----- Original Message -----
From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 5:35 PM
Subject: Re: The UN
> At 14:20 21-10-2002 -0700, John Giorgis wrote:
>
> >Come on now! While most of the world gives credibility to the UN, you
> >claim as Absolute Truth that the UN is a discredited body. If you are so
> >intelligent and so intellectually superior to the rest of the world that
> >you can make such a statement of Absolute Truth (thus implying that
> >hundreds of thousands of politicians and diplomats worldwide are all
> >wrong), surely you should have no problem whatsoever figuring out what I
> >mean!
> >*************************************
> >
> >O.k., let's try the parphrase trick.
> >
> >Do you believe the letting the Communist Dictatorship of the People's
> >Republic of China veto decision is a "democratic principle?"
> >
> >Do you believe that the UN Security Council "veto power" is a democratic
> >principle?
>
> I have always been opposed to veto power for *any* country because it
gets
> in the way of the democratic process, so the answers to the above
questions
> are "no" and "no".
>
>
> >Do you believe that the principle of "one country, one vote" is a
> >democratic principle?
>
> Yes. Of course, ideally any UN decision would be made by letting every
> citizen of every member country vote on the issue (using the "one man,
one
> vote" principle). However, given that this is not doable, the principle
of
> "one country, one vote" is the best alternative.
Why? IIRC, the majority of countries in the UN are still not
representative governments. I know 20 years ago that was a certainty. Why
should dictatorships be able to dictate their will to representative
governments. Would you have wished the Neatherlands to obey the commands
of the ambassadors of dictatorships?
>
> No. By rejecting the authority of the UN, the US is choosing a form of
> dictatorship ("the US and only the US decides") over what at least to a
> certain extent is a democracy.
No, it is choosing the freedom of a soverign state to act as it deems best.
There is no world government. While representative governments are not
perfect, they do have a better track record than dictatorships.
Dan M.
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