David A. Schwinghammer, click here
to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
We Need the United Nations 7/18/2012 9:34:23 AM
War is inevitable without the United Nations.
Michelle Bachmann, 6th District Congressman from Minnesota, recently showed up in St. Cloud (One of the largest cities in the district) to speak to a Tea Party meeting. Bachmann is the self-styled leader of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. You’ll remember them; they threatened to shut down the government if the debt ceiling was raised. They weren’t concerned with a stock market crash or your IRA.
THE ST. CLOUD TIMES is the local Gannett syndicate paper. They publish McPaper, more commonly known as USA TODAY. For some reason they covered this speech (I suppose because she is a congresswoman, despite the fact that she’s only condescended to visit St. Cloud twice in the last two years that I remember). Her main mission seems to be commentator on Fox News. She misses something like half the votes in the House, at least she did while she was running for president. The woman was born in Iowa and she couldn’t even win the Iowa caucuses, perhaps because she confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy. That speech was pure propaganda and had no business being on the front page of a reputable newspaper.
While she was speaking to the choir, a woman asked about the United Nations. Bachmann is one of those who feels threatened by a world government. The woman who asked the question is well known in Central Minnesota. She writes far right wing letters to the editor about once a month, one of which complained that Michelle Bachmann wasn’t her congressman instead of 30-year veteran James Oberstar (The Tea Party managed to defeat him in the last election and replace him with an obscure back bencher named Chip Cravaack). Cravaack is one of those new congressmen the oldtimers complain about who can’t find the bathroom.
In other words they have no idea how to get a bill passed. That’s not why they’re there anyway. They’re there to “Just say no”).
Anyway Bachman answered the shill’s question (Why do you need a shill at a Tea Party meeting?) by saying she was worried about The United States’ sovereignty. You know, the old Illuminati ploy conspiracy theorists worry about. Certainly there’s a lot wrong with the United Nations, mainly the security council which gives the original powers the right to veto any effective proposal. This is why the UN hasn’t done anything about Syria yet. Russia and China are reluctant to give up their foothold in the Middle East. What we need to do is rewrite the United Nations Charter, putting everybody on an equal footing. I suppose Bachmann and her tribe would worry about the African countries forming a voting block and basically doing what the Security Council is doing now. But we could do what the American founders did when they formed the United States. Set up some checks and balances. That said, the UN has helped quite a bit recently. They helped in the Balkans; they’re helping in Afghanistan. They will help in Syria when Russia and China wake up and smell the coffee. The United Nations also depends too much on the United States for money. Sometimes we don’t pay our dues when politics interfere, as they did during the Bush administration.
Besides the United Nations, we have a World Bank which lends money to third world countries and emerging nations like Brazil which is doing quite well right now because of their thriving sugar cane ethanol business and a surprising pragmatic socialist president. See, it’s not a dirty word.
Let’s face it, nationalism causes wars, and we’re in a vicious circle. Some conservatives argue that wars are here to stay, which means we need to keep pumping money into the military industrial complex. As I write this, Darth Cheney is in Washington trying to talk Congress into eliminating the military cuts they agreed to.
An effective world government, which wouldn’t necessarily have a final say in everything, would react sooner to hot spots. Maybe they’d need a standing army. As is we diddle around until we have a civil war in Syria. A world government could also head off recessions; we’ve seen Ben Bernanke and other Federal Reserve Chairmen thwart inflation ever since Reagan. Unfortunately he’s also keeping interest down on investments such as certificates of deposit and the money market. A world government would also distribute resources better. At one time the United States had five percent of the world’s population and controlled forty-five percent of its raw materials. It’s probably less right now, but not much. Any humane person does not want to see another Darfur.
A world government is also inevitable. It’s the only way we’ll be able to leave the planet when that becomes necessary. Everybody needs to be on board when that happens.
