The long-touted vision of the neocons and illuminati, a one-world government, presents all the difficulties and more of the United States as is, "and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under god (which god?), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" as touted in our Pledge of Allegiance.

That said, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset noted in his Revolution of the Masses (1930) that the United States had a unique advantage for economic success over its European counterparts. That would be its large land mass, in which goods could be sold to many more millions of citizens than in European nations, guaranteeing higher profits, corporate wealth, jobs, and a growing industrial capacity. Also, an American product could expect to be found in the north, south, east or west of America with a relatively similar standard of quality.

This marketing advantage, Ortega y Gasset postulated, created the unique engine of our economic growth. Yet, that rapid expansion and economic development, which adapted so well to arms� production for victory in WW II, brought us in the post-war era to our super-power political status. Along with that came an insatiable appetite for materials, products, continual growth, the development of a consumer and military economy. We turned into a dinosaur, with a one-swing-of-the-tail ability to wreak havoc on smaller nations, right to this very day.

Secondly, the decision making power of the nation for all 50 states become more centered at the national level, putting an enormous amount of power in the hands of relatively few people, whose wisdom to make the right choices could easily fail, and whose visions of government policy could be outright delusional, with huge, dire consequences. Thus our very strength and size backfired in our often-tripping lunge to hold to or grasp more power.

The lunge became a way of life, exacting a frightening toll on smaller nations, who tended to be less expansive in their political expectations, unless they had direct support from the US, or its Asian counterparts China, Japan or Russia. It also inspired a string of Intelligence and military interferences in smaller nations that wouldn�t buckle to our will.

Also, our national size and power inevitably seem to give rise to a missionary political zeal, not unlike Rome�s, or the empire of the great Genghis Khan, Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire. Though all of these �Empires� did not have great land mass to start with (nor did we), they had the will to expand via political and economic aggressiveness. They accumulated untold land and power in time at the expense of other peoples and their cultures.

Ironically, regarding our home-field selling advantage, Ortega y Gasset would be startled to know that our 2007 trade deficit "declined" to $711.6 billion. The deficit with China alone came to $256 billion, a rise of 10.2 %. This is the biggest gap on record with a single nation. CBS News reported, �The Chinese imports soared in spite of a string of high-profile recalls of tainted products.� The single-most driving factor was lower cost, based on the Chinese worker�s lower standard of living and reimbursement for his labor.

Is the US democratically governable?

This brings us to the $64 question: is the US really democratically governable any longer? Are China and Russia governable? Or do they all inevitably fall in the hands of bureaucratic elites, hand-in-hand with corporate elites, whose goal is to turn them into huge money making machines, corrupted by global corporatism at the expense of the working people.

In doing so, we seem to have lost the vision of our Pledge of Allegiance. In the time from Washington and Jefferson to Bush and Bush, power has grown to be centered in ruling cabals, even a lone family. Democracy, whatever that is, the right to the pursuit of happiness for all men is in serious danger. The chance afforded controlling groups to amass vast power and wealth, bringing with it corruption and decadence from top down to the �common man� has drastically increased. The notion of the government working for the �common good,� the notion put forth by FDR�s New Deal around the time Ortega y Gasset was writing, has vanished for private enterprise�s, free-market looting.

Also, we look at statistics today and we find that the European nations are less bellicose. Their workers work-time is lower, their vacation time is longer, their health and retirement plans better. It seems the superpower, which exacts a super-effort from its people, provides a less and less than super reward. The tendency of the superpower to dominate, even enslave individuals, spreads internally as well as externally.

Why is it a great historical anecdote that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. It underscores an assumption that first-responder peons would take care of the blaze. Does Bush think about the thousands of soldiers, hundreds of thousands of victims, his wars are creating? Or are they just society�s fodder to his neocon vision?

When, too, does a growing state cross the line to obsession with world power and lose sight of the needs of its own people, its need to preserve infrastructure, health, education and welfare systems as well as defense. Defense, I say, not offense. There�s a big difference. It is the line we crossed post WW II from being a great defensive power against an offensive despot, to becoming an offense power ourselves, citing all countries with contrasting ideologies as our enemies.

At this point, we became the world policeman. With the fall of the Soviet Union, having broken its economy�s back with the pressure of a military economy on top of a failing consumer economy, we became the world�s superpower. It was just a hop, skip and a jump to see ourselves in a march to world hegemony as Masters of the Universe -- as in Tom Wolfe�s novel about our financial ruling class, Bonfire of the Vanities.

In fact, the dream of one-world government is really to expansion of this principal: the notion is to bring every nation under the canopy of one rigorous set of political ideals, the Big Brother Holding Company. Of course, the same problem occurs. The power is centered at the top, along with the wealth and good life, with an increasingly difficult life as you slide down the food chain of power and privilege into peon obscurity and wages.

It is every emperor�s wet dream, this One World Government -- portrayed as the people�s paradise, a kind of uber-fraternity, like doctrinaire communism, where all men would be melded from their cultures� dross into a new unified human metal, and live in harmony and lack of fear. It is in fact totally unreal, and would be more like the fascist corporatism we see today, where the majority of the world�s population would be the pawns of a clique of button-pushers who put the rulers of Orwell�s Oceania in his novel 1984 to shame.

If today displays the apex of human government�s evolution, we�re in a huge amount of trouble. And will it end as Ortega y Gasset predicted -- that increasingly authoritarian regimes would lead to revolution that would either succeed or end in the tragedy of fascism.

In fact, as we face a $9 trillion debt and �financial meltdown,� there is an interesting article from the Wayne Madsen Report in rense.com that posits if we don�t repay our massive debt to China, Japan and Russia, we may face either a major conflict, i.e., battle of the dinosaurs; if, on the other hand the US decides to drastically raise taxes to pay off foreign debts, American reaction could be a popular revolution. This �C & R� document is now circulating in DC.

Think of the birds

Given these humans scenarios, let�s look at the social constructs of birds and see what we can learn. Birds are small in size, inhabiting (not destroying) ecosystems across the world, with some 10,000 highly diverse species, none of them at war as far as I know. They are warm-blooded and egg-laying, and go back a million years to the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx, said to be evolved ironically from theropod dinosaurs. The small inherited the earth from the static, possessive, voracious giants.

Birds are intelligent, with incredible radar-like systems that enable them to fly great distances, marshalling their energy from stored weight. They hunt, breed, flock, and have, it seems to me, a hell of a time. Man�s desire to fly is undoubtedly an attempt to be a bird. Unfortunately, it takes thousands of gallons of jet fuel these days to get man off the ground.

Birds mob predators with a heroic instinct that�s enviable. Despite their petite size they are creatures of incredible complexity built to cope with elements in the raw. If it�s too hot they fly north, too cold they fly south. And no one has to tell them to keep the peace. They keep it. They are the peace of the world.

Do they think of a one-world aviary in which all of the species could nest and live under the same conditions, unless it is the sky itself? Are they the true Sufis and wisest of beings who whirl among us, in our smoke-choked cities, strip-mall suburbs, genetically-managed farmland, guarded wildlife areas, unprotected Arctic, ready for the oil pipe�s suck?

Who indeed are these modest, impeccably dressed creatures who rule themselves in harmony, albeit subject to the swoop of the hawk and eagle? Their size does not make them an unsustainable burden on the environment. They are simply part of it, self-perpetuating, beautiful to behold. How does man, his government, his empires, hold up to these beings? What must the birds think of us? What should we borrow from their ancient knowing?

Perhaps the president needs an aviary on the White House lawn. Each day, he could go out with his power goggles and study them. Where does their great surge and energy come from? How can each have its own nest without a subprime loan that ultimately bankrupts their economy? How have they avoided being so utterly vicious, violent and psychopathic?

Look how many of their species give their lives to feed our tables, provide for a hunt that can end up with a man�s face half blown-off, amazing. And yet they suffer us with such elegance, urging us to wake in the morning, coo-off to sleep at night. One is chirping right now in my backyard as I write, as if urging me to speak. Birds make us look like Swift�s Yahoos, or truly creatures from the deep crawled out of the ocean to stand on two feet and oppress the rest of the natural world and our own.

Why are �God�s� nearest and dearest, the angels, said to be in possession of wings like birds? Why have we claimed ourselves to be at the pinnacle of evolutionary development when we have become the single most destructive force on the planet and potentially space? Perhaps the OWG crowd could stop for a minute in its march to Valhalla and think about it, at least before they�ve destroyed it all or been destroyed themselves by all whom they oppress.