The UN First?

A reader wonders whether I pulled a bait-and-switch on Rick with my complaint about McCain's "Country First" slogan:

In your reply to [Rick's] post, you state "[B]ut I think slogans like these encourage our tendency to put "American" interests over human interests." . . . But isn't this argument a type of bait and switch on your part (and I don't mean to imply any malice)?  Your original point was that the slogan was wrong because it put "country" ahead of "God."  At least that is how I, and it looks like Rick Garnett, read it. 

Your response brings up a different question: whether or not the system of independant, sovereign nations is the best method yet devised to advance and protect human rights.  As opposed to what seems to be your preferred choice of an international bureaucracy.  Those are far different issues.  Indeed, I think it is playing to the anti-UN crowd.  But I don't see that as problematic from a Catholic/Christian standpoint.  I think its a political problem over which reasonable people can disagree.  A commitment to the rights of man does not require that one decommit from national sovereignty.  But again, I think that's a different issue from the one initially raised.

This is a good point, so let me clarify.  I do not suggest that "Country First" should be replaced by "The UN First."  Our commitments to our Creator must come first.  But most of us will not be asked explicitly to place Country over God -- we're not often given the choice between bowing to the earthly ruler or facing the fiery furnace.  More commonly, our commitments to God are lived out through our recognition that our fellow humans were created in God's image, and it is that recognition that is dangerously clouded by making an idol out of Country (or money, or academic prestige, or the UN).  In some contexts, we should support international institutions because the nation-state system does not adequately protect human dignity.  In other contexts, international institutions may pose the greater threat to human dignity.  If we take subsidiarity seriously, I would submit, Christians should take a consequentialist view of national sovereignty -- is it an effective vehicle by which to protect human dignity and facilitate human flourishing?  In many (most?) cases, the answer is yes.  But not in all cases, and "Country First" obfuscates that fact.  In its more extreme versions, it completely obliterates our commitment to human dignity by placing a greater value on American lives than non-American lives.  (I do not accuse McCain of that more extreme version, but I do accuse Mitt Romney of it, and his speech last night solidified my view.)