Closed Communion and the UN
One of the defining differences between right and left today in the US is that the left is enamoured of the UN while the right thinks it mainly an execrable waste of time, money, and resources of which not the least is mention bandwidth on the global stage. For the most part, I don’t want to concentrate (with one exception at the end of this piece) on Mr Obama’s speech to the UN, which can be found here. Unlike his predecessor, Mr Bush, Mr Obama had nothing but nice and complementary things to say about the UN, which at the very least supports the statement made in the opening. One of the primary complaints that the right has about the UN is that it has a completely open membership. Dictatorships have equal voice with Democracies. Free societies with closed. Coercive with (mostly) non-coercive. For the left, somehow this is not a fault but a feature. For the right, as a feature, it is sort of like more like the “smell feature” the outhouse has over the water closet.
A recent development in the last few decades in mainstream liberal churches has been one of open communion. Anyone who is a baptised Christian (in some churches these qualifiers are not in force) can partake of the Eucharist. In the early centuries of the church, “let the catechumen’s depart” was a feature of the liturgy. What this signified was the separation or break between teaching and Scripture in the liturgy and the prayers developing to the giving of the sacrament. Non-Baptised perspective members of the church actually left the church proper and the doors were locked at this time. This was likely far more important during the period of persecution prior to Constantine and the legalization of Christianity. That reminds me of a story from Eastern Europe, which I may be misremembering but I think I’ll get the gist of it. A troop of soldiers entered a church at the start of a service. They told the people present that if they continued they would be arrested (or shot … I forget). Some left, but many remained resolute to continue their worship no matter the consequences. At that point the soldiers dropped their arms and joined in worship, allowing that they had to weed out informers.
The film, The Tuskegee Airmen, teaches a lesson misread by many. The lesson for the UN is that by restricting membership and making the road to qualification harder, the effect is to create a better more elite capable force. For the UN, this might mean that benefits to membership combined with the introduction of qualification for entry might create a better more capable organization.
The point of this is that qualifications for membership has purpose. It is not a priori a bad thing. It certainly might be more useful if membership in the UN (or some alternate organization) required confirmation and affirmation that their nation was free and not coerced. When the UN is the only game in town, you end up with armies of rapists stationed to “police” unrest in the Congo. You get anti-Semitic declarations made by human rights congresses and so on. The list goes on. The root of this problem is that so many of the representatives in the UN assembly represent not a nation but an individual or small coterie or junta in power.
Oddly enough on the hotly debated questions of torture he said:
On my first day in office, I prohibited — without exception or equivocation — the use of torture by the United States of America. (Applause.) I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.
Hmm, how is that for accuracy. Guantanamo Bay is still actually open, torture is still in the Executive quiver (Mr Greenwald has exhaustively documented the loopholes and exceptions), and his “forging a framework to combat extremism” has mostly been (in the public view at any rate) a matter of outlawing the use of the phrase, “war on terror.” One wonders if “you can tell I’m lying because my mouth is moving” is to be viewed in the context of the preceding sentences as a American value or whether prevarication is the norm and expected in the halls of the UN.
Filed under: Foreign Policy • Government • Mark O.
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the left is enamoured of the UN
I believe you mistake the understanding of the need for international cooperation and coordination with being “enamored.”
As to Obama’s speech, it’s called “diplomacy.”
Bush should have learned a bit more about it before considering running for president.
A recent development in the last few decades in mainstream liberal churches has been one of open communion.
This part is correct. It’s one of the things that drew me to my current faith community.
Dan,
You will find that diplomacy predates and does not require the UN.
As for Mr Obama’s speech and his inability to criticize the UN, do you never criticize your children? How would they turn out with never having been rebuked or corrected?
Oddly enough the same is true for me, i.e., closed communion is one of the things that drew me to mine. It might be fruitful if I wrote some on that and we could explore that in more depth.
You will find that diplomacy predates and does not require the UN.
Absolutely. But that does not negate the reality that we are a global world, with a global economy and where our actions can often have global impacts. And that being the case, it makes much sense to me to have global cooperation and global agreements. Flawed as we all know it to be (and the Left knows the UN is flawed), we need some sort of organization like this.
But that’s not my point. My point was simply that you are mistakenly characterizing the Left.
Large governmental cooperation and oversight is a seriously problematic ideal and perhaps the only thing worse than it is anarchy.
As for Mr Obama’s speech and his inability to criticize the UN, do you never criticize your children? How would they turn out with never having been rebuked or corrected?
This is part of the problem. The US has treated much of the world like children for too long. We are co-inhabitants of the planet and it is time for us to quit acting like the world’s Granny.
Yes, there is ABSOLUTELY a time and a place for criticism and correction and intervention. But it must be balanced with respect and cooperation and the realization that we are not the world’s boss.
Dan,
I’m unclear on how the suggestion of an alternative to the UN with membership contingent on a reasonable level of non-coercion or non-authoritarian nature for which membership provides significant benefits to member nations (therefore providing some incentive for non-member states to clean up their act at the very least) would be rejected. That is, when you offer,
So? I’ve suggested a better way? Why isn’t a slightly more restrictive membership not be bad? How does the UN benefit from Mugabe having his buddy representing him (and not, to be honest, his nation) help anyone? All that does is validate Mugabe and his regime. Feel free to replace the name “Mugabe” with any of the dozens of totalitarian dictators and small authoritarian cadres.
I have not objected to reorganizing the UN or changing the way it operates. Rogue regimes (defined by whom?) probably need to be present, but probably should not have veto power over taking actions over their own rogue actions.
But that would be true whether the rogue actions were by Mugabe or by Obama.
All I have suggested is that you have mischaracterized Left support for the UN. We’re not “enamored” with the UN – we just recognize the need for a body such as the UN.
By all means, let’s work for improvement in the UN.
Dan Trabue- “Bush should have learned a bit more about it before considering running for president.”
Maybe so, but Obama should have taken some economics, history, and ethics classes before he did.
Do you really think that Obama was LESS learned/schooled on such matters before entering office than Bush?
Come now, we may disagree on the wisdom of Bush’s or Obama’s policies, but it would be hard to dispute that Bush was more well-educated than Obama, by Bush’s own admission (that is, Bush freely admits he was not much of a student).
My point was that Bush was not much of a diplomat and many (most?) of us think it was too our great disadvantage.
Obama’s speech at the UN was a national embarrassment. He is the perfect example how one can be educated and still not have wisdom.
Obama has a child-like view of the world that is breathtaking in it’s naivete . He insults his own country again and again. He is more narcissistic than any politician I’ve known. And he is a moral coward because he hides behind politically correct pieties and refuses to address, let alone acknowledge the villains and evil nations in the world.
Of course the assembled kleptocrats, murderers, dictators, and thugs applauded him. They know that they can get away with anything they want as long as he’s in office. Obama’s foreign policy is to insult his own nation, put demands on our friends, and be nice to our enemies.