Would Anyone Care To Publicly Defend The UN?
By Giles Howard on Feb 26, 2010 in Featured
I know I haven’t been posting frequently in the last few weeks as midterms are currently taking up a great deal of my time but something I read today blew my mind: the United Nations General Assembly elected a stooge of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to serve as that body’s president in September 2009.
I don’t spend much time thinking about the UN and I generally consider it to be a useless organization beneath my notice but this is just amazing. The stooge in question, Ali Abdussalam Treki, served as foreign minister to the Gaddafi dictatorship during the 70s and 80s and, in an effort to prove he’s as crazy as his boss, he made sure to denounce homosexuals during his first press conference as President of the General Assembly.
So, to my friends and readers who believe in globalism and the United Nations, I challenge you to defend the organization that would elect a dictator’s lapdog to serve as their president.
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Well, I can’t defend electing that asshole, so I won’t try. I happen to think the U.N. is a pretty useless group, but not because I’m not down with globalism. I think it’s useless because we haven’t invested any real power or energy into it. It’s broken and needs a deep, basic restructuring. Instead, I look to the E.U. for a positive example of an international group. European countries gave up a bit of control over their own economies to make trade between the countries easier and cheaper. And unlike NAFTA, which depresses the economies of the U.S. and Canada without bringing Mexico up at all, the E.U. reserves membership to countries with a similar economic situations. Yet, it isn’t elitist or exclusionary. The group works with countries that aren’t quite up to snuff to help improve their economies and only after they can handle it are they allowed the privileges of joining the group. Everyone benefits.
One more thing: The United States drafted our constitution because the individual states needed each others help but were unwilling without a national government to give them a kick in the right direction. The states of the world today are far more closely tied together (economically, politically, culturally) than the 13 colonies; can’t the principles that brought us to a representative federal government be used support an international government?
Brendan Sullivan | Mar 3, 2010 | Reply
I think you’re wrong about today’s nations being tied closer together than the 13 states were pre-Constitution. The United States is a democratic republic whose citizens are endowed with certain inalienable rights and whose economy is more free market than that of most nations. What do have in common with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy or France’s quasi-socialist welfare state?
Even look at the EU where the individual right to privacy trumps free speech rights. Would US citizens have to give up our First Amendment to become part of an integrated world government?
You’re correct in thinking that our similar cultures made the unification of the 13 states possible but that same similarity is lacking around the globe and is a significant impediment to any international government. Plus, why would we want more government? The one we have is to big already and it’s just a national one.
Giles Howard | Mar 3, 2010 | Reply
Maybe I wasn’t exactly clear. Just because we don’t have much in common with Iran or Saudi Arabia or France, but we are certainly interconnected. The speed at which money moves through the world, and hence makes nation-states extremely closely tied, is unfathomably faster than in the colonies. We are all part of the same global economy that affects all of us; that’s how we are connected.
As for why would we want more government? Obviously we aren’t going to agree on this, it’s a pretty basic ideological difference. But let me say this: there is no difference, at all, between a state government, a national government, and an international government. It is simply a question of how large the voting base is.
Brendan Sullivan | Mar 4, 2010 | Reply