Thanks, but no thanks. Why do we want to integrate with a basket case?

I'm sure Aznar isn't thinking of it, but the EU will surely be in D.C. after the next Democrat is elected, hat in hand. They might even present such 'aid' as an alternative to the UN.

The NRA is very skittish about foreign entanglements as they might impact the RKBA.

The threat is that misuse of treaty language might someday produce an end0 run around the Second Amendment. The American militia concept is quite exceptional and is anathema to statists around the world.

Interesting to see that at least some folks are still pushing one of the visions of [all-but-forgotten?]conservative pioneer James Burnham. Check out this old piece, from Nov. 5, 1990 issue of National Review (toward the end):

"20th century AD"
by John O'Sullivan

http://tinyurl.com/jhg42

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n21_v42/ai_9046894/print

[snip]
[...]to reshape Europe into a loose-limbed, free-market, free-trade confederation of nation-states, cooperating in various practical economic ways but each retaining its own tradition of democratic accountability in politics. Desirable in itself, such a Europe would also be a natural partner for the U.S. and Canada in an Atlantic Common Market. The insight is not, of course, original. Commenting in NR on a congressional report exactly 29 years ago, James Burnham wrote: "The logic' of the Common Market, granted present world technology, economics, and politics, extends to all of the relatively advanced nations, not only of Europe but of the Americas ... separation between our own continental common market and the newly integrating European economy must lead to constant friction and to the erosion of our own economic and fiscal strength."
Events since 1961 have done nothing to undermine that judgment.

But the obstacle, then and today, to this economic equivalent of NATO has been the opposition of the U. S. Government. Washington has instead promoted a tightly integrated, bureaucratically regulated EC (sometimes miscalled a United States of Europe) which is turning out to be protectionist in trade, socialist in economics, and appeasement-minded in foreign policy. That was at least understandable when it might have meant strengthening an ally in the cold war; it makes no sense when it is creating a rival in a mercantilist struggle. And it is doubly self-defeating when, combined with moves toward a Western Hemisphere Common Market, it amounts to volunteering for the weakest side in a protectionist war.

Compared to this prospect, U.S. membership in a free-trade, free-market Atlantic Common Market would be almost idyllic. Such a body would be the largest concentration of industrial power, economic wealth, and human ingenuity in history. It would represent 58 per cent of world GNP, 66 per cent of the world's exports, 63 per cent of world manufacturing added value, and 52 per cent of world electricity production. It would provide a source of capital and a large and profitable export market for the Soviet Union, Africa, and Latin America. And because it would overwhelm Japan's Asian co-prosperity sphere in every respect, its general philosophy would set the tone and standard for trade and economic policy throughout the world.

That philosophy would be capitalist in economics, liberal in trade, and democratic in polities (and, it must be conceded, hedonist and populist in culture). The bureaucratic, autarchic, and socialist traditions which exist in European politics, and which were dominant in the superstate future, would here be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. A combination of the U.S., Britain, some of the smaller EC member-states, and an Eastern Europe purged of statist illusions would ensure the long supremacy of the Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty. And insofar as some nations found that tradition irksome, they could use the safety valve of their national sovereignty to impose some local socialism at the cost of some relative impoverishment.

An Atlantic Common Market would also contribute to international security in significant ways. It would safeguard the old military balance of power in Europe, while establishing a new economic one. America's increased participation in the European economy would underpin NATO [...] Of more immediate importance, it would offset German economic dominance by subjecting Germany's corporatist structures to the disciplines of a wider market. But its most important contribution to the world's security would be to provide the economic, financial, and strategic base for U.S. power in the wider world.
[snip]

Interesting, eh? A remarkable idea, IMSHO.

Now on a more whimsical note:

"Letter From America"
by Regis Debray (yeah, *that* Regis Debray)

http://tinyurl.com/h2bws

http://www.newleftreview.net/PDFarticles/NLR25302.pdf