"Policital scare tactics"

The leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada last week downplayed critics' fears that they are seeking to create a North American Union. Wimps! Instead of being defensive, they should have called for much greater economic integration.

An unusual mixture of ultra-conservative anti-immigration groups and leftist anti-free trade organizations had sent out alarm bells through the Internet that the three presidents were about to merge the three countries into a single North American Union, and to create a single currency, the "Amero." [...]

The John Birch Society Web site has claimed that "one of the (SPP's) first orders of business will be a borderless North America -- spelling the end of our nation's independence."

"This is, no matter what anyone tells you, a very serious and unprecedented challenge to the sovereignty of this nation," CNN's fear-monger- in-chief Lou Dobbs told his audience with characteristic anxiety April 4.

Asked about the three leaders' reaction to this hysteria, American University's Center for North American studies director Robert Pastor told me: "By their silence and defensiveness, the presidents have allowed the relationship to be defined by an extremist fringe that fears any co-operative initiative will lead to the dissolution of sovereignty. The leaders were too timid."

(Source: The Modesto Bee)