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By Jonah Goldberg
Those of us who believe the United States would be best served by pulling out of
The phrase "tilting at windmills" was inspired by Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote," and it means to fight something that doesn't really deserve to be fought. Quixote mistook the windmills of the Spanish countryside for ravenous giants and set out to vanquish them. ("Tilting" is a jousting expression, in case you didn't know).
Well, let's review some recent evidence.
The U.N. has been working hand-in-glove with the Chinese government to make the Chinese one-child policy as efficient and ruthless as possible. "Our conclusion is that the (
Of course, not everyone dislikes the one-child policy. Vice President Biden has supported it, and President Obama restored UNFPA's funding when he took office. So let's move on.
Lots of people like the Internet, right? Well, good news! The U.N. wants to take it over.
You see, that's what dictatorships do at the U.N.: work to make the world safe for dictatorships. The most brutal regimes on the planet are constantly trying to get on or game the
Not everything the U.N. does is evil. Some of it is just incompetent. The whole of what passes for the "international community" has been trying to enforce sanctions on Iran and North Korea. But nobody at the U.N.'s intellectual property agency told them so, it was revealed earlier this month, so they went ahead and gave North Korea and Iran computers and IT equipment.
A few days later, the invaluable human rights group UN Watch reported that Iran was elected to the
Speaking of Syria, which is currently violating agreements to not murder its own people, it recently had a big victory at the
Now these are all just recent news items. But you can play this game any time you want because the U.N. always provides fresh hells for us to marvel and laugh at.
For example,
Alas, the U.N. website notes, "
But that's the great thing about the U.N.: It never fails to surprise us with its predictability.
I'm beginning to think the U.N.'s defenders are the Don Quixotes, only in reverse. Where the critics see the reality of the ravenous giant, the U.N.'s defenders can only see a harmless windmill converting hot air for the good of all mankind.
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World - Tilting at the United Nations Windmill | News of the World