At the Twilight's Last Gleaming: United Nations

Showing posts with label United Nations. Show all posts

April 5, 2011

If the United Nations had existed in the 1860s…

Imagine, if you will, that the United Nations existed in the 1860s.

Upon receiving news of Sherman’s March to the Sea, it would not be farfetched to presume that the leading power of the day, Great Britain, would have assembled a coalition of the willing and, armed with the appropriate UN resolutions, intervened on behalf of the Confederacy*.

By the rules of “humanitarian intervention” under which we apparently operate today, it doesn’t matter whether or not Lincoln had any legitimate interest in keeping the union together** – the actions of his generals would have brought upon the north the wrath of the nations.

Just saying.

* Just like today, the nation leading the coalition would have had its personal reasons for wanting to deal some serious hurt to the offending government. So then, as today, one wonders if the motivation for the intervention would have been completely altruistic.

** I have my own opinions on this, but they are not germane to this post.

June 12, 2009

Yeah, that'll teach North Korea

The Associated Press (via WaPo) breathlessly informs us that the United Nations is sending North Korea to bed without any dinner:

The U.N. Security Council has approved tough new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear test.

The resolution imposes new sanctions on the reclusive communist nation's weapons exports and financial dealings, and allows inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas.

U.S. deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said Friday's vote was a strong and united international response to North Korea's unacceptable behavior.

Does anyone seriously think these sanctions will persuade the folks in charge of NK to change their ways?

Saddam Hussein prospered for a decade under the United Nations' "tough sanctions" and its "strong and united international response" to his "unacceptable behavior". And Saddam was just your garden-variety genocidal dictator. Kim Jong-Il and his merry men take genocidal dictatorship to a whole new paranoid level.

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What Happened to C-Pol?

For over a decade, this blog was called "C-POL: Constitutionalist, Conservative Politics". Over time, my deep-thought ponderings have been moving away from the rough-and-tumble of everyday political wrangling and toward the larger philosophical, ideological, and cultural currents of our age.

I've changed the title of the blog to highlight my conviction that the "fundamental transformation" (to adapt President Obama's phrase) of the United States that's currently underway is, in the long run, bad not only for this country but for the world in general.

Scoff if you must; I'm okay with that. I aim to make my case as time goes on. I'm okay with being on the "wrong side of history" if I'm actually right.

Why our country is where it is

As I have traveled across the country, I have been astounded just how many of our fellow citizens feel strongly about their constitutional rights but have no idea what they are, or for that matter, what the Constitution says. I am not suggesting that they become Constitutional scholars -- whatever that means. I am suggesting, however, that if one feels strongly about his or her rights, it does make sense to know generally what the Constitution says about them. It is at least as easy to understand as a cell phone contract -- and vastly more important.

-- Clarence Thomas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, October 16, 2008 speech

The U.S. is not a democracy!

Q. If we are not a democracy, why are our officials elected by a majority of the people, and why are our laws passed by a majority of the lawmakers?

A. We are not a democracy because both the people and the lawmakers are limited by the fundamental law of the land, our written Constitution. Election by the people is not a grant of power beyond the constitutional limits of the office. A representative government limited by law is a republic, not a democracy. In a republic a majority of the people cannot vote away their own rights, or the rights of others -- unless ... unless they step outside the Constitution.

-- Preserve The Constitution, By Don Fotheringham (October, 1995)

The Cancer of Democracy

Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome.

— Lazarus Long, in Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset

At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

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C-Poll

April 5, 2011

If the United Nations had existed in the 1860s…

June 12, 2009

Yeah, that'll teach North Korea