Logic Times

The United Nations: Bad Idea

Posted by Aslan, 11/17/05, 11:46pm. Comments (0)

Cost of U.N. Renovation Soars to $1.9 Billion

By MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun, November 17, 2005

A 60-day, top-to-bottom review of the United Nations's renovation plans - meant to bring down the $1.2 billion cost of the project, described by many real estate experts as over-inflated - has instead sent the project's estimated price tag soaring to $1.9 billion. (here)

In light of this hefty price tag, it is past time to ask if the U.N. is salvageable. The United Nations has proven to be a dysfunctional world body, but is this the fault of a corrupt organization or a corrupt idea birthed in the slightly unbalanced Ivy League mind of Woodrow Wilson over 85 years ago? The language of his League of Nations is noble –

The High Contracting Parties,

In order to promote international cooperation

and to achieve international peace and security

by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war,

by the prescription of open, just and honorable

relations between nations,

by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law

as the actual rule of conduct among Governments,

and by the maintenance of justice

and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations

in the dealings of organized peoples with one another,

Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.

(from the Covenant of the League of Nations, Preamble)

– but the implementation – then as now – has been a disaster.  Why?

Any organization designed to promote just and ethical behavior that imposes no limitations on membership is destined to fail.  Approaching the matter from the other end, any organization that purports to uphold some ethical standard (i.e., human rights, international law, charity, etc.) must have, as a condition of membership, participants who honor that standard and must reject those who do not.  Since, by definition, the U.N. – or any global organization – takes all comers, only the lowest common ethical denominator will prevail.

This idea of a productive (i.e., ethical) global organization is beset with an insoluble problem: the need to uphold ethical standards, which must be an exclusionary process.  The U.N. Constitution skips merrily along and ignores this fundamental contradiction:

That the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfill in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern;

That a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and that the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind.

An organization is moved by the common interest of its members.  A herpetology club will do poorly if it includes members who hate snakes. The purported common interest of United Nations members is to secure "justice and liberty and peace" appealing to the "intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind."  But, like the snake-haters in the herpetology club, the U.N. counts among its members those who reject these things, who disdain human rights, charity and the rule of law.  

How then can a global organization, trying to advance a common interest that does not exist, accomplish anything?  It cannot; activity in such an organization necessarily devolves into endless debate as members struggle to reconcile this paralyzing lack of agreement on standards.  

Why are ethical standards beyond the reach of a world organization?  It is not simply because there exist bad countries with bad leaders who will exploit their membership for nationalist gain.  It is because morality must inform all ethical standards and the lone source of morality is God, not the "intellectual solidarity of mankind."  Without grounding in the divine, all ethical standards become relative, a matter of opinion amongst members.  China’s restriction on childrearing is a standard no more or less ethical than the reproductive freedom (i.e., choosing the size of your own family) enjoyed in the West.  

Here is where secularists and world Utopians, a common sight at the U.N., crash and burn.  If, in their God-less view of the world, morality is simply a social contract that allows people to live in "liberty and peace," then they are forced to defend why liberty and peace are worthwhile objectives at all.  Because they wrote it?  If one can advance a sovereign society that endorses war and the State (i.e., Mongols, Hitler's Germany, Hussein's Iraq), then who is to judge which social contract is preferable?  They cannot refer their case to a higher authority – because there isn’t one.  

The fallback position is to let the majority speak.  However, in a world where more countries deny full freedom than grant liberty, the majority has spoken.  This concept of ethics as opinion is the classic relativist’s trap that reveals its ultimate absurdity in the membership of Cuba and the Sudan on the U.N. "human rights" commission.

Now to really inflame the debate.  God is the source of morality, but Man does not possess a consensus understanding of God.  In fact, these understandings of God are in conflict with each other: the Christian God is fundamentally different (and opposed to) the Muslim God, which is fundamentally opposed to the pantheon of Hindu gods.  Just as the wrong "morality" will fail (i.e., Taliban morality), the wrong understanding of God, or more bluntly, the wrong "God" will produce a dysfunctional morality.

Correcting the critical flaw in world organizations – a lack of morality – is not simple.  Which understanding of God will supply that morality? The answer is the Christian God, and the proof can be found in Western democracy, specifically the representative republic of the United States.  When there are competing sources of morality undergirding systems of government, the proof is in the results.  And among all the world views of morality that inform and define government, the Western Christian form – self governance deriving from the recognition that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights - has triumphed.  Its triumph lies in the natural law understanding of the Christian God, which alone of Man’s understanding of God could produce the words of the Declaration of Independence.  The floundering of governments in the Middle East, the human rights disaster that is Sharia law, demonstrates that the morality extending from the Koran is a defective model for government and a curious vision of "justice and liberty and peace."  This is brilliantly summarized in a recent article by Dennis Prager, excerpted here:

Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?  (Dennis Prager, LA Times)

So, too, other secular (socialist, communist) and religious (Hindu) moral codes have proven to be failures, most of them horrific failures, in providing a basis for "justice and peace and liberty" in government.

World organizations, by definition, cannot be purveyors of morality; geopolitical alliances should be left in the realm of politics and regional common interest (NATO, OAS, NAFTA, etc.).  The moral superiority of Western representative republics should be free to achieve, by example and through strength, total victory over their inferior counterparts, and free to avoid validating moral bankruptcy by sitting at table with them.

Copyright ©  2005 Dan Hallagan. All Rights Reserved.