Exactly Julie. I detest the prevailing Christian neurosis of waiting for the clouds to part, which is usually accompanied with obsessive divination. Being a Christian day-to-day is so much harder than perching on a hill waiting for God(ot). That's rather sterile and life-evading.
Now that we've re-righted the acronym, the TPP has everything to do with eroding national sovereignty. Maybe your sources differ on that appraisal, Janice. Sourcng is iffy as so few are allowed to read it. One can always hope the peoples' best interests are front-and-center and that the unprecedented secrecy isn't hiding an anti-democratic intent. But yes, this could be a precedent for future transnational agreements.
Don't feel obliged to commit to a definition on my behalf, nor certainly my interpretation of Bill Carpenter's attempt, but he alludes to this as possibly being one of your 'first principles':
"It seems that a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best."
Whomever the proponents of this might be, it reads to me like a whopper of an
until. How do we prove our deservingness after self-determination has been relinquished to this transnational order? What precedents are there of bloodless reverse-devolutions of power at the first signs of popular maturation? The problem of course is that the vanguard never self-dissolves --without coaxing. And given the perfecting of surveillance technology, dissolution seems even less likely in the years ahead. If globalism truly succeeds at becoming
global, where will the exogenous counterforce march from should things veer dystopian?
You say,
"it seems to be ingrained in the psyche of the human being to seek a Great Controller to deal with contingencies he cannot control." Indeed it does. The Soviet Union had its own go at it in the atheistic guise of democratic centralism. This may be the brand of democracy you have in mind when you say:
"yes, I do believe that the nation-state has passed its heyday. The current global response to the Paris attack seems to confirm that. Breaking down larger states into smaller ones based on religion or ethnicity with no overarching political deterrents (i.e. the EU) will make the individual state more vulnerable..."
I guess it's fair to say you're no fan of localism. That's okay. Not everyone comes away inspired by the stateless Kurds' experiments with grassroots self-governance. To me, democracy
is the lack of overarching politcal deterrents. I mean, what about the vulnerability of the people to an overarching transnational entity? I find you oddly silent on this point. I don't know if the on-line Britannica is on your sanctioned reading list, but I'll venture it. There are other sources for definitions:
http://www.britannica.com/topic/democratic-centralism
"Democratic centralism purported to combine two opposing forms of party leadership: democracy, which allows for free and open discussion, and central control, which ensures party unity and discipline... Unrestrained discussion, [Lenin] insisted, would produce intraparty disagreements and factions and prevent the party from acting effectively."
There's nothing wrong with being a democratic centralist, though I can't resolve what strikes me as its glaring internal contradiction. It's a recognized form of governance with an historical track-record. Maybe the kinks the Soviets experienced have been ironed out.