Free Republic

The United Nations may be useful as a forum for world leaders, but it is not a productive place to develop policy. The international bureaucracy compulsively supports statist initiatives that would reduce individual liberty and expand the burden of government. Global taxation with no democratic accountability or oversight. A “right” to taxpayer-financed birth control. An international scheme to undermine the right to keep and bear arms. A Law-of-the-Sea Treaty that would give international bureaucrats tax and regulatory powers over international waters. And you won’t be surprised to learn that the United Nations also wants to control the Internet. Actually, to...

Not shockingly, immediately after President Obama was reelected for a second term, his administration reinforced its support for the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty [ATT], also known as the "Small Arms Treaty." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been expressing full support of the treaty on behalf of the United States for years now while for political reasons, President Obama sat back. Now, the entire administration will be out front in support of ratifying it. Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee's call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty...

I am grateful to George Washington University professor of Law, Jonathan Turley, for pointing out that a growing number of world leaders find the First Amendment's right of free speech to be an inconvenience. He cites, for instance, U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's warning that "when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected." Turley makes the valuable -- and if you think about it, obvious -- observation that free speech becomes intolerable not when it is used recklessly but when one person or a group...

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Barack Obama tried to explain this strange attachment that Americans have to freedom of speech. He was handicapped by his attraction to a moral principle whose dangers the journalist Jonathan Rauch presciently highlighted in his 1993 book, "Kindly Inquisitors": "Thou shalt not hurt others with words." During the past few weeks, the widespread, often violent and sometimes deadly protests against "Innocence of Muslims," a laughably amateurish trailer for a seemingly nonexistent film mocking the Prophet Muhammad, have demonstrated the alarming extent to which citizens of Muslim countries -- including peaceful moderates, as...

I spoke at the United Nations back in May, explaining that more government was the wrong way to help the global economy. But I guess I’m not very persuasive. The bureaucrats have just released a new report entitled, “In Search of New Development Finance.”As you can probably guess, what they’re really searching for is more money for global redistribution.But here’s the most worrisome part of their proposal. They want the U.N. to be in charge of collecting the taxes, sort of a permanent international bureaucracy entitlement.I’ve written before about the U.N.’s desire for tax authority (on more than one occasion),...

It is beyond reason. The inmates clearly have control of the asylum. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rant before the UN General Assembly in New York this week would better have been delivered in Stockholm. The famous Stockholm Syndrome was named for the way some hostages began to identify with their terrorist captors. It was offered as a psychological disorder. In New York, at the UN, this psychological disorder is the new order of business. Ahmadinejad called for a new world order. Of what? A rule of a UN world body dominated--or at least held hostage by--the Terroristans that make up an increasing...

When President Obama stood at the UN and proclaimed that "the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," it turns out that's one campaign promise he kept.  A judge has ordered the detention of the maker of the video publicized so assiduously by the President and Secretary of State when they maintained it was the reason behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11/12. Don't get me wrong.  Violating the conditions of one's parole is wrong.  But really? Taking the guy into detention and making sure the news gets out?  As image-makers are wont to say, the...

Two weeks after Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration has conceded it was an act of terrorism. The attack on the U.S. Consulate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now admits, was part of a broader effort by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, working "with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions under way in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi." Yet 10 days ago, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was trotted out on every Sunday talk show to blame the massacre on a mob inflamed by...

Why aren't you mad as hell yet, America? What will it take? At home, unemployment is stuck above 8 percent. Twenty-three million are out of work. Millions of others have given up looking for jobs. One American in six is on food stamps. Small businesses are terrified of Obamacare. The economy ran out of gas four years ago and the president still thinks the only way to get it going again is to fill up the tank with trillions of dollars of debt and make successful people pay for the tow truck. Overseas, we have a dead ambassador and three...

We like tribalism for the same reason we like to eat fatty foods: We evolved that way. Homo sapiens didn't survive long on the African savannas as rugged individualists. Alone, they couldn't scare away the scarier animals and, for the most part, they couldn't catch or kill the tastier ones. But in groups, humans rose to the top of the food chain thousands of years ago and have been passing down their tribe-loving genes ever since. Customs and practices that ensured the survival of the species were worked out through trial and error and passed from one generation to another....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Benjamin Netanyahu is delivering his speech at the United Nations General Assembly. I just tuned into a bit of it here during the break, and it's awesome. It's very, very well done. It's an exceptional speech, all about Iran's nuclear weapons and how they differ from the Soviets, for example, in having nuclear weapons and why. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Benjamin Netanyahu, who may be the closest thing we have to a Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher today, Benjamin Netanyahu is at the United Nations. He's giving a great speech, and he's now using a visual aid. He's...

Last time I checked, Americans were responsible for making our own laws. We do not invite foreign nations to have a say in how we govern ourselves within our own borders. Yet if you follow what's been going on with the United Nations this year, you know that the USA came perilously close to having other countries dictate our gun laws. And the fight isn't over yet.The United Nations has been debating an arms trade treaty for nearly a decade now. Though the treaty is ostensibly focused on military arms, it has long been clear that the majority of U.N....

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. President Obama continues to get high marks in all public opinion polls on foreign policy. Much of that, doubtless, is due to his crisp dispatch of Osama bin Laden last year. The latest dust-up about that raid is a mere tempest in a teapot. Some ex-SEALs are saying that Osama was not armed when he was taken down, that he was shot while looking out the window of his residence in Pakistan. This really should not matter in the least. Under centuries of international law, Osama bin Laden would have been...

Every fall, it seems, Americans are subjected to the ugly spectacle of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coming to New York to address the UN General Assembly. There, at the podium, he is placed on a par with President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, France's Francois Hollande, and other leaders of civilized states. Ahmadinejad has used this podium to spew his anti-American, anti-Israel hatred. And yet he receives hearty applause from the Islamist delegates seated before him. Iran signed the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as long ago as 1948. That's when Iran was ruled by the Shah. That UNDHR contains...

Those of us who believe the United States would be best served by pulling out of the United Nations and starting up a more morally and politically serious clubhouse for morally and politically serious nations are often accused of tilting at windmills. The phrase "tilting at windmills" was inspired by Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote," and it means to fight something that doesn't really deserve to be fought. Quixote mistook the windmills of the Spanish countryside for ravenous giants and set out to vanquish them. ("Tilting" is a jousting expression, in case you didn't know). Well, let's review some recent evidence....

Today NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre addressed the United Nations as the debate about the Arms Trade Treaty, or the "Small Arms Treaty," continues in New York City. The treaty is written to make it seem as though only arms transferred by governments will be affected but the details of the language seem to show the treaty applies to civilian firearms. The treaty has been classified as an international effort to attack the Second Amendment in the United States Constitution. "I am hear to announce the NRA's strong opposition to anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens' right to self defense....

Given the kleptocratic nature of international bureaucracies (particularly my good buddies at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), I’m never surprised when a bad proposal is unveiled. And since the United Nations has a long track record of supporting global taxation (with the money going to the U.N., of course), I’m even less surprised when that crowd produces another idea for fleecing people in the productive sector of the economy.Here are some excerpts from a Yahoo report. The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for...

One of the most important periods for the Second Amendment in recent history is upon us, as the opening meeting of the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference began this morning in New York. During the 26-day conference, world leaders are convening to finalize the terms of the ATT, which seeks to regulate the international arms trade and seriously threatens Second Amendment freedoms.   In a press kit that was released in June, the UN was obviously cognizant of the backlash surrounding Second Amendment rights, going so far as to include a "Myths & Facts" section, which states:   Also included...

Want the United States to gain legal access to the vast amount of oil and natural gas in the underwater Extended Continental Shelf? Get LOST. Specifically, the U.S. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which often goes by the acronym LOST. The Obama administration wants the Senate to act on the treaty, which has been around since 1982. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) recently held a hearing to make the case for LOST. According to its advocates, we need LOST for a variety of reasons. One of them concerns the oil and gas resources located in the outer limits of...

British Lord Christopher Monckton parachuting into Durban, South Africa, to challenge UN climate crisis claims, brought numerous journalists and onlookers to the beaches where he landed. A 20-foot banner across our press conference table gave the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow further opportunities to present realistic perspectives on the science and economics of climate change. CFACT played by the rules, obtained the necessary permits beforehand, and ensured that its message was heard throughout the seventeenth annual climate conference (COP-17). Greenpeace, on the other hand, got no permits before staging an Occupy Durban protest in the hallway outside the plenary session...