For those growing up in the decades after World War II, the formation of a United Nations (UN) organization with a vision for peace and a global membership appeared to be a promising development.
We were told that the UN would improve international cooperation, prevent war, reaffirm human rights, promote liberty, and raise living standards throughout the world. We dutifully carried around our UNICEF boxes to collect funds for children in less-developed countries.
Specious Justifications for Terror
Despite the UN’s initial promise, it’s clear that the 78-year-old organization has little capacity to act as a useful arbiter of multilateral conflicts.
For example, the Hamas terrorist regime that controls Gaza calls for the complete annihilation of the State of Israel. Hamas supporters want to purge Israelis “from the river to the sea.” They believe the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East is sufficient justification for terror and other forms of resistance.
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists launched a surprise assault on border communities inside Israel. Some 1,400 innocent men, women, and children were deliberately murdered, and others were taken hostage. Images of the attack were horrific.
Soon after the terrorist strike, many Americans were surprised to hear the UN Secretary-General imply that the defensive measures taken after Arab states threatened Israel in 1967 justified ongoing violent “resistance” by Palestinians.
The Secretary-General went on to assert that: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Even after the brutal murder of hundreds of Israelis, the UN leader was unable to resist the impulse to blame the Jews. Israel was appalled by his comments. The Israeli UN envoy called them “shocking” and demanded the Secretary-General resign.
Only 14 countries, including the United States and Israel, opposed the resolution. It appears that a permanent majority in the UN embraces a perpetual justification for terror.
Permanent Minority Status
For those familiar with the evolution of the United Nations, the organization’s hostility toward Israel and the United States should come as no surprise.
Soon after the UN was founded, tensions between East and West reduced the organization’s capacity to act as an impartial arbiter of international conflicts.
After 1945 the dismantling of European empires in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East created many new member states. Americans hoped the liberated nations would reject communist totalitarianism and seek closer relations with people of the Free World. That didn’t happen.
New members of the UN General Assembly chose another path. Former colonies rejected the principles of the American “Minimal State” for forms of governance that were closer to the Soviet model of the “Maximum State.”
Moynihan called it the “British revolution,” which was led by a progressive intellectual club known as the Fabian Society. The purpose of its talented literary membership was to advance the tenets of socialism at home and abroad.
At first, the “British revolution” appeared exceedingly reasonable. It posited “social democracy” over the excesses of Soviet communism. But at the same time, it called for the abolition of private corporations in favor of nationalized industries and essential services.
Private enterprise was to be reserved for small businesses that could be regulated and controlled in “the public interest.” Fabians sought to replace the alleged greed of capitalism with socialist “fellowship.” Essentially they looked forward to the birth of what would soon become known as the “Welfare State.”
In the decades after Moynihan identified the “British revolution,” intellectuals embraced tenets of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, Deconstructionism, Critical Theory, Maoism, Race Marxism, Islamofacism, Anti-Semitism, Liberation Theology, and a Woke Identity Politics movement that’s profoundly, and often violently, anti-American.
As a result of these seditious ideologies, scores of indoctrinated university students are now raging against Jews on American campuses while insisting that those in opposition to their acquired prejudices are Nazis.
The UN Has Worn Out its Welcome in the United States
Amid the fallout from the Hamas attack, a narrow Republican Congressional majority moved with unusual dispatch to elect Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson as the 56th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Mr. Johnson’s first speech to Congress, he reminded U.S. citizens of the Judeo-Christian worldview that laid the foundation for the birth of the American Republic. The new speaker identified seven enduring principles in the American tradition: “individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity.” Few of these virtues are shared by our borderless left and their fellow-travelers in UN corridors of power.
So, while America is being overrun by the prodigy of Marxist ideologues who pose as anti-fascists and harbingers of a transformational new world order, it might be worth suggesting that the UN seek a more suitable base for its global operations.
The City of Beijing comes immediately to mind.
William Brooks is a Senior Fellow at Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Originally appeared here.
