stephendolenc on Have faith in the UN

I don't trust my federal government to do significant good for my country or good on the global scale -- is a more powerful body capable of avoiding corruption and actually consistently doing good?

"Sure the United Nations is slave to the self-interests of states in the Security Council..." truer words have never been spoken and it is the reason why the UN is largely ineffective. Concession: smallpox was eliminated by the work of the UN and I commend it for that. However, I don't foresee them doing much more good as their power grows and the special interests that have ruined our political system will look like child's play compared to the destructive interference of special interests on a global scale.

The UN does not help US relations with the rest of the world. Russia, our enemy of yesterday, disagrees and hates us more than ever because of what we do in the UN. And China seems to side with Russia on every front so it wont be long before they hate us as much as Russia does if they don't already. (Run a google news search on the words: "Kosovo Serbia US Russia" if you aren't up to speed on some of the current disagreements we've got with Russia).

The argument that the UN will help US relations is silly. That's like saying Virginians are closer with South Carolinians because we are both represented in the Senate.

Information sharing should (and does) happen naturally and the UN is irrelevant in facilitating that.

Peace keeping missions called for by the UN are largely carried out by people in surrounding states of the area in conflict. States should try and help fix the problems in their regions naturally and if they don't then let the concerned nations that would call for it in the UN do it themselves.

Let the UN be in fiscal crisis; it should use the money we do give it more effectively in the first place.