Don Feder
The U.N. sinister? Hey, where did that idea come from?
WHATEVER HIS FAULTS, Harry Truman was a patriot. Little did he suspect that the United
Nations, which he helped launch at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, would spend
the next 53 years relentlessly attacking American sovereignty. 
The latest assault came in a 65-page report by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights,
released last week, which charges the United States with racism and economic
discrimination in its application of the death penalty.
The author, Bacre Waly Ndiaye from Senegal, spent all of two weeks in America
researching the project. When informed that capital punishment has widespread
support here, he sneeringly replied that in many countries lynchings are a popular
response to crime.
Comparing a criminal-justice system that strains every sinew to protect the accused
with vigilantism should be enough to discredit Ndiaye. Once we abolish capital
punishment, as the commission urges, who will protect us from viscous predators? U.N.
blue helmets? They did a swell job of defending Tutsis from machete-wielding Hutus in
1995.
Even more deluded than the U.N. bureaucracy is our own euphoric State Department.
Speaking to a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 2,
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Clinton's first U.N. ambassador, sadly noted
that the world body has somehow acquired a reputation as a "sinister organization."
Fancy that?
Albright wants to enlist the society in rehabilitating the U.N.'s image. If we don't pony up
our back dues pronto, America could be stripped of its voting rights, Albright cautioned.
This is a scary scenario. Why, the United States would lose its one vote in the
185-member General Assembly.
"The U.N. is not an alien presence on U.S. soil. It was made in America," Madeleine
chirped. Right, and Frankenstein's monster was made in the good doctor's laboratory.
Don't imagine that the world body is all talk. It is taking very concrete steps to achieve
its goal of global domination. Last month, Albright joined first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton in urging Senate approval of the grandiosly named U.N. Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
In pursuing the international left agenda, this treaty is in keeping with all of the other
U.N. protocols that have rained down on us over the years.
It requires signatories to eliminate "any distinction ... on the basis of sex" that denies a
woman her full human rights, a mandate that could easily be construed to require the
assignment of women in combat.
The treaty's language is Orwellian. The preamble states that "a change in the
traditional role of men and women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full
equality." Social and cultural patterns must be "modified," "stereotypes" rejected and
gender re-education "encouraged."
Women must be assured the "right ... to equal treatment in respect to work of equal
value" (a call for comparable worth legislation) and the sexes must have equal access
to health-care services, including "family planning" (i.e., abortion).
If the Senate ratifies this anti-family devil's brew, it might as well haul down Old Glory
from the Capitol and run up the U.N. banner in its stead.
Simultaneously, the U.N. is moving to assert its authority over child-rearing (via the
Convention on the Rights of Children), de-industrialize the West (with the Rio treaty)
and outlaw private gun ownership. The U.N. Crime Commission, which complains of a
world "awash" in small arms, is developing "strategies" for worldwide regulation of
firearms.
The United Nations has the time, resources and personnel to effect these statist
schemes.
The U.N. has a staff of 53,000. Its salaries are lavish enough to attract the best
bureaucratic guns. A mid-level U.N. accountant makes $84,000 annually. At $190,250,
an assistant secretary general makes more than the mayor of New York.
Fifth columnists in this country (feminists, tree-huggers, population controllers -- all of
whom are well represented in the Clinton administration) press for ceding more and
more authority, over our families, our businesses and our lives, to the U.N., in the guise
of addressing what are presented as international crises.
Admittedly, there are more sinister organizations than the United Nations. Hamas, the
Cali Cartel and the Church of Scientology come to mind. But, unlike the U.N., none of
them poses a direct threat to American sovereignty. And none has the Secretary of
State acting as its pitchman.
Mona Charen