0 comment Monday, November 10, 2014 | admin
Along with everyone else, I've been following the antics of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, as they 'do' New York.
Here's a rather glowing if disjointed account of Chavez's rambling diatribe at Cooper Union College in New York
Meanwhile, Columbia University wisely withdrew their invitation to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to come and speak there on Friday, according to the New York Sun.
Of course there is the predictable outrage from the usual suspects on the left, who think the cancellation was a denial of free speech to Ahmadinejad.
While watching the news coverage of these men and their grotesque antics at the UN and elsewhere, I am dumbstruck, trying to understand how and why we as a country now passively allow our sworn enemies, people who have called repeatedly for our death and destruction, to enter our country and spit in our faces.
I think back to a few decades ago, when Chavez' and Ahmadinejad's brand of raving lunacy would not have been tolerated in a respectable public forum, not even in the sinister UN
Now, we have these psychopaths roaming our country and making rabble-rousing speeches, while our 'leaders' stand mildly by. What is the message being sent by our side in this spectacle?
Chavez's childish insults, calling Bush 'the devil' evoked an equally juvenile response from his fellow travelers at the UN: applause and laughter.
I don't know which angers me more: these rabid demagogues from the Third World, or their craven claque of Third World rabble at the United Nations.
There have always, unfortunately, been tinpot dictators and anti-Christ wannabees in this world, especially in the more benighted regions, but the fact is the United Nations is the real disgrace. It is nothing more nor less than a club for a lot of failed nations who have found a forum and a megaphone for their perpetual grievances against the successful nations.
It's just a means for attempting to blackmail the First World into paying reparations to the confederacy of losers from the Third World. Just a machine for wealth transfer.
When I was a kid, I remember having to study about the United Nations in grade school. We were taught of its origins, and of its supposedly noble purposes and goals. We had to learn and sing a little song,
We're the United Nations of the world,
For peace and freedom we stand.
Freedom from want and fear,
Freedom to think and pray,
Each man in his own way...
And I suppose, as a 10-year-old, I believed all that. But as I grew up it became obvious that not all of those in the UN are idealists devoted to 'peace and freedom'; that many there represented despotism and tyranny and corruption -- and now, terrorism. Yet much of the world still holds to the childlike view that the United Nations somehow is our last, best hope for 'peace and freedom', despite the many, many failures of that body. The belief that the UN somehow prevents war and bloodshed is belied by the record; did they stop bloodshed in the Balkans? In the Middle East? Or did they do anything to stop the mass slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s?
And besides the UN's utter failure to bring 'peace', (which realists have always known was a chimerical quest anyway), there's the rampant corruption of the UN.
Even worse is the UN peacekeepers' involvement in sexual abuse and exploitation, reported even by the leftwing Guardian newspaper:
Why does the United Nations retain even a shred of credibility, given its abysmal record?
Does even the humanitarian aid make a real dent in Third World poverty and disease?
To hear the constant badgering for more money from various charitable causes, it would seem to be making little difference.
The fact is that the United States still contributes the largest share of contributions to the UN, in addition to hosting them and their 'diplomats' in our country. Our annual contributions are in the region of $3 billion, apparently.
Yet the overall tone of the UN is virulently anti-American. We are supposed to turn the other cheek and take the abuse while we foot most of the bill. Why should taxpayers' money fund our enemies' interests and finance the anti-American cause? There is a growing sentiment among Americans that we should not stay in the UN, nor should the UN stay in America.
But somehow, as with the borders issue, our elected officials act independently of the will of their constituents, with most of the pols toeing the established line, paying homage to the UN, while supposedly attempting to use it to further American interests -- and how well is that working out, guys?
And beyond the vexing question of the UN, there is the larger issue of just what has happened to America, that we pretend that the Chavezes and Ahmadinejads and the other demented tyrants are our peers and equals, commanding our respect? The leftists among us, of course, openly side with the enemies of America, and vice-versa. I notice that Chavez is a Chomsky groupie; any surprise there? Birds of a feather. But the 'conservatives' continue to entertain some liberal ideas of their own, such as the quixotic interventionist idea that we can slay our enemies with kindness and democracy. And the idea that we are supposed to be the saviors of the entire dysfunctional Third World; that if only we teach them about the novel idea of 'freedom', like a mother teaching the child at her knee, that they will suddenly become enlightened, reasonable, and civilized.
The fuzzy, wishful-thinking liberalism which produced the United Nations is the problem, and it is not just confined to the Democrats and leftists among us.
If the Ahmedinejads and Chavezes of the world aren't enough to awaken us from our utopian dream world, nothing will be.
Here's a rather glowing if disjointed account of Chavez's rambling diatribe at Cooper Union College in New York
Meanwhile, Columbia University wisely withdrew their invitation to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to come and speak there on Friday, according to the New York Sun.
Of course there is the predictable outrage from the usual suspects on the left, who think the cancellation was a denial of free speech to Ahmadinejad.
While watching the news coverage of these men and their grotesque antics at the UN and elsewhere, I am dumbstruck, trying to understand how and why we as a country now passively allow our sworn enemies, people who have called repeatedly for our death and destruction, to enter our country and spit in our faces.
I think back to a few decades ago, when Chavez' and Ahmadinejad's brand of raving lunacy would not have been tolerated in a respectable public forum, not even in the sinister UN
Now, we have these psychopaths roaming our country and making rabble-rousing speeches, while our 'leaders' stand mildly by. What is the message being sent by our side in this spectacle?
Chavez's childish insults, calling Bush 'the devil' evoked an equally juvenile response from his fellow travelers at the UN: applause and laughter.
I don't know which angers me more: these rabid demagogues from the Third World, or their craven claque of Third World rabble at the United Nations.
There have always, unfortunately, been tinpot dictators and anti-Christ wannabees in this world, especially in the more benighted regions, but the fact is the United Nations is the real disgrace. It is nothing more nor less than a club for a lot of failed nations who have found a forum and a megaphone for their perpetual grievances against the successful nations.
It's just a means for attempting to blackmail the First World into paying reparations to the confederacy of losers from the Third World. Just a machine for wealth transfer.
When I was a kid, I remember having to study about the United Nations in grade school. We were taught of its origins, and of its supposedly noble purposes and goals. We had to learn and sing a little song,
We're the United Nations of the world,
For peace and freedom we stand.
Freedom from want and fear,
Freedom to think and pray,
Each man in his own way...
And I suppose, as a 10-year-old, I believed all that. But as I grew up it became obvious that not all of those in the UN are idealists devoted to 'peace and freedom'; that many there represented despotism and tyranny and corruption -- and now, terrorism. Yet much of the world still holds to the childlike view that the United Nations somehow is our last, best hope for 'peace and freedom', despite the many, many failures of that body. The belief that the UN somehow prevents war and bloodshed is belied by the record; did they stop bloodshed in the Balkans? In the Middle East? Or did they do anything to stop the mass slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s?
And besides the UN's utter failure to bring 'peace', (which realists have always known was a chimerical quest anyway), there's the rampant corruption of the UN.
Even worse is the UN peacekeepers' involvement in sexual abuse and exploitation, reported even by the leftwing Guardian newspaper:
Why does the United Nations retain even a shred of credibility, given its abysmal record?
Does even the humanitarian aid make a real dent in Third World poverty and disease?
To hear the constant badgering for more money from various charitable causes, it would seem to be making little difference.
The fact is that the United States still contributes the largest share of contributions to the UN, in addition to hosting them and their 'diplomats' in our country. Our annual contributions are in the region of $3 billion, apparently.
Yet the overall tone of the UN is virulently anti-American. We are supposed to turn the other cheek and take the abuse while we foot most of the bill. Why should taxpayers' money fund our enemies' interests and finance the anti-American cause? There is a growing sentiment among Americans that we should not stay in the UN, nor should the UN stay in America.
But somehow, as with the borders issue, our elected officials act independently of the will of their constituents, with most of the pols toeing the established line, paying homage to the UN, while supposedly attempting to use it to further American interests -- and how well is that working out, guys?
And beyond the vexing question of the UN, there is the larger issue of just what has happened to America, that we pretend that the Chavezes and Ahmadinejads and the other demented tyrants are our peers and equals, commanding our respect? The leftists among us, of course, openly side with the enemies of America, and vice-versa. I notice that Chavez is a Chomsky groupie; any surprise there? Birds of a feather. But the 'conservatives' continue to entertain some liberal ideas of their own, such as the quixotic interventionist idea that we can slay our enemies with kindness and democracy. And the idea that we are supposed to be the saviors of the entire dysfunctional Third World; that if only we teach them about the novel idea of 'freedom', like a mother teaching the child at her knee, that they will suddenly become enlightened, reasonable, and civilized.
The fuzzy, wishful-thinking liberalism which produced the United Nations is the problem, and it is not just confined to the Democrats and leftists among us.
If the Ahmedinejads and Chavezes of the world aren't enough to awaken us from our utopian dream world, nothing will be.