One World Democracy (Session 5)

Most people never hear the case for ending war through enforceable law told as a story they can see themselves in. The closing session on One World Democracy turned from the argument to what readers can do about it, with both authors present.

About the Book

One World Democracy: A Progressive Vision for Enforceable Global Law by Jerry Tetalman and Byron Belitsos argues for a democratic world federation with the power to make and enforce law in the few areas, war above all, that no nation can manage alone. The World Citizen Book Club read it from July to November 2021.

About the Authors

Jerry Tetalman is a long-time Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) activist and board member; Byron Belitsos is a writer and publisher. Both co-authors joined the final session.

Discussion Highlights

The session, on Saturday 20 November 2021, covered the last two chapters and the appendices. Jerry Tetalman framed the ending as a call to action: thought comes before action, movements from abolition to civil rights were driven by ordinary people, and the group’s job is to offer a new story in which people see themselves first as part of humanity. Byron Belitsos described sovereignty as real at two levels, the individual and the planet, and said that since the book appeared in 2005, corporate power, technology companies and rival great powers had obscured that picture.

Questions turned to storytelling. A member asked whether a series based on Garry Davis’s book My Country Is the World could reach a wide audience, and both authors backed film and video. Another asked whether world federalists face competitors in existing, undemocratic global governance; Belitsos answered that critics of globalism are also thinking at global scale, and that CGS should say plainly it stands for world democracy.

The club agreed without objection to read excerpts from Joseph Preston Baratta’s The Politics of World Federation from January, and Bob Flax announced a December session on the CGS Theory of Change (his conference talk on it is recorded).

The World Citizen Book Club meets online on the second Saturday of each month and is open to anyone, whether you have read the book or not. See what the club is reading next.