[lit-ideas] The hijacking of the left & the UN
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 17:16:43 -0700
On Page 128, Peters writes, "A tragedy of our time is that the left has
squandered the last of its moral capital by elevating rigid anti-Americanism
above human rights and freedom. Campus theorists were able to hijack the
left even in the United States, thanks to a splendid paradox of history. In
America, the workers of the world won. The traditional leftist program for
which labor leaders struggled ended in a triumph for the working man and
woman, thanks to the progress of capitalism, a system whose dynamism Marx
and his followers never grasped. The American worker's priority shifted
from a fight for economic justice to a desire to enjoy the gains achieved,
leaving the left to ideologues who now disdain the workers as fully as they
despise the government he or she chooses at the polls.
"Human rights and freedom should not be polarizing issues in America. They
should unite us. But our domestic ideologues, in slavish imitation of their
foreign counterparts, would rather see a million black or brown human beings
die than accord Washington the right to intervene.
"Instead they argue that all crises should be referred to the United
Nations. But the UN is hopelessly corrupt. Will a Security Council that
includes France, Russia, and China ever vote to remove a bloodstained
regime? When the Oil-for-Food Program scandal broke we learned that the
permanent Security Council members who opposed our intervention in Iraq had
been making billions of dollars by helping Saddam Hussein subvert sanctions
(the sanctions that critics of the war insisted would have worked, if given
time). The General Assembly will not approve the deposition of tyrants
because so many of its members would have reason themselves to fear, were
justice and freedom to be acknowledged as grounds for intervention."
". . . for all the mixed blessings it offers, the United Nations will not
and cannot advance the cause of freedom. The body is a prisoner of its own
membership. And its members will defend the sovereign privileges of tyrants
over human rights every time.
"The United States should not withdraw from the UN, but it should impose
more rigor upon it - past efforts have been halfhearted and inadequate. We
should not provide the level of funding we do today and should 'demote' the
organization by favoring regional bodies.
"Most important, we must recognize that a new century demands a new
organization, one that elevates moral purpose, freedom and common sense
above inclusiveness. Let the mouthpieces of tyrants have their say at the
UN. Meanwhile, we must build an Alliance of Democratic Nations, constructed
around the Anglolateral core of states that form the vanguard of liberty. We
need a new organization that attracts would-be members with the hope of
joining an exclusive club, an association of rule-of-law democracies that
cherish freedom, human rights, and the individual citizen. At present, the
UN does its best to paralyze the forces of human advancement. We need an
organization that not only espouses liberty and justice for all, but which
acts upon its principles.
"The establishment of such an organization would be met with howls of
outrage from despots everywhere, and even from superficial democracies such
as France. The anger would mask their fear that a body of democratic
nations would be a far more effective champion of the oppressed than the
'democracy' of the UN in which tyrannies enjoy an equal voice in deciding
our global future."
". . . Such an institution would slowly gut the UN, forcing it either to
amend its ways or die a slow death. But if the UN will not act for
humankind, the United States and like-minded nations can no longer afford to
pretend that the UN is the only organization a tormented world requires."
Lawrence
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