U.S. Senator Rand Paul (shown, R-Ky.), a leading contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, would be “happy to dissolve” the United Nations, the senator told gun-rights activists at a recent gathering in New Hampshire. Widely ridiculed in the United States as the “dictators club,” the controversial global body has become especially unpopular with American gun owners outraged about the UN’s accelerating attacks on the God-given rights enshrined U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. The message was apparently popular in New Hampshire.
During a campaign-style gathering packed with gun-rights supporters at the Londonderry Fish & Game Club, Senator Paul reportedly addressed a crowd in what was supposed to be a press-free briefing. While the senator mostly answered questions on gun rights, with the UN increasingly wading into the discussion and pushing a deeply controversial global gun-control scheme known as the UN Arms Trade Treaty, the global outfit inevitably came up.
According to a reporter from RealClearPolitics.com, who apparently did not leave the room when journalists were instructed to get out, the Kentucky senator said that a body to “discuss diplomacy” was not necessarily a bad idea. The UN and its current structure, though, and the fact that American taxpayers are forced to provide a “huge chunk” of the UN budget — about a fourth, by most estimates — is what Paul said he found objectionable.
“I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States,” explained the senator, whose father, former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, was a leader in the growing national effort to have the U.S. government withdraw from and defund the UN. “There’s a lot of reasons why I don’t like the UN, and I think I’d be happy to dissolve it.”
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Senator Paul has also been a leader in the fight against the UN ATT, an international agreement critics describe as a “global gun grab” that the Obama administration signed but which has not been ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. “I’ll fight tooth and nail in the Senate to defeat ratification,” the senator said about the UN arms treaty in an e-mail to supporters, highlighting some of the most troubling elements buried in the agreement. In an e-mail the year before, he also noted that, “Watching anti-American globalists plot against our Constitution makes me sick.”
Separately, Senator Paul has been a leader in the broader battle to preserve U.S. sovereignty and wealth in the face of an increasingly power-hungry UN that appears to acknowledge virtually no limits to its purported “authority.” In 2013, Paul even proposed an amendment to a spending bill for FY 2014 that would protect American taxpayers from being forced to finance the UN, which now attacks the United States and the God-given liberties of the American people with increasing regularity and ferocity under any pretext.
When it comes to infringements on the unalienable right to keep and bear arms, meanwhile, Senator Paul touted his credentials as a strong supporter of the Second Amendment’s guarantees during the New Hampshire gathering. Limiting the size of magazines, for instance, is bad policy from a “freedom perspective” and from a pragmatic standpoint. “From a practical point of view, I’m not that great a shot, so I need a few more chances,” he told the audience, reportedly making the standing-room only crowd laugh.
Senator Paul also suggested to the crowd that, while every GOP contender in 2016 is almost certain to express strong support for gun rights, voters would be able to identify the best candidate in terms of truly protecting liberty. “I don’t think you’ll probably find anybody in our primary who’s going to come up here and say they don’t support the Second Amendment and they’re not for gun rights,” he said. “So really the job of voters sometimes is sifting through who they think can best advocate for the position, who has advocated for the position, and how do we do it best.”
“I think there’s a lot of overlap between all of the people you’ll see and hear from,” Paul added. “But I think one thing that may be unique about my message is that I try to intertwine and make it not just about guns and not just the 2nd Amendment. I tend to make it more about freedom.”
While Senator Paul has distanced himself from his more libertarian-minded father somewhat, Ron Paul, a doctor and true statesman, has a long history of working to get the United States out of the UN entirely. For decades, then-Representative Ron Paul introduced the American Sovereignty Restoration Act in Congress — a bill that gained more and more supporters each time leadership permitted a vote. After Paul retired from lawmaking, the bill was introduced in the last Congress by Representative Paul Broun (R-Ga.).
“No funds are authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for assessed or voluntary contributions of the United States to the United Nations or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, except that funds may be appropriated to facilitate withdrawal of United States personnel and equipment,” the legislation reads. “Upon termination of United States membership, no payments shall be made to the United Nations or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, out of any funds appropriated prior to such termination or out of any other funds available for such purposes.”
Of course, the UN-loving establishment media acted shocked about Senator Paul’s statement. More than anything, though, the press response revealed how out of touch from “mainstream” America the mischaracterized “mainstream” media has become. Bloomberg and fringe leftist MSNBC both reported on Senator Paul’s comments, with the practically irrelevant MSNBC suggesting that opposition to financing or being involved with the UN was indicative of somebody who believes in “conspiracy theories.”
Apparently the American public sees through the spin, however, and not just because alternative media outlets such as Infowars have Web traffic levels that dwarf establishment propaganda mouthpieces such as MSNBC. In 2014, for example, a Gallup poll revealed that a staggering 57 percent of Americans believed the UN was doing a “bad job.” By contrast, just 37 percent of respondents said the UN was doing a “good job.” Among the GOP, the contrast is even greater, with more than two thirds of Republicans unhappy with the UN and just one fourth supporting it. Even among Democrats, though, half thought the UN was doing a bad job while just 42 percent thought it was doing a good job. Independents were also overwhelmingly anti-UN.
Conservatives and libertarians of all varieties have long advocated an orderly U.S. withdrawal from the UN for a wide range of reasons. Among the chief concerns have been national sovereignty, protecting U.S. taxpayers, not giving credibility or legitimacy to the UN’s brutal autocratic “member states,” preventing systematic atrocities perpetrated by UN “peace” troops against civilians, and more. In recent years, with the UN continually meddling in U.S. affairs and making outlandish anti-constitutional demands, outrage over the “dictators club” has only intensified.
Senator Paul, of course, is hardly the only GOP contender for the 2016 nomination who is rightly critical of the UN and its largely autocratic member regimes. However, with potentially a handful of exceptions, it is likely that Paul, despite anti-sovereingty positions on pseudo-“free” trade issues, is the most serious about protecting the American people from being forced to finance or adhere to the ludicrous demands of the widely ridiculed global body. In recent years it has demanded assaults on gun rights, the overturning of “stand-your-ground” laws, “universal background checks” also known as gun registration, “international standards” for local police, overturning the wishes of voters on prohibition in various states, a “national water affordability standard,” and much more.
With the GOP in solid control of Congress, though, Americans should not have to wait until the 2016 presidential election to defund and get rid of the UN. The House of Representatives, which constitutionally controls the federal “purse strings,” could protect U.S. taxpayers from funding the UN in the next spending bill — and there is nothing the UN-loving Obama administration could do about it. Voters concerned about liberty and national sovereignty are encouraged to contact their representatives and make their views on the subject known.
Photo of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at the Londonberry Fish & Game Club in Litchfield, N.H.: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at
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