Posted on 07/25/2014 9:25:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
As legend has it, Groucho Marx sent the Friars Club a telegram that read, "Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
At least the Friars Club had standards. What to make of the United Nations? It has a single criterion for membership: existence.
Admittedly, this is an unattainable standard for such fictional realms as Westeros, Erewhon, Kreplakistan and numerous locales from the TV series "MacGyver" (Gnubia, Kabulstan et al.). But if you're a nation-state that actually exists, you're a shoe-in, like Kate Upton trying to get into a nightclub or a Kennedy applying to Harvard.
There are other, more exclusive organizations around the globe. Many are important, but most of them have fairly uninspiring membership requirements, too. The most common are regional outfits based on geography, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the African Union or the European Union. And there are plenty of economic clubs, such as OPEC and the G-8. Although the G-8 is essentially back to being the G-7 these days because Russia was kicked out, at least temporarily, for general evilness.
But evilness won't get you kicked out of the U.N. Just ask North Korea. One need only review the repugnant record of the U.N. Human Rights Council (formerly the U.N. Commission on Human Rights), which for decades has served as a magnet for the world's most vicious regimes. It's a global version of what economists call "regulatory capture." The worst offenders don't want to be chastised by the agency, so they take it over. These Legion of Doom nations then spend most of their time condemning Israel as a way to pander to their domestic populations and take the focus off themselves. Since 2006, the UNHRC has condemned Israel nearly 50 times -- far more than Syria, Sudan, North Korea, Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Libya and Iran combined. Feel free to criticize Israel, but if you think its human rights record is worse -- never mind vastly worse -- than Syria's or North Korea's, you're a fool.
Heck, the Chinese and the Russians -- and before them, the Soviets -- aren't merely U.N. members, they are power brokers. As permanent members of the Security Council, they get to veto any proposal they want. The authority of the Security Council is derived entirely from military might, not moral right, which is why we're on it, too.
And yet, whenever a resolution makes it through the greasy sluices of the United Nations -- often as a result of some cynical compromise with undemocratic, corrupt or grasping regimes -- people talk about it as if it's a moral triumph of some kind. That's because when it comes to international affairs, the rule is that it's better to be wrong in a big group than to be right alone.
This is not to say that the U.N. doesn't do anything worthwhile. Irrigation projects and vaccination programs are great, but they don't need the U.N. to exist. Just because some things need to be -- or should be -- done, it doesn't mean that the U.N. needs to do them.
I understand that abolishing or quitting the U.N. is a lost cause. The idea of a world without a club that any nation can join is too horrifying for transnational elites and the pundits who hobnob with them. And the childish dream of a Parliament of Man will never die, even though an institution that meaningfully lived up that idea would spell the doom of the United States of America.
But the existence of one club with low or no standards does not preclude the creation of another with higher standards.
So I return again to an old hobby horse of mine (and many others). Let us set about to create a new League of Democracies. The standards for entry wouldn't have anything to do with race or geography or even wealth (though wealthy countries tend to be democratic countries so long as the wealth is derived from broad prosperity and not merely natural resources exploited by oligarchs). The standards would be simple: democracy, the rule of law and respect for individual liberty. A formal consensus among such countries would actually have the moral authority the U.N. only pretends to have.
Such an organization might inspire nations to better themselves on the grounds that it would be an honor to be a member rather than an entitlement that comes with mere existence.
First, the UN would need standards....in order to examine them and cause them to be “higher”.
The UN is a collection of idiots exceeded only by the White House, the West Wing of felon/cretins...and our State Department.
I recall when the UN threatened to pull its headquarters out of the U.S. over some nonsense, Ronald Reagan said something like, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.
The UN reminds me of the Justice League, but where Lex Luthor and the Joker both have permanent seats on the Security Council and veto power.
Superman: We just got word that a terrorist is attacking Tokyo, let’s go Justice League.
Joker: Wait. I don’t think so. Sit your cape wearing butt down.
Batman: But we have to stop the terrorist.
Wonder Woman: I agree, let’s go!
Lex Luthor: I’m going to abstain from this vote.
Joker: And I veto the action.
**Headlines in Metropolis paper**
Superman Takes Action Condemned by Justice League; Sanctions Against Man of Steel Proposed
Darn, who were the morons who stopped them?
You mean the same UN that once had a Nazi War Criminal for Secretary General?
What are we to make of an organization which gives the same vote to the racist butcher Robert Mugabe, as it gives to the country of Japan?
As Mark Styen has said, the UN is what you get when you mix one half-gallon of Haagen-Daas (The US, Great Britain, France, Australia, Israel, in short liberal democracies) with a measure of dog feces (Third World despots and kleptocracies and other various regimes run by tyrants and crazies). The result resembles dog poop a lot more than ice cream!
We should get the heck out and form another international body. Chances of that happening with this admin - zero.
Uh no... the UN is a club in need of dissolution.
The UN needs to be shipped off to those countries, who enjoy thier scalawag envoys performing illegal acts with diplomatic immunity, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia (I still think we owe them a thermonuclear response for 9/11), or any of the world’s tin-horn dicktatorships.
But evilness won't get you kicked out of the U.N. Just ask North Korea. One need only review the repugnant record of the U.N. Human Rights Council (formerly the U.N. Commission on Human Rights), which for decades has served as a magnet for the world's most vicious regimes.
It's a global version of what economists call "regulatory capture." The worst offenders don't want to be chastised by the agency, so they take it over.
These Legion of Doom nations then spend most of their time condemning Israel as a way to pander to their domestic populations and take the focus off themselves. Since 2006, the UNHRC has condemned Israel nearly 50 times -- far more than Syria, Sudan, North Korea, Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Libya and Iran combined. Feel free to criticize Israel, but if you think its human rights record is worse -- never mind vastly worse -- than Syria's or North Korea's, you're a fool.
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