[Overpaid Slacker]

Steve -- My personal view is that we have a League of Democracies. Yes, I know there is something of a "spectrum" as to what constitutes a democracy, but that kind of thing can be worked out.

As far as China, it's not democratic by any Euclidian standard, so it's out. But size won't matter. The smallest, struggling African democracies would be welcome to join, as would any truly democratic (even if impoverished) nation.

As for EU members, I suspect w/o knowing that the EU would attempt to pre-empt their members from acting in any sovereign capacity such as this.

It's not exactly a secret that the EU is very anti-democratic (it does not like to have EU membership or the acceptance of the Euro put to public referendum, but prefers to have each country's legislature vote on such matters w/o each citizen-to-be having an opportunity to vote -- Where's the "Let Every Vote Count" outcry from our disenfranchisement industry?). I imagine the UK would still want a seat in this LoD; and many former Soviet Bloc countries might as well.

You can forget Fra and Ger even making overtures about joining b/c the scope of the conflict-of-interests between the EU's power centralization/aggrandization and the EU's two motivating forces joining an autonomous international entity would warp gravity.

Plus, France would see it as a US power-play, as they see everything as a US power-play...

We (the democracies) have the money anyway -- how much does Saudi Arabia or the rest of the Islamofascist world provide in dues to the UN? How much to they give to disaster relief --even disaster relief for MUSLIMs, for Mohammed's sake. Next to none. We democracies get things done, we innovate, we have goals and aspirations for the world (aside from conquest and united worship of Allah under some 12th century theocracy).

We're really the only nations that DO anything anyway, so why do we need the dirtbags right in our living rooms, eating all our food, drinking all our booze, consuming our culture, utilizing the technology that we -- and definitively not they -- developed, impregnating the domestic animals and then telling us how much we suck and how great they are.

Get out of our penthouses and go back to your moms' basement apartments, your squalor and filth, dirtbags. No matter how gracious or generous we have been or will be (witness Egypt for a prime example) you're going to blame us for your plight, steadfastly refusing to take responsibility for your own actions that keep you oppressed ... we don't need you doing it in our home any more.

JP