I liked this Claudia Rosett column at the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com this morning, called “U.N.-Plugged”, in which she questions what would happen if the United Nations were shut down long enough for anybody to even notice.
[…] The U.N. founders wrote a charter at the end of World War II filled with wonderful words about reaffirming faith in “human rights” and “the dignity of human beings.” They then contradicted themselves in practice from day one by respecting thug regimes enough to provide Stalin’s Soviet Union a permanent seat on the Security Council and two extra seats in the General Assembly. They set up a U.N. system that not only failed to prevent a long series of wars but today fails to curb terrorism, or even adequately define it. In other words, to create an inclusive gathering of nations in 1945, our forefathers made some big practical compromises with their lofty ideals. In making those tradeoffs, their priorities did not reflect a world in which Osama bin Laden could surf the Internet.
Nor did they set up a U.N. replete with the checks and balances and transparency widely recognized these days as necessary to good governance. The U.N. founders did not provide adequate defenses against the tangled growth of U.N. bureaucracy, the packing of the ranks over the decades with cronies and rival national cliques, or the formation of influential lobbying groups of despotic regimes such as the former Soviet bloc or the current Arab League. And in setting up the U.N. as the mother of all multilateral aid agencies, the U.N. founders never came to grips with the vital principle that if private enterprise is the real engine of prosperity—which it is—then the secret is not to jack up government-channeled aid at every opportunity but to push chiefly for more liberty, even if that means a lesser role—and smaller budget—for the U.N. […]
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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