A global effort dubbed “Covenant of Democratic Nations” is working to abolish the United Nations, widely ridiculed as the “dictators club,” and replace it with an international forum open exclusively to free and democratic nations. Basically, it is a “repeal and replace” campaign to protect the world from the UN and its increasingly vicious attacks on freedom and self-government. A number of lawmakers around the world have expressed interest in the campaign as the movement travels from city to city hosting events to expose the UN and promote an alternative.
The figurative straw that broke the camel’s back for organizers appears to have been UN Security Council resolution 2334 declaring the presence of Jews in parts of Jerusalem to be a violation of supposed “international law.” The move sparked outrage across the political spectrum. Even stalwart neo-conservatives and globalists jumped on the bandwagon to defund the UN. On Capitol Hill, interest in protecting America and liberty from the UN has surged since that vote. The “Covenant of Democratic Nations” agenda also has strong support among certain Jewish and Zionist groups seeking to defend Israel against the constant UN demonization.
But with the dictator-dominated UN becoming increasingly and openly hostile to freedom, borders, and self-government — not to mention the perpetual UN scandals, the regular rape of children by UN “peace” troops, the retaliation against whistleblowers, and other horrors — the broader movement to protect humanity and liberty from the UN has been growing for decades as well. And in the years ahead, it is almost certain to keep getting stronger. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump was a fierce critic of the UN, too, pointing out that the outfit was “not a friend” to freedom, Israel, or the United States.
The Covenant of Democratic Nations held its “Global Launch” event last month on Capitol Hill. “The League of Nations outlived its usefulness during the Hitler regime,” read the invitation for the January 23 confab, held at the Rayburn House Office Building. “After the War, the League was replaced by the United Nations. Now the United Nations has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced with a new international body, one comprised solely of those nations governed by democratic principles, devoted to genuine democracy, equality, and peaceful relations throughout the world.”
“The United States should defund and withdraw from the United Nations and reconstitute the movement to achieve world peace for all in a new world body: The Covenant of Democratic Nations,” the campaign continued on its website and in various documents and invitations. “The Covenant of Democratic Nations will review, re-ratify, amend, or nullify all acts and resolutions of the United Nations and its agencies creating a new body of long-overdue, reformed, and updated international law.” The Trump administration is already working on executive orders and actions that would fit nicely with that agenda.
Among those in attendance at the “Global Launch” in Washington, D.C., was Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). “This is a critically important issue,” he explained. “The United Nations started out with a noble charter … but the United Nations has not only failed their charter, they have distinctly moved in the opposite direction and done actual harm. They have become an anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, anti-freedom mob. We need some type of alternative — a Covenant of Democratic Nations. We need to repeal and replace.”
On the campaign’s website, Franks is also quoted blasting the UN. “The United Nations is a proven failure and must be replaced,” said the congressman, who has a cumulative 73 percent on the Freedom Index, which ranks lawmakers based on their fidelity to the U.S. Constitution. “An international body with the goal of promulgating global stability and protecting and promoting inalienable human rights and freedom in the world requires an entirely new institution. Founded by genuine democracies, limited to democracies, and devoted to democracy as the foundation for world peace, the Covenant of Democratic Nations would be able to succeed where the U.N. has failed.”
A number of other prominent voices also spoke at the event. Among them was Edwin Black, author of the book IBM and the Holocaust, and one of the lead figures behind the new campaign. “The world body began as a sick organ, and deteriorated from there,” Black explained in recent commentaries about the proposed new body, highlighting the fact that the UN’s member regimes include the most blood-thirsty and brutal dictatorships on the planet.
Another leading activist pushing the plan who attended the Global Launch was Sarah Stern, founder of the pro-Israel Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). Panelist Kenneth Marcus, former director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, pushed an “Amexit” from the UN. Finally, constitutional attorney Nathan Lewin, who has reportedly worked on dozens of Supreme Court cases, said the UN “deserves an obituary” after “signing its own death warrant” by passing the Security Council resolution claiming the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria was illegal.
Ben Cohen of the Israel Project also spoke at the event. “You now have states that are basically glorified concentration camps … like North Korea, who get to have an equal voice with Australia, Canada and the United States,” he said, highlighting the constant demonization of Israel at the UN.
Follow-up events have been or will be held in New York, Palm Beach, San Francisco, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, Detroit, and other major cities. A number of additional speakers and panelists have made appearances at the subsequent events.
Lawmakers in other liberty-minded Western nations have also joined the bandwagon. Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts with the anti-globalist One Nation party, for example, said the UN was also a threat to his country. “This much is quite clear,” he said. “Australia’s values and way of life are also at risk from insidious institutions such as the unelected swill that is the United Nations. Action needs to be taken.” He is facilitating an event by the anti-UN group at the Australian Parliament.
The campaign to repeal and replace the UN has been almost entirely ignored by the establishment press so far. Indeed, outside of a few articles and columns in Jewish media outlets, there has been virtually no U.S. media coverage of the effort. One article on a fringe far-left website called “BuzzFeed” attacked Senator Roberts as a “far-right wing” lawmaker for opposing the UN, socialism, and the killing of unborn children.
Much of the rhetoric of the Covenant of Democratic Nations campaign has touted “democracy” as the ideal to be pursued and the requirement for admission. The founders of the United States, though, explicitly rejected pure democracy as an unstable and dangerous system of government in which individual rights would not be adequately protected. Instead, they decided to establish a constitutional republic, governed by the rule of law and democratically elected representatives, in which the God-given rights of individuals would be protected.
In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison, known as the “father” of the U.S. Constitution, made the point clearly, saying that democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” To guard against such a system and its risks to life, liberty, and property, Madison advocated a republican form of government. “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking,” he continued.
And of course, the Constitution he wrote made that explicit as well. In Article IV, Section 4, the U.S. Constitution mandates that the United States “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” Madison was not referring to the GOP, obviously, but to the system of government based on the rule of law to protect individual rights.
It appears, though, that rather than “democracy,” per se, the individuals behind the Covenant of Democratic Nations hope to impose admissibility requirements such as self-government and elected leadership. On the other hand, membership would be closed to dictatorships and unfree regimes, which are welcome in the UN and even dominate its discredited UN “Human Rights Council.”
Of course, the Covenant of Democratic Nations is hardly the only effort to replace the scandal-plagued UN with something else. Billionaire Swedish-Hungarian investor Laszlo Szombatfalvy, for example, is offering $5 million in prizes to whoever can invent a new UN-style organization to allegedly solve global problems better than the current scheme.
“The biggest threats to humanity stem from the global community’s inability to deal with them effectively,” the Hungarian-born billionaire said in an interview with Swedish media. However, unlike many UN critics, Szombatfalvy appears to be a fervent globalist, hoping the “UN 2.0” will impose a global “climate” regime and other radical schemes as part of a new system of “global governance for the 21st century.”
In the United States, various efforts to quash or rein in the UN are currently under development or being explored. Following the Security Council vote on Israel, a large group of lawmakers vowed to stop U.S. tax funding of the so-called “dictators club” unless and until it was reversed. President Trump, meanwhile, is working on a plan to strip “at least 40 percent” of the UN’s American funding. American taxpayers pay over $10 billion per year to the UN and its tentacles, more than 185 other UN member states combined, and in exchange receive constant attacks on freedom, the Constitution, Judeo-Christian civilization, and other American values.
Separately, a group of liberty-minded U.S. lawmakers is working to have the U.S. government completely withdraw from the UN. The legislation, known as the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R 193), would also evict the UN from U.S. soil while ending American support for the global outfit and all of its agencies. Representative Franks of Arizona, who joined the Covenant of Democratic Nations campaign, is not yet a co-sponsor of H.R. 193. His office did not have a formal response by press time.
As it becomes clear to more and more people around the world that the UN is not compatible with freedom or self-government, many more ideas for “replacing” the UN will undoubtedly emerge. Whether the Covenant of Democratic Nations is the right solution to protecting humanity from the out-of-control UN remains to be seen. Many critics of the UN — very much including The John Birch Society, the parent organization of The New American — argue that the United Nations should be replaced with nothing. And considering the fact that globalists on both sides of the political spectrum have proposed similar schemes for “entangling alliances,” a skeptical eye is certainly justified. However, simply by advancing the global conversation on the threat posed by the UN dictators club, the latest campaign to abolish it is performing a valuable service for humanity and liberty.
