Posted on 12/03/2012 9:47:43 AM PST by jfd1776
“When in the Course of Human Events…” thus begins the most famous divorce decree in history, conceived by the Committee of Five in the Continental Congress, crafted principally by future governor and president Thomas Jefferson, with the helpful editing of their fellow delegates in Philadelphia, in June and July, 1776.
It was indeed a divorce decree, not a letter of annulment. It did not declare that we had never been partnered with England; it acknowledged clearly that there had once been legitimate bonds between England and these colonies. But the Declaration of Independence analyzed the then-recent practices of King George III, his ministers, and the British Parliament, and found them wanting.
It is time for the United States to recognize that another such international divorce is needed: a permanent end to our long relationship with the United Nations.
WHAT WERE WE PROMISED?
When the American people were hoodwinked into joining the United Nations in the 1940s, it was something of a bait-and-switch from the beginning. While people generally think of it as an heir to the failed League of Nations of a generation before, it really wasn’t. So let’s begin with the history:
Much of the rest of the world was already at war in December, 1941, when Japan launched a surprise attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor, in our then-territory of Hawaii, in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Japan declared war on the USA, and the agreement between the Axis Powers required that Germany and Italy must likewise declare war on us as well, which they gladly did within 72 hours.
The USA therefore found itself in a war – one for which we were terribly unprepared, thanks to the Hoover-Roosevelt Depression that had already lasted a dozen years. Desperately grasping at straws to mount a proper and organized strategy against our well-armed foes, the diplomats of Washington D.C. hit their telephones hard, calling all those already in the conflict to develop alliances as fast as possible. The Axis was working together, they reasoned; so should the good guys.
So it was that in a month’s time, the USA gathered such other combatants as Great Britain, Canada, Australia, China, Communist Russia (Communist Russia? Yes, Communist Russia too) – 26 countries in all – at the Arcadia Conference, signing “The Declaration by United Nations” on January 1, 1942, to lock in an agreement for mutual support and cooperation to fight the Axis Powers.
The members thought of it as an alliance for the war, but some intended it to become permanent. So after the war was over and won, they moved on to the next step – turning the United Nations into a replacement for the League.
SOME "DEBATING SOCIETY."
The establishment of the United Nations – coming on the heels of a second devastating world war – played on the emotions of a shattered public. The idea of a world in which nations would debate rather than shoot at each other was again a tempting proposition, and if it failed and wars still started, well, at least we wouldn’t be any worse off.
Ambassadors debate in a big room in a big building in a big city. Let the largest free country be the host, with the experience of the cultural and commercial landmark of New York City serving as a gentle but ever-present guide for the delegates: “This is what your country could be like, too, if you make the right choices.” A good idea, no?
Yes, there were good reasons to begin. It would be relatively inexpensive – compared to wars (anything looks inexpensive compared to wars) – and there would be benefits to the USA for being chosen as the permanent home of this debating society. So, over the opposition of more cautious and realistic members of our government, the UN was established, and the USA jumped in with both feet.
There were plenty of flaws in the organization that should have served as warnings that all would not be well, but a majority closed their eyes to them.
Unlike the USA’s Constitution, the UN was not seriously limited by its charter; it could grow in membership, in activities and in spending as a majority of its delegates desired. With as great a disparity of economic resources as the world community has, this seed was bound to become a strangling vine in no time, as a majority of members realized they could vote to spend money that a minority of other delegates had to furnish. As the old saying goes, when you promise to rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on a vote from Paul.
Also, in an effort to prove its utter impartiality, the United Nations made every nation an equal member, without weighting for such standard considerations as regular free elections, economic liberty, or a respectable criminal justice system. As a result, Canada and Nigeria have equal votes. Japan and Iran have equal votes. Libya under Qaddafi, and Australia under John Howard, had equal votes! Giving equal votes to kleptocracies and genocidal tyrannies, setting them up as the moral equivalent of the world’s freest and most honorable republics, has made a mockery of whatever original promise the organization had in the 1940s.
A LITANY OF LAST STRAWS
The Declaration of Independence, in which the future United States severed our ties with Mother England, did not rest its case on a single impropriety, a single slight or complaint.
In our immortal Declaration, we Americans listed numerous violations of the social contract by which Great Britain had lost its moral right to claim us as their subjects.
The king had refused to respect the authority of our duly elected colonial legislatures, and ordered his governors and troops to disobey both the laws of Parliament and of these colonies when on North American soil. The king had created “a multitude of new offices” – swamping these shores with needless, costly, and obnoxious bureaucracy. The king cut off or restricted our international trade. He directed the military to report to him personally, instead of to the civilian government. The king even transported Americans “beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”
Over the sixty-some years of the United Nations, we have seen this body headed down that very same path.
The UN has issued blue helmets to the soldiers contributed by the member nations, and tried to wrest away their control. The UN has attempted, again and again, to pass laws that disrespect the freedom of the individual, despite contradictions with American state and federal law – whether about child-raising or self-defense or taxation or commerce. The UN has established international tribunals – “international criminal courts!” – with which to intimidate, terrorize, or outright convict the private citizens of these United States. The UN has proposed the crippling of our economy through carbon controls, the robbing of our citizens through global tax collections, the perversion of our next generations through globally-structured controls of speech, and schools, and philosophy.
There are few things of which we accused George III that the UN has not done to us many times over… and they’re not even our rulers, just a voluntary association – a “debating society” – that so quickly got too big for its britches.
They have squandered billions of dollars from the United States already; they desire little more than the ability to squander billions more. Tens of billions. Hundreds of billions, over both past decades and, if they have their way, future decades as well. They have long seen the USA as their piggy bank, and it is long past time for the USA to stop willingly enduring such an abusive relationship.
ISRAEL AND THE SO-CALLED "PALESTINIAN STATE"
In November, 2012, the United Nations voted a resolution that served as the last straw, even for many who had been giving the UN chance after chance for years. The UN voted – by a massive majority – to recognize the “palestinian authority” as a nation deserving its own state. Carve it out of little Israel they said; Israel must have plenty of space to spare.
Never mind that Israel is already so small as to be nearly indefensible, mere miles wide at its narrow points, surrounded by hostile enemies and continuously under attack since its founding.
Never mind that the vaunted “two state solution” has already been tried… was in fact tried at the very beginning. Two nations were carved out of the old “British Mandate of Palestine” in the 1940s: one huge country for the “palestinans” called Jordan, one tiny country for the Jews called Israel.
Still the Israelis accepted it, happy to finally, once again, have a place among the nations… but the arabs never accepted this “two-state solution.” Giving the lion’s share of land to palestinian arabs in the name of Jordan wasn’t enough for them; since 1948, they have agitated for the destruction of the Israeli state and the establishment of the caliphate all the way to the sea.
And never mind that Israel has been the fairest nation in the middle east to its own muslim arab citizens. Only in Israel have muslim arabs voted for decades, stood for office for decades, served, themselves, in public office as councilmen, mayors, and national legislators, for decades now. Only in Israel are muslim arab citizens truly treated as citizens and given full rights that every arab nation denies its people in their own countries. But the UN doesn’t see this Israeli approach as role model behavior to be shared; the UN sees Israel only as a plot of land to divvy up and dole out to its favorite interest groups.
No, the UN hasn’t cared about history, or truth, or fairness, for decades now. The UN has only cared about supporting its pet interest groups, such as the shia and sunni branches of islam, and it has become less and less delicate about offending the countries that still care about objective matters like right and wrong.
The November vote was special, because it was an unjustifiable vote, a vote in support of tyranny, a vote for lawlessness.
Regardless of whether one generally sides with Israelis or arabs in matters of foreign policy, this is the most basic line of demarcation ever:
These "palestinians" are not ethnically different from those who already have a country of their own in Jordan. They were not cheated out of full citizenship by history, but by their own choice; they and their ancestors chose to leave Israel to fight against it on the side of Israel’s attackers. After losing those wars, they were cheated by their own allies, the Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians, by not being invited into their allies’ countries upon the loss of these wars of aggression against Israel. The Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians abandoned them to be refugees… and the UN, incredibly, chose to hold Israel responsible instead.
All this is well-known; all this has been the case for decades… and the UN’s gradual transformation from being at least a slightly fair arbiter to an utterly pro-“palestinian” cheerleader is well-established.
Nevertheless, the November vote was stunning as precedent, because of who and what these “palestinians” have proven themselves to be.
Hamas has fired thousands and thousands of rockets into Israel. It has hid its missile launchers in apartment buildings and schools, nurseries and hospitals, jeopardizing its fellow “Palestinian” civilians as much as the Israeli civilians they target.
There was a time when the world could tell itself “the whole palestinian culture can’t be corrupt; these killers must be a small minority of the people they claim to represent.” But then Hamas had no problem recruiting suicide bombers, again and again, year after year. When hundreds of suicide bombings have failed to deplete the population of new suicide bombers, in such small territories as the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, then obviously the malicious nature of these terrorists must indeed be much more widespread among the “palestinians” than a charitable outsider would expect.
The November vote conclusively demonstrated the utter moral degradation of the United Nations.
Not just a majority, but near unanimity in their ranks agreed to endorse an unaffordable land grab from tiny Israel, and the establishment of a nation-state on that land by an organization of mad bombers whose policy for decades has been to attack civilians in shopping malls, children in school buses, tourists at hotels, diners in restaurants.
The UN decrees that Israel should turn over its land to these terrorists, to give these terrorists all the permanent power and legitimacy of a nation, able to arm itself with the modern weapons necessary to destroy her peaceful neighbor once and for all. It is more than an outrage; it is the last of the last straws.
As we said to George III, over two centuries ago, the time may come when a relationship between nations, or between nation and master, must be severed. This is such a time. The cultural, economical, and moral gulf between the United States and the United Nations has never been more clear.
It is time for Congress to cease paying UN bills… to cease blessing the UN’s outrages with our assent… to cease participation in this gang of tyrants and criminals, once and for all.
Copyright 2012 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago based Customs broker and international trade lecturer. A president of the Ethnic American Council in the mid-1980s, and chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the mid-1990s, he has now been a recovering politician for over fifteen years.
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My thoughts on the matter are in my Illinois Review column today, here, if you're interested...
Thanks jfd1776.
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