1. Actually the UN made things much worse during the Cold War. With China and the USSR both having vetoes in the UNSC, it essentially paralyzed that organization into ineffectiveness. As the proverb goes, for evil to win good men must do nothing. And the UN pretty much facilitated doing nothing.

2. NGO’s are really like little governments. They participate and use use what clout the UN gives them to pummel those nations that they disagree with. Mostly the USA.

There really is no saving either the UN or most of the NGO’s. The one single thing that I’m looking forward to is the public accounting of the Tsunami disaster relief. In a few months quite a few news organizations are going to review the Tsunami relief, which will bring it back into the public focus. Probably around August since that’s a slow month.

By that time there should be plenty of ammunition to show how corrupt and wasteful the UN and the various NGO’s have been with donated money. Americans aren’t all that exercised about Oil For Food because it’s not their money that got stolen. But a **lot** of people, especially kids, generated a lot of cash. Many people did without during the New Years holiday so they could contribute.

If that money gets ripped off and stolen, as we all know it has, then this is THE single issue to beat the UN to death with. So far the UN has operated with very little publicity lately, which is the perfect forum for theft. I plan on doing a lot of pushy research come June to start laying down the prep work for the backlash.

It’s one thing to steal the government’s money. It’s quite another to steal little Timmy’s Christmas money that he donated to help people. As the American Red Cross found out during the post-9/11 fund raising scandal.

Expect people to actually froth at the mouth over this.

“Independence forever.”

I agree.

They don’t need to jaw-jaw face-to-face anymore.

And their new home should straddle the “Occupied Territories and Israel proper.

That should start a few turbans twirling.

Plus, get them out of Geneva and to Africa.

Closer to their constituents.

So I followed your link to Michele Malkin and her link to the new UN blog and have a looksie at their most recent entry which is titled UN: 1 in 12 Children Worldwide Involved in Child Labor. This entry tells us that UNICEF has published some “disturbing numbers” and gives us a link to the “full story”.

Maybe its me, but with a lede like that at the UN’s blog I assumed the link would take me to the UNICEF report publishing the disturbing numbers. But no, the link takes us to the Billings Gazette. Why is the UN linking to a news report about a UNICEF report? Perhaps they just don’t have the time to track through the bureaucracy to find the actual report. Then again, maybe they don’t want the unwashed masses having a look at their report and questioning their research and statistical methodology.

I vote for Mogadishu. Since they have no government of their own to speak of let’s allow them the benefits of having the representatives of so many wandering among them. All I ask is that we get periodic reports about the reactions of the Somali powers that be to claims of diplomatic immunity in defense of bad behavior.

Whether you did so intentionally or not, you brought to mind the issue of NGOs. As if the UN doesn’t “give voice” to more than enough GOs that don’t represent anything approaching the will of the people they represent, the UN provides the preposterous cloak of “moral authority” to NGOs – who the heck elected the NGOs? Even more reason to get rid of everything but the auditorium, translators, and oratorial scheduling services.

How does dialogue help other than to make the parities to it feel better for a while? Isn’t the point of dialogue to reach agreement which is normally some level of compromise and/or cooperation? Once agreement is reached there must be some way to enforce agreement should one or more of the parties fail or refuse to live up to the agreement.

The UN has no ability to enforce the terms of any agreement (or to even force a dialogue in the first place) on any but its weakest members and, even then, it must rely upon strength borrowed or rented from other members.

The UN is not a “world government”. It is a forum for facilitating international discussion and the creation of non-binding agreements. Perhaps the facilitation is valuable but it is not inherently essential. Nations, powerful and otherwise, are still free to enter into whatever agreements they wish and are still subject to coercion by more powerful nations and alliances.

Perhaps I am too harsh. But I don’t see how the UN has proven to be a worthwhile endeavor. It was, IMO, a worthwhile “idea” or pipe dream, but so was esperanto.

Sorry folks but there are two basic problems:

1. The UN is outmoded and useless.

The simple fact is that the UN was designed for a time when travelling was still rather difficult. At that time you either travelled on a ship or took your chances with air travel. That is not the case now as private individuals, and certainly governments, can afford to charter long-range jet aircraft.

Then there’s the whole international phone/internet structure.

So the UN being a place where people can talk, that pretty much describes anywhere in the world. Which is why so many various meetings and international get-togethers seem to take place all over the world. The UN is not necessary.

2. There is nothing that requires a world government to be democratic.

I’ve heard many people talk about a “world government” and how necessary it is. But when I ask them to prove that such a government would be democratic, it’s like their brains shut down. The simple fact is that there is no necessity for a world government to be democratic. If such a thing came to pass, it would be nice. But there are many governments that aren’t democratic at all. A prime example is the EU, which is decidely anti-democratic.

So if anyone here really thinks a world government is a good idea, please explain in detail why that government couldn’t possibly be a tyranny.

“I don’t wish to pile on, Rick

It’s really OK with me to pile on. If Peretz’s advice is to be taken seriously, then someone has to posit the illusions and delusions from which liberalism is to be liberated. I stated the standard argument for the existence for the UN (with a verb implying causation). There is a temporal correlation between the existence of the UN and the absence of great power conflict. The illusory (or delusory) aspect applies to “prevention”, whuch loops back to “govern”.

Eventually the argument will return to the nature of man but ya gotta start somewhere and we are currently experiencing a dearth of well founded liberals here in the comments area. Although, I must say that world government is not exactly a classically liberal construct.