Hemispheric integration by the installment plan.

When in 1913 Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-R.I.), acting on behalf of a power-hungry elite cabal, proposed a framework for the Federal Reserve, President Woodrow Wilson opposed the plan as inadequate. Wilson ardently sought the creation of a European-style central bank, and the Aldrich plan fell short. Presidential confidant Edward Mandell House, who like Aldrich was wired into the Power Elite, persuaded Wilson to accept the Aldrich plan.

"The President ... was distrustful of the Aldrich theory, but I early succeeded in talking him out of that," recalled House decades later. "I told him that it would be physically impossible for us to produce at one stroke an ideal bill. We could only frame one as close as possible to the ideal, and trust to time to amend its mistakes." Significantly, House wasn't able to convince Wilson to display similar flexibility regarding the League of Nations Covenant. As a result, the Power Elite got the Federal Reserve, but had to wait until later to get its world government framework (re-christened the United Nations).

Today, the Power Elite's top priority is completion by 2005 of the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas. The FTAA would integrate the nations of the Western Hemisphere into a single political and economic entity modeled after the socialist European Union. The road to a supranational government of the Americas will be difficult, and, as William F. Jasper pointed out in his onsite report from the recent FTAA summit in Miami (see "FTAA Falters on Road to 2005" in our December 15 issue), the pact's promoters have "hit some snags." But the promoters are approaching the FTAA as a "process" rather than a result. This means, a la House and the Federal Reserve, securing agreements in principle that can be revisited later in the process.

For instance, immigration is one of the most contentious issues in the FTAA process. That process would eventually abolish our national borders--a prospect explicitly acknowledged, and welcomed, by Mexican President Vicente Fox. But because of public and congressional opposition, the Bush administration is carefully avoiding the issue in FTAA negotiations--a tactical decision understood by Open Borders ideologues who know that the subject can be taken up again when the pact is finished.

"Nobody's lobbying mainly because most people realize it's something that should be brought in at least gradually," remarked leftist academic Max Castro of Miami's North-South Center in an interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "If you made that the first item on the agenda it would probably torpedo the whole thing," continued Castro. Other potentially deal-breaking issues will be similarly deferred in the interest of finishing an FTAA agreement--any FTAA agreement--that can be revised and strengthened later on.

Americans must understand, however, that this process will ultimately lead to the abolition of our national independence, the creation of an unaccountable supranational socialist bureaucracy, a larger tax burden, and a radical reduction in our standard of living. That's why it must be stopped--now.