“The United Nations long ago reached its sell-by date,” wrote National Review columnist Noah Rothman for NR Daily recently, arguing for the United States to withdraw from the organization.  

Of course, this has been the view of The John Birch Society (the parent organization of The New American) since its founding in 1958. On the other hand, calling for the American exit from the UN has been a position that relatively few, even on the more conservative side of American politics, have taken until recently. In fact, the JBS position was dismissed as wrong — even extreme — by magazines such as National Review. 

To be fair, the UN and its agencies have been criticized by National Review in the past. For example, in 2018, Jimmy Quinn, the magazine’s national security correspondent, castigated the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for including Cuba, Russia, and China as members while criticizing Israel’s human rights record. Quinn condemned the hypocrisy of the UNHRC for its failure to issue a resolution against Communist China, despite it holding an estimated one million political prisoners. But calling for actual withdrawal from the UN is new, and long overdue. 

What precipitated this change of heart? The revelation that employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “directly supported and even participated in the massacre, torture, and kidnapping of thousands of Israelis on October 7, 2023” was apparently too much for Rothman and his editors at National Review.  

Rothman charged that the UN “appears to exist for the benefit of terrorist organizations and their sponsors,” and rejected the protests by UN officials that they were “shocked” to learn an estimated 13 members of UNRWA staff were part of “kidnapping Israeli women, hiding captives from Israelis, distributing ammunition to terrorists, and even participating in the massacre of civilians.” 

Rothman also castigated the International Court of Justice (part of the UN), which agreed with the charges brought by the leftist government of South Africa that Israel was on a campaign of genocide in Gaza in its retaliatory response to the unprovoked attack of October 7.  

He added that the UNHRC has whitewashed “acts of antisemitism” for decades. “It attacks Israel with monomaniacal frequency.” Another UN agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, “drafts resolutions that refer to Israeli sites by their Arabic names,” while the General Assembly, made up of all member nations of the UN, “exists only to empower the world’s worst regimes,” Rothman argued.  

Finally, Rothman asked, “What is the point of the United Nations?” 

Answering his own question, he said, “It serves only to lend diplomatic cover to rogue states, revisionist great powers, and the terroristic non-state actors in their orbit.” Furthermore, he added, “It absorbs exorbitant sums of the American taxpayers’ dollars only to spit in their faces.” 

Rothman concluded his hard-hitting piece by saying the UN is “worse than worthless” and an “illegitimate institution. That’s a bad deal. It’s time to cut our losses.” 

They’re Catching On!

Nor is National Review senior writer Noah Rothman the only one who has caught on to the idea that the UN is “worse than worthless” and that the United States should leave the organization. For example, the New York Post made many of the same arguments in one of its articles.  

Rejecting the plea of UN Secretary-General António Guterres to not allow the recent actions of the handful of employees who participated in the attack on Israel to represent the UN as a whole, or even the UNRWA, the Post retorted, “Sorry. No way UNRWA can be trusted with that work, nor any organization associated with the anti-Israel, antisemitic, terror-supporting United Nations, which has essentially sided with the terrorists.” 

The Post also rejected the pleas of White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby, who said, “Let’s not impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the potential bad actions here by a small number.” 

“Sorry,” the paper responded, “but, again, it’s not just 13 — it’s the whole agency. And the UN itself.” 

“This body,” the Post added, “is not a force for good in the world. Not by a long shot. Without wholesale reform, and Guterres gone, it doesn’t deserve another nickel of U.S. taxpayer money.” 

Actually, the UN doesn’t deserve another penny of U.S. taxpayer money regardless of what cosmetic “reforms” the body were to make and the ouster of Guterres. The UN has been horrible since its inception, regardless of who is secretary-general. The first secretary-general of the UN, American Alger Hiss, was later uncovered as a spy for the Soviet Union. 

The solution is not “reform,” as Fox News commentator Sean Hannity said recently, in calling for the United States to “get out of all these globalist organizations.” This is the same Hannity who, during the administration of President George W. Bush, often cited UN resolutions as sufficient justification to go to war in the Middle East. Hannity is another example of a political commentator who has seen the light, as it were, regarding the UN.  

Some U.S. politicians have been calling for cutting off U.S. funding to the UN, such as Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Paul’s father, former Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), frequently introduced legislation to remove the United States from the international body. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) have also introduced legislation to disengage entirely from the UN. 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has recently added her name to a growing list of co-sponsors of H.R. 6645 (the DEFUND Act), which would terminate U.S. membership in the United Nations and all affiliated bodies. In an interview with The New American, Greene said that co-sponsoring a bill to get out of the UN was, to her, “a no-brainer. We need to get out of the UN. I’ve also co-sponsored legislation to defund WHO [the World Health Organization]. It makes sense. These are global entities that do not serve the interests of the United States and are oftentimes controlled by our enemies.” She added, “As soon as I saw that bill, I said, sign me up.” 

Job security: Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UNRWA, held a press conference in early March in an attempt to downplay the UN’s role in the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. He argued that defunding the UNRWA would only “foment hatred.” (AP Images)

Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) is a longtime critic of the UN who proposed legislation in 2022 calling for U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He recently explained his support for leaving the UN itself: “You give up your sovereignty to the United Nations, and the UN is not a friend to the U.S. It has undermined us repeatedly.” 

Step by step, conservatives are catching on to the fact that the United States needs to get out of the UN — the position long held by The John Birch Society, a position that no longer seems on the political fringe but mainstream, at least so far as GOP politics are concerned.

CPAC 2024 

Consider a seemingly surprising development in the battle to save America’s independence that took place at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC, which has been holding annual meetings in the Washington, D.C., area since 1974, has featured some very good speakers, but since it is sponsored by the likes of Human Events and National Review, it has often tended toward a neoconservative view on foreign policy and foreign military interventions.

In fact, after the 2011 CPAC meeting, The John Birch Society was removed from the list of sponsoring organizations and was no longer welcome at CPAC. This was partly in response to the JBS promoting a book by then-JBS president John McManus that was critical of National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr.

But last year the JBS was welcomed back, and this year, CPAC adopted the JBS-friendly theme “Where Globalism Goes to Die.” Several speakers added their voices to that message. 

As in years past, U.K. Brexit leader Nigel Farage was a featured speaker. He told the audience that CPAC was part of an international movement, remarking, “The globalists, by trying to take away our national sovereignty, trying to take away our national democracy, and ultimately, trying to take away our individual freedoms and liberties, has forced us all together into this new movement in the most remarkable way.… We want international cooperation. We want common sense. We want it within the framework of the nation state, not within the framework of the European Union, or the increasingly appalling World Health Organization.” 

The World Health Organization was specifically condemned in a resolution passed at CPAC for its efforts, “in coordination with the Biden Administration, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Gates Foundation, to surrender national sovereignty to a de-facto global government through a radically revised public health treaty.” 

CPAC organizer Mercedes Schlapp told the crowd, “We are not going to let the globalists take over this country. They are done.” 

Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was met with thunderous applause during his fiery speech when he said, “If you want to send aid to Israel, fine. Pay for it by defunding the United Nations. I want the UN to be zeroed out in our budget. The U.S. should be out of the UN, and the UN should be out of the U.S.”  

These anti-UN political leaders are not bucking the “grassroots” of the Republican Party. Many conservative activists both in and out of the GOP have long used anti-UN and anti-globalist language, and this is now becoming more mainstream. For example, the Iowa Republican Party platform recently stated, “We believe the United States should never sacrifice its sovereignty or relinquish control of its soil or its citizens to the United Nations or any other international body. We believe our armed forces should only serve the United States, our Constitution, and the American flag.” 

In Texas, the Republican platform calls the UN “a detriment to the sovereignty of the United States and other countries.” Because of this, Texas Republicans called for pulling out of the UN, and the removal of the UN from U.S. soil. The platform also included rejection of all Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 policies and programs, support for the withdrawal from the UN Arms Trade Treaty, and the prohibition of any global pandemic treaty that would “infringe on our national sovereignty.”

Opposition to the UN is also being reflected among Americans as a whole. For example, opinion polls have repeatedly found that Americans are highly dissatisfied with the UN, and a September 2022 poll of 15 countries by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and YouGov found the United States had the highest level of public support for less involvement in the global body. 

Reform Is Not the Solution 

Americans must understand that reforming the UN is not the solution. The United States simply needs to leave the organization, and expel it from U.S. soil. John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the League of Nations that President Woodrow Wilson tried to impose — unsuccessfully — on America after the First World War, desired a world government and saw the UN as the best vehicle to achieve it.  

“I have never seen any proposal made for world government,” Dulles said, that could not be carried out “either by the United Nations or under the United Nations charter.” 

But getting rid of the UN — as important and positive a step as that would be — would not be the ultimate solution to the problem. There are many other organizations — such as the World Economic Forum — that would continue the globalist agenda.

Some argue that the UN could be replaced with a world government modeled after the American constitutional republic, with a separation of powers, checks and balances, limited government, respect for human rights, and the free-enterprise system.  

There are two problems with this optimistic scenario. First, any world government would, by its very nature, be antithetical to the concept of limited government. Even if we could get James Madison to write a constitution for a world government, we know that such a government would not remain limited for long. 

On shaky ground: UN Secretary-General António Guterres has found himself and his globalist organization on the defensive recently, with increasing calls for the UN to be defunded.  (AP Images)

Frank Chodorov, the editor of The Freeman, wrote in 1955, “The tendency of government to expand upon its power and its prerogatives is inherent in it simply because it is composed of men.… Therefore, the concern of society, particularly in the last few centuries, has been to find some way to keep government within bounds.” He explained, “Thus came constitutionalism. Thus came the idea that to safeguard freedom ... it is necessary to keep government small, so that it can be subject to constant surveillance, and poor, so that it cannot get out of hand.” 

Of course, the UN by definition is anything but small.  

Globalists argue that world government is needed to solve worldwide challenges such as “climate change” and promote “world peace.” But if a government is powerful enough to impose “world peace,” it is powerful enough to impose world tyranny. And, while there are without doubt many well-meaning advocates of actions to mitigate the alleged human impact on the climate, all the proposed solutions offered mean less freedom for individuals and more power for globalists who support an organization such as the UN. 

Globalists such as the late David Rockefeller were really quite open about their intentions. In his 2002 autobiography Memoirs, Rockefeller said of attacks by “ideological extremists” on his family, “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”  

It should not have taken the despicable actions of UN employees participating in the attack upon Israel to open the eyes of folks at National Review and commentators such as Sean Hannity. They should have realized long ago that the continued existence of the UN and U.S. membership in it is like a dagger aimed at the heart of America, threatening our constitutional republic and our liberties. 

Certainly, The John Birch Society understood the UN threat long ago (see "Blazing the Trail to Get US Out!"). Past efforts to warn America of the UN threat over many years have not only created formidable resistance against UN empowerment, but have also led to today’s great awakening — and getting the United States out now seems more realistic than ever.