Chances are most liberals aren't familiar with the Left Behind series, the set of apocalyptic mega-bestsellers penned by the fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. But if you want some insight into conservative rage over the recent booting of the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Commission -- where it has held a seat since the body's founding in 1947 -- the Left Behind novels are a good place to start.
Informed by a rather oddball theological outlook, LaHaye's and Jenkins's fictional account begins with what evangelicals refer to as "the Rapture." In this supernatural conflagration, all devout Christians (the "saved") are summoned instantly from Earth up to Heaven, leaving behind their worldly possessions and even their unrepentant family members. Not surprisingly, deprived of its most morally straight inhabitants, the world goes quickly to hell. One indicator of the apocalypse? The Antichrist ascends to the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations on a platform of disarmament, toleration and universal brotherhood.
The Left Behind series, with its not-so-subtle American chauvinism and arrogant dismissal of global government as somehow demonic, gives a pretty good indicator of how some conservatives view the U.N. The U.S. has long sneered at the organization, and its Human Rights Commission in particular. As the Yale international law professor Harold Hongju Koh, former leader of two U.S. delegations to the Commission, put in the Washington Post, "Our belief in our global exceptionalism has too often led us to vote alone at the commission, falsely assuming that such isolationism has no costs."
There are plenty of examples. Koh cites the U.S.'s recent refusal to support resolutions recognizing a human right to food and favoring cheaper access to AIDS drugs. Other commentators have noted that the U.S. has also bucked a growing global consensus concerning land mines, child soldiers, and the Kyoto protocols -- more than enough reason for some nations to feel we deserve some comeuppance. And of course, we're still hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears on our U.N. dues.
Nevertheless, after the U.S. was voted off Human Rights Island last week, conservatives have preferred heaping condemnations on the U.N. to soul-searching. They're particularly enraged about the behind-the-scenes conniving that led to the U.S.'s loss (for which we can thank a dozing and neglectful Bush administration that has not yet sent the name of its U.N. ambassador to the Senate). Though 43 of 53 nations at the U.N. Economic and Social Council's had pledged to vote for the U.S., in the final secret ballot just 29 came through. This left us in last place behind France, Austria, and Sweden among "Western nations."
Republicans have been quick to point out that the U.N. Human Rights Commission is in many ways a hypocritical body. Its current members include such paragons of virtue as China and Cuba, both of which were overjoyed to see the U.S. lose a platform it had previously used to criticize them. And while the U.S. was voted off the commission, abusers like Sudan and Sierra Leone were voted on. Clearly, the Human Rights Commission is flawed. Nevertheless, conservatives have been entirely unwilling to concede that the U.S.'s global arrogance might also have had something to do with the vote against it. Instead, they have been sounding more arrogant than ever. Consider:
We Are The Champions. The Heritage Foundation put out a statement on the U.N. vote reading in part:
Allowing habitual human rights abusers, such as Sudan, Cuba, and China, to sit on the principal international entity responsible for monitoring and enforcing human rights, while removing the freest and most democratic nation in the world, can only please human rights abusers. (Emphasis added)
Heritage is right about the absurdity of letting human rights offenders monitor their own transgressions. But the fact that the U.S.'s enemies are indeed baddies doesn't make it lily white, and to call the U.S. the "freest and most democratic nation in the world" strains credulity. As the global community knows full well, this "free nation" exercises absolute sovereignty over a number of disenfranchised colonies, including Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico -- where 4 million U.S. citizens lack both the presidential vote and voting representation in Congress. And speaking of democratic embarrassments, it just so happens that citizens living in Washington D.C. are also governed without their consent, as they too lack representation in the House and Senate. One needn't even get into the Florida electoral fiasco to see the gaping holes in U.S. democracy. That the Heritage Foundation invokes such a cheerleading mantra about the United States demonstrates its dangerously nationalist blinders.
But conservatives weren't particularly inclined to concede the U.S.'s flaws before condemning the rest of the world:
Global Conspiracy. Writing in the New York Times, columnist William Safire took a pugilistic tone, explaining the booting of the U.S. as a capital-C Communist conspiracy. It was because the U.S. boldly criticized China on the Human Rights Commission, but refused to join the rest of the community of nations in condemning Israel for violence against Palestinians, Safire explains. This outstanding courageousness made the U.S. a target:
The U.N. nations did not enjoy being shown up publicly to be a pack of hypocrites in approving a dictatorship's offense and condemning a democracy's self-defense. The enraged Communists and their fellow U.N. travelers seized their chance to show who decides how freedom is to be restricted and morality is to be measured.
Another Cold War, anyone?
Other conservatives' reactions were strongly persecutorial and vindictive. They wanted to know who the U.N. back-stabbers were, and called upon:
Colin Powell, Super-Sleuth. According to the editors of the Washington Times, Secretary of State Colin Powell needs to get on the phone immediately to find out which of the 43 countries that pledged to support the U.S. in the secret vote flipped sides. They argue:
The White House should call on each and every one of the countries that promised their votes, and ask them what their decision was on Thursday, and, if they acknowledge reneging their support, state why.
Say what? And this Times editorial was not the paper's only piece of U.N. coverage to miss the copy-editor's desk. In another Times anti-U.N. diatribe, the Hoover Institution's Arnold Beichman observes that "China violates everything the ILO [International Labor Organization] stands for yet its representatives sit in the ILO as full members." But just two paragraphs later, Beichman continues, "Yet China sits in the ILO even tough it violates everything the ILO supposedly stands for."
Finally, there's:
Blinded by the Transparency. When it came to the U.N., the reliably rabid Wall Street Journal found a novel means of attack:
There is one matter that deserves attention: Why is the U.N. voting in secret in the first place? Only in some smoke-filled room could the world's tyrannies take over its Human Rights Commission. A secret ballot with open elections, not recognized by the tyrannies, is designed precisely to protect voters from official threats and intimidation. But governments are supposed to act in the light of day.
How curious that The Wall Street Journal is now a fan of openness in the proceedings of government, particularly as they relate to international affairs. We don't recall the Journal offering up similar sentiments during the recent fight over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City, where negotiators literally built a wall to keep out the rabble. Indeed, the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund is currently suing the United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick for refusing to release Bush administration communications concerning the FTAA's investment provisions. We await The Wall Street Journal's editorial supporting Earthjustice's suit.
Meanwhile, the latest buzz is that conservatives in Congress are going to make the U.N. "pay" for embarrassing the U.S. by withholding dues until our nation resumes its place on the Human Rights Commission. That way, the battle between the U.S. and the rest of the world can escalate. That way, we'll never have to admit that we might have something to learn.
