J O E L H I L L I K E R C O L U M N I S T

A U.S.-UK Export the World Doesn’t

Want, Thank You Very Much
December 1, 2010 | From theTrumpet.com
A sign that the world is about to get far more dangerous
 

L ast month, David Cameron was in Beijing making himself a target for Chinese leaders’ jokes.

The British prime minister was lecturing them on the supposed benefits of democracy. He tried to sell
them on the joys and wonders of the political quarrels in parliament, of the schisms dividing the
electorate, of the condemnations he routinely receives via Britain’s vociferously free press. You should
try it, he told the Chinese. “These are constraints on the government, and at times they can be
frustrating,” he said. “But ultimately we believe they make our government better and our country
stronger.”

China’s leaders had to be amused. The new head of a washed-up, shriveling country of 60 million—
squeaking out advice on how to be “great.” To them he must sound like a clueless tour guide praising
the Titanic as it sinks.

They, meanwhile, are using authoritarian tactics to rocket their nation of 1.3 billion into the
superpower stratosphere.

This is reality of life on planet Earth today. The tenets of liberal Western governance are becoming
passé. The nations that most embody them—Mr. Cameron’s Britain, and the United States, most
notably—are losing relevance. Power is rapidly shifting toward regimes undemocratic, authoritarian,
even repressive.

Get ready—this theme is going to get louder. And the ramifications are scary.

Perhaps one can view it as a natural response to anxious times. Economies teeter—trade wars loom—
insurgencies threaten wobbly governments—ruinous weapons proliferate. In the face of such threats,
fussiness over freedoms and rights apparently looks out of touch. Such things might be nice in
prosperous, peaceful times, perhaps, but tougher times demand tougher measures.

Whatever their reasons, nations and bodies of nations are unquestionably redefining their priorities.
They have tabled discussion about democratic reform in order to address more pressing matters.

Cameron’s recent comments aside, even the West has seriously backed off promoting democracy and
backing opposition movements. It has given up demanding populist reforms as a condition for
enjoying trade, receiving aid or arms, or joining multinational organizations or alliances.
In Egypt, the West has watched in near silence as the president has rigged elections—including one
this past weekend—to remain in office. In Iraq, elections in March produced eight months of political
gridlock; this ended last month in an arrangement that kept the incumbent prime minister in power
despite his party winning fewer seats than its rival party. In Afghanistan, U.S. leaders are hoping to
see a stable government emerge from a deal between a corrupt president and Muslim extremists who,
they hope, have renounced terrorism. In case after case, idealism is simply giving way to pragmatism.

“When we deal with Sudan or Libya or China today, it is to make deals or to guarantee military
support, not to demand elections in exchange for any of that,” wrote Doug Saunders in the Globe and
Mail. “The more important goal is not democracy but stability.”

It’s a fascinating and ominous shift. Who really wants to be Britain, or America? Who wants the
hassles and inefficiencies that competing political parties bring? In today’s world, the real success
stories are autocracies. “The economic boom of autocratic powers such as China and Russia has
reignited the competition of [political] systems,” said the lead editorial in Germany’s leading journal
on global affairs, Internationale Politik, this past summer. “Have authoritarian systems refurbished
their gloss—because they are quicker at making decisions than portly democracies?”

Judging by the way European leaders are conducting themselves, it seems they certainly believe so.
They are brushing aside public protest in order to ramrod their vision of a federal Europe into reality.
They are contemplating the uninvited imposition of federal taxes and federal police powers. To resolve
the economic crisis, they are brutishly taking over formerly sovereign national economies. Last month
the EU president, Herman van Rompuy, condemned the perfectly sensible desire to prioritize national
interest over European federalism as “egoism” that leads to war. This is precisely the type of
reasoning Eurocrats are using to justify their growing despotism.

The vast majority of the British absolutely hate what is happening, and their place within Europe is
certain to reach a crisis point soon. (Just watch this speech, delivered last week to Mr. Rompuy and
the rest of the European Parliament by MEP Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party.) Nevertheless,
the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker noted the irony of Prime Minister Cameron criticizing the Chinese,
when Britain itself is being swallowed by the unapologetically undemocratic European Union. Just how
democratic is Britain, he asked, “where almost everything our government does is either dictated or
constrained by decisions taken at a higher level by our new system of government centered in
Brussels?”

Watch this trend! The discrediting of the pillars of governance espoused by Anglo-America is laying the
pavement for nothing less than—pardon the expression—a new world order.

The return of old empires—autocracies, dictatorships, tyrannies—is already occurring. The economic,
political and social instability that is beginning to shake the nations today is presenting the opportunity
—even creating the necessity—for strongmen to rise.

Believe it or not, this state of affairs was specifically prophesied by Jesus Christ.

He foretold of a period that would grip this world called “the times of the Gentiles.” This seismic shift
in geopolitical momentum—away from America and Britain and toward a clutch of non-Israelite, or
Gentile, powers—is actually one of the visible signs Jesus gave of His imminent return!
Christ warned that this trend, which we are witnessing today, would precipitate a time of suffering
“such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time [the end time—our day today], no, nor
ever shall be” (Luke 21:24; Matthew 24:21). He said that if God Himself did not intervene to stop it,
mankind would annihilate itself! (verse 22).

The fact that God will intervene is the only hope for a world bent on its own destruction. But it is a
sure hope!

You must not ignore these momentous global shifts, nor should you fail to understand them.
The Trumpet is your guide. Your early-warning news source.

The inexorable march of end-time events is happening. The years ahead will be full of horrifying
shocks to a world asleep. We urge you to prepare yourself by taking the Trumpetseriously—and acting
upon what you read. •

Joel Hilliker’s column appears every Wednesday.

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