Try to stick to answers which are as factual as possible please.
The recent thread on the UN disabilities treaty got me thinking, that while all nations have certain reservations about and dislikes of the UN, the US seems to take it to a a whole new level. The arguments out forward by the opponents of said treaty border on strange and at times enter the realm of the downright ridiculous, One Senator even suggested that the treaty would be used by the UN to tell parents that the could not home school their children, which betrays a complete lack of understanding of how treaties work, not to mention a lack of appreciation of the fact that the UN officials are too busy to care about what parents in Seattle or Mobile are doing wrt to their children education.'s
This seems to be more than a fringe or quack position, I had one lady, educated and who worked as a telecom engineer ask quite seriously( me if international drovers permits were a way to impose world government?
Note: I don’t think the UN is evil, or even necessarily believe what I’m saying here, but it’s what I’ve gleaned from a number of people over the years.
It’s essentially a matter of US sovereignty and perceived violations or curtailments of that sovereignty.
One school of thought goes that essentially we’re big enough, powerful enough and progressive enough to do these things ourselves, and we don’t need a bunch of dinky 3rd world nations telling us what to do.
The other school of thought is more wild-eyed and crazy, and thinks that the UN is some sort of nascent world government whose purpose is to whittle away at US sovereignty through UN agreements and treaties, and eventually take our guns and a bunch of other stuff.
The first one was generally the opinion until rather recently, when the wild-eyed nut opinion came into prominence more recently.
You left out the religious right. There is the belief that the Antichrist will come one day and set up a tyrannical world government. They view the UN as a possible beginning. Why they fight it, I don’t know, since their own beliefs are that those events are inevitable.
The thought that the UN is evil has ties to Conservative religious groups that have the idea that the Anti-Christ will come up through the ranks of the UN to form a New Word Order. There is more than one movie very loosely based on Revelation that depict a UN lead by the Anti-Christ.
For some reason I thought this was in GQ, so I gave a bland answer so as to avoid political jabs.
It is mainly the political right in the US that hates the UN. The right is pretty much willing to declare war on any non-christian nation that does something we don’t like, or has something we want, or is named France. (The right doesn’t so much consider Catholics to be Christians, you see) The UN is against this most of the time.
That is the main thing, but the right also thinks it is cool to torture people. The UN doesn’t like that.
The right fears that UN wants to restrict the ability of US citizens to own firearms.
But don’t we have to go through that before the next Coming of Christ? Which I thought they wanted and are actually preventing.
The UN is stronger than God? :rolleyes:
I think the Religious Right foolishness is out there, but I think bump had its origins correct.
The U.S. has a strong leaning toward supposed “rugged individualism” that manifested itself in isolationism in earlier years. This was a strong reason why the U.S. never joined the League of Nations. When the U.S., itself, was largely responsible for founding the United Nations, (under a Democratic President who had been anti-isolationist), the reaction of many was to feel that U.S. sovereignty was threatened. (It did not help that many small, emerging nations often opposed efforts favored by the U.S. or favored actions opposed by the U.S. when such actions were couched in terms that made the U.S. position appear to them to favor colonialism or imperialism.)
More recent claims of “one world government” and “black helicopters” along with references to the anti-christ are on the (louder) loonier fringe of anti-UN feelings, but there is and will always be opposition to the UN from the political Right on the grounds that we should be setting our own goals without undue consideration for world opinion and that we should never accede to the wishes of “lesser” nations.
Because the UN is run by it’s member states, the vast majority of which are shithole third world countries where corruption and nepotism are the rule of the day.
Be aware that Glen Beck is one of the most influential American philosophers alive today. He warns his devotees about the pernicious New World Order which seeks to operate through the U.N.
Google “Glen Beck New World Order” to learn more than you want to know on the topic. Here’s one example.
I would venture to say that most Americans support the UN, and the ones that oppose it largely do not understand that the Constitution supersedes any treaty that the US signs so they see it as an attempt to weaken or destroy the US through diplomacy since they can’t do it militarily.
These people also forget that anything substantive is subject to US veto, as General Assembly resolutions are largely symbolic whereas Security Council resolutions have teeth. As such, they confuse the two and determine that hey, Obama is making overtures to other countries and now he’s considering these treaties that might blahblahblah, the Democrats are selling us out to the UN!
It’s a combination of paranoia that the US isn’t the same country they grew up in (which it’s not) and they don’t like the changes, and fear that further external pressures might change it further. Therefore the UN must be opposed at all costs, even if the matter up for vote or ratification is perfectly rational since those other countries might sneak something by.
I think it’s also natural for the biggest guy on the block to be less interested in the UN than the little guys are. We can take care of ourselves, and they can’t. Much over-simplification there, but I think that’s a good part of it.
I think a lot of people today have forgotten about the pre-UN world, where the failure of the League of Nations was one of the causes of WW II. Growing isolationism is another cause, another is that we don’t like anyone else not supporting us, not counting known enemies like the Soviet Union.
My father started working for the UN in 1946 right after he got out of the Army, and back then there was incredible idealism about it. No more.
It’s not recent, the militia movement came into the public eye in a big way as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Fear of the UN on some level in some way was universal in the militias, with pick your flavor of conspiracy lunacy; the UN either was an agent for bringing about the New World Order or being used by ZOG. The term ZOG dates back to at least 1976.
We are the United States, we have done more for other countries than any other country or the u.n. and if the u.n. thinks we will give up our guns to join some treaty with all of their commie thug countries , they got another thing coming. …they will have to pry them from our cold, dead hands!
