President Obama lavished praise on the United Nations and its controversial military interventions during his September 21 address to the UN General Assembly, promoting big-government policies and even more international “cooperation” on everything from protests in Syria and the global economic crisis to healthcare, climate, and poverty.
Throughout the speech to world rulers assembled in New York, Obama barely mentioned traditional American notions of liberty and individual rights. Instead, he spent most of his time boasting about military operations and advocating expanded government power at the national and international level.
Obama demanded, for example, that all governments submit to the socialist principle that “freedom from want is a basic human right.” He also expressed support for “gay rights” and the UN’s universal declaration of human “rights” — more accurately described as a list of revocable privileges granted by the state.
Among the most alarming segments of the speech was the President’s call to ration resources using “the power of science.” He claimed that to “preserve the planet” and address now-discredited theories about human-caused global warming, governments needed to take action and continue erecting a global anti-carbon dioxide regime.
“Together, we must work to transform the energy that powers our economies,” Obama declared. “That is what our commitment to the next generation demands.”
In addition to resources and energy, the President also called on the UN and its members — mostly totalitarian regimes — to interfere more with the broader global economy. “We acted together to avert a Depression in 2009,” he said. “We must take urgent and coordinated action once more.”
Obama also touted his so-called “jobs bill,” unconstitutional legislation which critics blasted as an attack on state sovereignty that will further damage the U.S. economy. And he called on other leaders to increase control over their own economies in an effort to shift toward “self-reliance” while “boosting domestic demand.”
More global cooperation on healthcare issues is needed as well, Obama claimed. “To stop disease that spreads across borders, we must strengthen our systems of public health,” he declared. “And we must come together to prevent, detect, and fight every kind of biological danger — whether it is a pandemic like H1N1, a terrorist threat, or a treatable disease.”
Boasting that his administration had just signed a new agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO), Obama urged all governments to join him in meeting the global body’s public-health demands by 2012. “That is what our commitment to the health of our people demands,” he claimed.
Obama called on governments to promote gay rights and women’s rights, too. “No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere,” Obama said, noting that the U.S. government had just signed another new agreement on “women’s participation” calling for affirmative action and sustainable development. “That is what our commitment to human progress demands.”
According to Obama, fighting poverty also requires government solutions and global action — not free markets, the time-tested engine of prosperity. “To combat the poverty that punishes our children, we must act on the belief that freedom from want is a basic human right,” he claimed, calling on world rulers to continue spending taxpayer money on aid programs that analysts say increase poverty. “Our common humanity is at stake.”
While inaccurately portraying recent military interventions in countries such as Libya and the Ivory Coast as successes that had proper justifications, Obama also suggested more multilateral wars to enforce UN dictates if needed. Syria and Iran were among the potential targets he listed.
“The question for us is clear: Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?” he said, calling on the UN Security Council to act. “We must speak with one voice. There is no excuse for inaction.”
On the other hand, Obama also praised global disarmament efforts, announcing to the world that the U.S. government was cutting its nuclear arsenal to the lowest level in 50 years. “To lift the specter of mass destruction, we must come together to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” he said.
Claiming that the world body helped avert a third World War, Obama called on the rulers in attendance to return to the “wisdom” of the UN’s founders. In his book War or Peace, John Foster Dulles, a key architect of the global body, offered some insight into the real vision of those founders.
Dulles noted that the UN of the 1940s was “not a final stage in the development of world order,” but a stepping stone in that direction. Its primary task, he wrote, was to create the conditions to advance a more "highly developed" organization. "Then, perhaps, a world police force could work," he explained.
Many other key American delegates who helped craft the institution and its charter — Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Irving Kaplan, and others — were later exposed as communist agents. But experts generally agree that the main goal of most UN founders was to promote global governance at the expense of national sovereignty.
As Obama himself noted during his address, institutions such as the UN “bind our fates together.” But according to critics, most Americans hardly support binding their future to that of nations terrorized by mass-murdering dictatorships such as North Korea and countless other tyrannies around the world.
The UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” was featured particularly prominently all throughout Obama’s speech, which called for those “bedrock beliefs” to be “our guide.” “We will always stand up for the universal rights that were embraced by this Assembly,” he declared.
Critics, however, note that the so-called “rights” — government-funded healthcare and welfare programs, for example — are actually privileges: the opposite of rights. And many of those state-enforced privileges are in fact incompatible with America’s constitutional system of limited government.
Exercise and enjoyment of the few actual rights the document purports to “grant,” according to the declaration itself, is subject “to such limitations as are determined by law.” In contrast, the American system recognizes that rights are inalienable and endowed by the Creator — not granted by governments or subject to “limitations.”
Even as Obama demands more UN activism, however, the public and members of Congress are becoming increasingly weary of the global institution. The popular American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R.1146) introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), for example, would withdraw the U.S. from the institution completely.
A separate bill, entitled United Nations Transparency Accountability and Reform Act (H.R. 2829), would withhold American taxpayer money until contributions to the UN are made voluntary. U.S. funding would also become contingent on certain reforms.
“The days of a free pass and an open check book are over,” H.R. 2829 sponsor and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told CNN right before Obama‘s speech, attacking mandatory UN funding as well as several of the organization’s programs and institutions. “We should not fund all of these councils and committees that really are anti-democracy.”
Meanwhile, the UN and its military actions are increasingly under fire worldwide as well. Reports of widespread and systematic sexual abuse of women and children perpetrated by UN “peacekeepers” from Haiti to Africa have added fuel to the fire — especially as the atrocities made headlines around the world in recent weeks.
“When the cornerstone of this very building was put in place, President Truman came here to New York and said, ‘The United Nations is essentially an expression of the moral nature of man’s aspirations,’” Obama concluded. “As we live in a world that is changing at a breathtaking pace, that’s a lesson that we must never forget.”
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Photo: President Barack Obama addresses the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011.: AP Images
