Shared sovereignty isn't sovereignty

Now, for Americans, sovereignty is not an abstract concept. ... We understand very well that under our constitution, sovereignty is vested in us, in America. It's not the government that's sovereign. It's the people who are sovereign. So when you hear people say, "Well, you know, problems today are really global in nature and therefore, you need global solutions and what we need to do is to share sovereignty or to pool sovereignty," what they are saying indirectly to Americans is, "You have too much control over your own government and you need to give some of it up to Germans and Chinese and South Africans and all the other members of the United Nations."

I think since most Americans think we don't have enough control over our own government, the last thing we want to do is give what we have up in whole or in part. And I think it's important, as you look at a range of issues that are being discussed, some in Congress, some in international organizations covering a huge diversity of subjects, from the idea of international fees and taxes for banks that would fund international regulatory activities to the Law of the Sea Treaty, which the administration is trying yet again to get through Congress that would fund an international authority from revenues, royalties of deep-sea mining, to any of a variety of other things, including issues like gun control, the death penalty, family issues, that the tendency to put more and more of these issues into international negotiations is a tendency that we should resist because it is ultimately destructive of our liberties. -- John Bolton, The First Post-American President and American Sovereignty, 5/18/10