Letter: Adams dreaded global crusades to aid democracy

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had traveled to Santiago, Chile, to address the plenary session of the Community of Democracies. "To advance our democratic consensus, all free nations must insist that upholding democratic principles is the surest path to greater international status," stated Rice. "The Community of Democracies is one of a growing number of international organizations that make democracy an actual condition for membership ... International organizations such as the Community of Democracies can help to create a balance of power that favors freedom."

Few Americans understand the dire implications of the Bush administration's efforts to "reform" the United Nations into a suitable instrument of the "global democratic revolution" via the Community of Democracies.

America's Founding Fathers well understood, and clearly warned about, the dangers of embarking on open-ended, international crusades on behalf of "democracy" or other abstractions. By enlisting under "banners other than our own," even though they would be the banners of foreign liberty, warned John Quincy Adams, "Our government's mission would insensibly be turned from liberty to force; our national independence would be stolen from us and we would find ourselves enslaved."

The Bush administration's global democratic revolution, in which the drive to "reform" the U.N. plays a central role, is the very embodiment of what Adams warned our nation to avoid.

FRANK M. PELTESON