Are the Libs ready to kick out the UN?

American Thinker: Martin Peretz, former owner and editor-in-chief of the flagship leftist magazine The New Republic, is calling to get the United Nations out of the United States.  Although he notes it, Peretz says this has nothing to do with the inconveniences the U.N. creates for a lifelong New Yorker like himself, such as traffic jams and the like.  No, rather it’s that Peretz sees the U.N. is an abject failure in its anointed mission of bringing peace to the world.  He writes, “Move the U.N. out of New York and the U.S., so we don’t have to host and legitimize the pernicious showmanship of autocrats and killers.”

So far, I cannot disagree with Peretz.  The United Nations is an abominable failure.  Getting it out of America is certainly an excellent idea, at least as a first step, anyway.  This erstwhile liberal also emotes that the existence of the U.N. as it’s currently constituted is actually making peace in the world less, not more likely.  Probably so.

Where Peretz and I part company is his reasons for expelling the U.N. from American soil.  Basically, he thinks the U.N., what with its endless debates and resolutions without meaning, “gives the U.S. cover for abdicating its role as the world’s most powerful democratic state, handing its responsibilities over to what is vaguely called ‘the international community.'”

Responsibilities?  What responsibilities?  Scrape away Peretz’s rhetoric, and it is basically to police the world to prevent atrocities and other unpleasantness.  This is to ensure what Peretz calls a “minimum level of good conduct by states to allow a peaceful, liberal order” to exist.  Give Peretz enough rope, and he’d probably see America’s responsibility to feed, educate, and provide health care for the rest of the world, too.  After all, this is the logical conclusion for universalism.  As I recall, it was not that long ago that Madam Hillary was hinting at such extended responsibility on our part.  read more