Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Espen Barth Eide (Labour Party), thinks it is a terrible thing that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told the International Criminal Court (ICC) to get lost.
Unfortunately for us, we do not have ministers who understand democracy, as Marco Rubio gives the world a lesson in:
For 250 years, we Americans have governed ourselves as a free and sovereign people. We elect our own leaders. We make our own laws. And when we are accused of a crime, we stand trial before a jury of our own peers. This is the essential and indispensable hallmark of our form of government. It is the foundation of our common way of life.
Today, powerful people far away want to take this from us. They believe they should have control over your laws, your country, your lives, and they do not care whether you agree or not. Halfway around the world there is an institution calling itself the International Criminal Court (ICC). Perhaps you have heard of it, perhaps you have not, but chances are you do not know the names of its judges, prosecutors or president, and there is no need for you to know them either.
At this very moment, the ICC and its allies are waging war against our country—not with bullets or missiles, but with laws, treaties and the power of so-called international law. When the ICC was established 24 years ago, we were told that it was merely a narrow safeguard, a global court that would intervene only to prosecute the gravest crimes—things such as genocide and war crimes—and only when a nation’s own courts were unable to prosecute them themselves.
The truth is that it was something far more radical and extreme. It was a global court staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim that their authority is virtually unlimited. The danger posed by this global court has only continued to grow. Today, it threatens every aspect of our political and judicial system. Border patrol officers who remove violent criminals from our country. American Marines who risk their lives defending our homeland. Prosecutors working to uncover terrorist plots to attack and kill Americans.
If we remain passive, all of these people will be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away, facing a constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called crime of defending their own country.
The American people have never agreed to any of this, and they never will. Read the words of our Declaration of Independence. We fought a revolution against a foreign power that transported us across the sea to stand trial for alleged offences.
Independence is our birthright. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to take it from us. This administration will not stand by while the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its allies seek to threaten our people. If they believe they can deprive us of our sovereignty, we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve.