My basic precepts:

#1: People are afforded certain irrefutable rights by sheer existence. (Natural Law)

#2: Common good. (The needs of a group are more important than the needs of an individual.)

I'd like to think that those two are pretty universal.



Governments are nothing more than organizations of people. As such, they have certain rights. (#1) Also, being (generally) large collections of people, they have the ability to supercede their consituents' rights as needed for the betterment of the common good. (#2) One responsibility of government is to have some kind of process whereby the decision to infringe on these rights can be made.

By extrapolation, the needs of global good (the world's collective good) supercede the rights of a nation or state. Obviously, the needs of the human race as a whole override any individual group's. Also by extrapolation, a process is needed whereby this can occur as needed. As such, a global government (Back to first paragraph, government = collection of people. Global government = collection of nations) of sorts needs to be in place to handle this. Hence the United Nations.

The United States going into Iraq and saying "Your leader is a danger, we're going to take him out" is no different from one of your neighbors saying "That Duff Man guy can't be trusted, I say we kill him." No matter what you've done, he's circumventing the proper authorities to impose his own version of justice. If other neighbors voice their support or say "We're donating 6 bullets and a ham sandwich to support the murder" that doesn't justify the action. He has decided that his individual rights overrule your individual rights, which is both illegal and runs against natural law. Proper process needs to be observed to impart a fair decision.

Here's my breakdown on the whole situation: I hate rapists, and I think they should all die. However, that does not entitle me to violate their basic right to life by killing them. I think certain totalitarian governments are unjust and immoral. However, that does not give me or the United States the right to violate their sovereignty.