Ron Paul .com

by Ron Paul

Two weeks ago I discussed the growing sentiment among conservatives in America that we should consider getting out of the United Nations. Much of this sentiment has been generated by the oil-for-food scandal, but this strikes me as misguided. Sovereignty is the issue, not scandals, and many newly-minted critics of the UN were happy to support the organization when it did our foreign policy bidding. Why in the world are we surprised by this oil-for-food scandal?

Power without accountability naturally leads to corruption, and the UN is nothing if not unaccountable. Just as Washington politicians are too far removed from the Americans they purport to represent, UN bureaucrats are utterly distanced from the “world citizens” they wish to govern. The UN is nascent global government, no matter what its supporters claim– it attempts to issue legally binding decrees. Centralized, faraway government is always less accountable than localized government. The average American has no say whatsoever over what happens at the UN, even though he’s forced to pay taxes to support it. Given the reality that UN bureaucrats operate totally outside the bounds of any national laws or oversight, we hardly should be surprised when the organization becomes arrogant, corrupt, and mismanaged. The real problem, however, is not that the UN is corrupt, or ineffective, or run by scoundrels. The real problem is that the UN is inherently illegitimate, because supra-national government is an inherently illegitimate concept.

The ultimate test for the ostensible validity of any government is whether its authority comes from the people it governs, rather than from the use of force or arbitrary edicts. In other words, legitimate governments operate only by the consent of those they govern. This is the fundamental democratic principle. It is ludicrous to suggest that billions of people across the globe have in any way consented to UN governance, or have even the slightest influence over their own governments. Yet so many of those on the political left in America, who claim to believe in democracy above all, vigorously champion the inherently undemocratic UN. We cannot reconcile American sovereignty with our membership in the UN. Neither the UN nor any other international body has authority to make laws that bind the American people.

Americans have not consented to laws passed by foreign individuals or bodies. American citizens abroad, of course, are subject to the laws of their host nation. At home, however, American citizens are subject only to our domestic laws. Congress, and Congress alone, has the constitutional power to craft our federal laws. While constitutionally-ratified treaties can be legitimate, no treaty can legally usurp the basic function of Congress by transferring legislative authority to an international body. Not even the wildest interpretation of the Constitution would allow Congress simply to abandon its lawmaking power to another body. Yet this is what UN advocates would have us believe when the UN attempts to dictate or influence our domestic labor, environmental, trade, tax, and gun laws– as it already has.

by Ron Paul

Let me take this opportunity to wish readers of this weekly column a very happy New Year. I appreciate your willingness to work for liberty by staying informed about the actions of your government, and I hope you will redouble your efforts this year to spread the message of freedom. Remember to visit my congressional website- www.house.gov/paul – throughout 2005 to find new weekly messages and speeches, which you are free to distribute to your family and friends.

You may have heard one United Nations official comment that America is being stingy with its offer of millions of dollars in aid for tsunami victims. His attitude toward your money is typical of globalist bureaucrats, who ultimately view the UN as a means for transferring wealth from America to other nations. Americans are very generous people, and undoubtedly will donate tens or even hundreds of millions to private organizations to help the victims of this terribly tragedy in Asia. We hardly need the UN to chide us about our supposed lack of generosity. The oil-for-food scandal brewing in the United Nations also has provoked long-overdue denunciations of the organization from several pundits and politicians on the right. Of course most of you didn’t need a scandal to convince you that the UN is anti-American, or that it egregiously wastes our tax dollars. I’m glad more Republicans are finally catching on to what many Constitutionalists, libertarians, Birchers, Goldwaterites, and religious conservatives have been saying for decades: we should get out of the UN, and get the UN out of America. I certainly agree with these newly minted critics, having advocated getting out for twenty-five years.

This growing anti-UN sentiment provides an opportunity to make a larger point, namely that participation in the organization is fundamentally incompatible with American sovereignty and the Constitution. Obviously, many of those now calling for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN resent its refusal to sanction our war in Iraq. Few Americans realize, however, that the resolution passed by Congress cited various UN resolutions more than twenty times as justification for invading Iraq– in contrast to the media images of President Bush “going it alone” and disregarding the UN. So despite the anti-UN bluster from the right, a Republican president’s stated reason for invading Iraq was that it failed to obey UN resolutions!

This approach gives us the worst of all worlds. When we play along and cite UN resolutions as justification for our actions, we grant credibility to the ideas of international law and global government– signaling our willingness to surrender precious sovereignty in the bargain. Yet we gain little in exchange. Other nations still consider us only too willing to ignore the international rules when it suits our purposes, and we remain deeply mistrusted by much of the envious world. America would be far better off simply rejecting global government as a concept, and openly embracing true sovereignty for every nation.