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    MIKE GRAVEL AND PHILADELPHIA II
    During our nation's bicentennial year of 1976, then U.S. senator Mike 
Gravel (D-AK) rged his constituents and all Americans to learn to be "world 
citizens first and Americans second." When others were trying to get fellow 
citizens to appreciate the marvelous Declaration of Independence and the 
great heritigeit inaugurated, here was one of the nations top elected 
officials suggesting that they subordinate their patriotism to an undefined 
world citizenship.
    At the very next opportunity, in 1980, Alaskan voters had endured enough 
of their eccentric and frequently apalling leader and sent him packing.
   Did he stay in Alaska? like most defeated politicians, he went elsewhere. 
But unlike most who find themselves unable to break free of the heady 
atmosphere in the Washington DC area, he went to California where he has just 
re-emerged as the leader of a controversial scheme known as "Philadelphia 
II."
      WORLD GOVERNMENT HOKUM
   If you feel threatened by war, pollution, hunger, and the loss of human 
rights, Mike Gravel has an answer. If you would like to swap national 
sovereignty and the U.S. Constitution for a "world federal government" and a 
"world constitution," his Philadelphia II plan is for you.
    The wayit is supposed to work is quite simple. The people call for a 
worldwide convention, elect delegates who draw up constitution for a world 
government, and then vote referendum-style to accept the new system. 
According to GRavel, it's all very much like events in the early days of this 
nation when a call for a convention was held in 1787, the delegates met in 
Philadelphia, and the Constitution they  wrote was eventually ratified by the 
separate states. If it worked in Philadelphia in 1787, it could work for the 
world in the 1990's.
    How does all of this get started? Gravel's two-page flyer (realize that 
he's just getting started) proposes "a world referendum that asks the people 
if they want a convention to address global problems." If they want it, then 
"delegates are elected and the convention is convened."
     Realizing that "not all political jurisdictions...permit referendums for 
their people," Gravel's plan calls for starting the processwhere they do 
exist. He claims his plan "will permit the American people to circumvent 
their unresponsicve leadership." And he has chosen Calfornia as the place to 
begin because it "has an excellent referendum law." Believing that California 
voters can "awaken the people of the world to the possibilities of a world 
convention," he intends to submit the philadelphia II initiative to the 
Secreary of State of California in January 1994 "for placement on the general 
election ballot in November 1994."
  As soon as he meets with success in California, he will go to the other 
sates and even force the enactment of a federal law permitting national 
referendums. With the U.S. in his camp, he will then spread his wings and 
gather in, country by country, the rest of mankind.
   Because so many truly wild ideas have already achieved legitimacy in this 
nation, it's a bit dangerous to stick one's neck out say that Gravel's 
cockamanie scheme will go nowhere. Surely, the good people of California will 
recognize Philadelphia II as subversive nonsense. Or will they?
    Appeals to the people.
   Appeals to the people have been long been the tools of demagogues who 
intend to rule rather than be ruled. What too many Americans have forgotten 
is that freedom exists where government power is limited merely to protecting 
rights. The reason America has slowed down is not that government isn't 
working, it's that government is working too much. Its powers andits cost 
have soared far beyond the limitations set in the Constitution created in 
Philadelphia I.
     When a politician prates about the people ruling, he intends that they 
give him power to do whatever he wants in their name. Daniel Webster once 
stated, "There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but when they 
mean to govern.
   They promise to be good masters, but they promise to be masters." 
Precisely! And Thomas Jefferson warned that "confidence is everywhere the 
parent of despotism... In questions of power, then, let no more be heared of 
confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the 
Constitution."
Yet the Gravel plan would cast aside the chains of in this nation's 
Constitution."
   In 1848, an ambitious demagogue named Karl Marx set down a plan to rule. 
COmplete with appeals to the people, His COMMUNIST MANIFESTO actually stated 
that "the first step in the revolutuion [is] to win the battle  of 
democracy."Like Marx, Gravel wants a world democracy and the unrestrained 
rule of the majority. But the awful truth is that the tyranny of a majority 
is historically as violent a tyranny as could possibly exist.
   If Mike Gravel's Philadelphia II stimulates anyone to learn about 
Philadelphia I that produced the government-and majority limiting U.S. 
COnstitution, then it will have produced some good effect. By itself, it is 
unadulterated and dangerous Hokum.
John F. McManus 
National president of theJohn Birch Society
1-800-JBS-USA1
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