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A
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B
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C
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B
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C
Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterm. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.
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B
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D
That is fire.
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B
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D
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B
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D
The United States helped build the United nations to prevent World War three. But we ended up with a global HOA that sends angry letters and loses your money and lets the worst people in the neighborhood sit on the board and run your life. So yes, it is time for America to end the United Nations. Tear down the building in New York, turn it into a park so the leftists in Manhattan can finally go outside and touch some grass. The squirrels in that park would have a significantly better record of creating international peace than the bureaucrats inside the UN building. Today, after more than a century of failed internationalist experiments, the verdict is in. The UN does not stop wars. It does not stop atrocities. It does not stop dictators. So why are we all still pretending it does any of those things? It actually helps all of those people. Let's go back to where it all began. A liberal internationalist fantasy. In the wake of World War I, dueling visions of a future world order began to emerge. World War I shattered the old system of sprawling empires. A new system of nation states began trying to find a way to coexist and Prevent World War II. Spoiler alert. It didn't work. The 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, had a vision, a beautiful vision. War, world peace, the equality of nations. Everybody hashing everything out at a magical legislature called the League of Nations. This was the precursor to the un. The League of Nations proposal had a particular clause called Article 10, which stipulated that if any member of the League were attacked, everybody else would then jump in to protect them. Sort of like NATO, except for the whole world, which sounds nice in a Princeton seminar but is actually totally insane and also at odds with the United States Constitution. At the time, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge read Article 10 and said, hold up a second. This means that an international body now has the power to decide if Americans ought to go to war. It guts senate war powers, it hands them to a council of foreigners. Americans agreed and the Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations covenants. And the US sat out of the international body that the President had originally proposed to the rest of the world. The League of Nations continued to exist, by the way. It just had no power and it did nothing to Prevent World War II. The league basically was completely defunct for the entire rise of Nazi Germany, the rise of Soviet Russia and the rise of Fascist Italy. So then World War II breaks out. You know, that massive global war the League was designed to prevent. In fact, there is a case to be made that without the illusion of collective security that restrained particularly Britain, France and the United States, that those countries may have rearmed sooner and adopted an effective containment policy toward Hitler's expansionism. So World War II ends and what did the internationalists do? They reran the experiment with better branding. While the world was reeling from shock and horror after the war, the UN was launched with the soaring promise to save succeeding generations from the scourge of of war. Spoiler alert. That didn't work either. FDR had made the UN his legacy project. He coined the term United nations for the anti Axis coalition during the war. And then he sought a permanent institution anchored by something he called the four policemen. The uk, ussr, US and China. He even mused about becoming the first Secretary General of the UN after concluding his term as the United States President. You may review those countries again. Us, uk, ussr, like the evil Soviet government and China, which at that time was not in fact a communist government, but would shortly become one again. This whole idea was steeped in Wilsonian faith that if people just sat together in a room, then war could be managed like an HOA zoning dispute. But underneath all of the rhetoric was the same question. When international Law ill defined international law, undefined international law. Law as decided by a random agglomeration of nations voting. Well, that clashes with American constitutional law. Who wins? For the people who fetishize the un, the answer is not the American voter. So who's actually in charge at the un? Well, it's called the Security Council. There are five permanent members of vetoes. The us, the uk, France, Russia, then the USSR and China. Why Russia? Well, because Stalin ended up on the winning side in 1945. That was after he started the war by joining the losing side, the Nazis, with the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and grabbing most of Eastern Europe. Why China? Well, because originally China was run by a guy named Chiang Hai Shek, who ended up as the head of Taiwan when he had to run to exile when Mao took over. So built into this system from the first day, this genius idea, America's biggest adversaries would have veto power over all UN mechanisms. You want to do something about the Syrian government massacring its own citizens, Russia will shoot it down with a veto. You want to do something about China, while China is not exactly going to allow that to go ahead. It's like designing a police department where mob bosses get to sign off on all the raids. Even the logo is a tell. The UN emblem shows the earth from above, the North Pole flattened out with all the continents compressed and the Americas shoved off to the side. The symbolism is deliberate. The global east and west are visually closer. No country more powerful than the rest. Well, after World War II, the Allies set up Nuremberg. Nazi leaders were prosecuted for crimes against humanity on the bizarre legal theory that was a mix of existing and new norms. In 1949, the updated Geneva Conventions were codified into what we now call the laws of war. How you treat prisoners, civilians, the wounded and war torn populations, while well intentioned, they largely do the same thing. They codify a morality that in reality, pretty much nobody around the world actually shares. And then all of those laws are militarized against the very people who put them in place in the first place. And the big question is, who enforces these laws? The Nuremberg Nazis were prosecuted under international law. The truth is the Allies could have just shot Hermann Goering upon winning the war and physically occupying Germany. The Geneva Conventions are a little different because they were signed by Congress as a treaty, which again, that's how America adopts international law as domestic law. The un, however, is doling out something entirely different. A standard of international law that does not exist. It is Sudan voting on what they think America ought to do. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been explicit about this. Don't allow international bodies to rewrite American law under the guise of diplomacy. Now UN defenders will trot out the same handful of successes in Korea. In 1950, the Security Council authorized force after North Korea invaded the South. Why did that pass? Well, because the Soviets were boycotting over China's seat and weren't there to veto it. And by the way, it didn't matter. The US had to spend all of the time and all of the money to secure South Korea in the Korean War, in the Congo. In the 1960s, the mask slipped. The UN operation got sucked into a civil war and a Cold War rivalry. The peacekeepers were incompetent. The idea of a neutral, technocratic UN peace force swooping in with their blue helmets to fix failing states starts to look like what it was, a fantasy. And during the Cold War, the Security Council spent most of its time doing nothing because again, the US and the USSR were the opposite sides of the Cold War and both were on the Security Council. America was built by people who worked hard and also slept well. If you are not sleeping well, you're not operating at your full capacity. And we need you at full capacity. America's 250th is coming up. You need to be ready. And this is where Helix comes in. Helix Sleep will make it so that you get a better night's sleep. It is that simple. How well they offer over 20 mattress models. Take a quick quiz and get matched to the right one for how you actually sleep. Your position, your temperature, your firmness preference, all of it. Free shipping, the 120 night sleep trial, and the Happy with Helix guarantee make it completely risk free. It's the most awarded mattress brand out there. It's been tested and reviewed by Forbes and Wired, among others. The 4th of July is coming. Invest in your sleep, invest in yourself. Head over to helixsleep.com ben for 20% off site wide, 25% off luxe mattresses, 30% off elite mattresses. Again, I have a Helix Sleep mattress. My wife and I took that sleep quiz. We got a mattress made for us and it's awesome. You can do the same. Head on over to helixsleep.com Ben Meanwhile, the UN General assembly became a tool of the worst countries on planet Earth, where they just vote routinely for random third world policies that mean nothing because none of them can be practiced. In 1974, the arch terrorist Yasser Arafat showed up to address the UN wearing a holster. Yes, he Actually brought a gun to the hall where people are supposed to talk about these. And one year later the UN General assembly declared that Zionism is racism again. The only Jewish state, there are some 50 odd Muslim states. The only Jewish state was singled out as inherently racist, while all the actual racist dictatorships voted yes. That resolution was not revoked until 1991. By the way, if you want to know when a lot of Americans began to realize the UN wasn't neutral, well, you can start during this period. The 1990s saw the permanent destruction of the myth that the UN is some sort of global guardian just protecting people. In Somalia, the UN's failed humanitarian interventions resulted in the entire Black Hawk down disaster in Mogadishu. That should have been the UN's job. It ended up being American soldiers in Rwanda in an EPT UN mission washed as a full on genocide unfolded. Lawyers in New York were arguing about the word genocide while people were being hacked to death with machetes. And safe areas guarded by UN soldiers were not in fact safe. In Bosnia, the UN declared Srebnica a safe area while Serb forces walked in massacred everybody. And peacekeepers stood by under paralyzing rules. In fact, in many areas in which UN peacekeepers were present, there ended up being giant sex scandals because it turns out the peacekeepers were, you know, abusing their positions of authority. Bill Clinton almost became more interventionist in spite of the un, not because of it. So if your main sales pitch for the UN is that it prevents atrocities, the UN has never prevented atrocities. And then of course there is the corruption. The Oil for food program in Iraq was supposed to let Saddam Hussein sell limited oil to buy food and medicine under UN supervision. And it turns out he just stole all of the money. Lots of companies and intermediaries got rich. The UN oversight did nothing. There is nothing more ridiculous about the UN and nothing more indicative of their corruption than their incessant condemnations of the State of Israel. Since 2015, the UN General assembly has has adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel. Over that same period, fewer than 70 resolutions were passed against the rest of the world combined. There are 190 some countries in the world. Over half of all UN Human Rights Council's resolutions targeted Israel in its first decade of operation. Meanwhile, China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, they're all part of the UN's top human rights body. China is on the panel monitoring free speech. Iran is the Vice Chair of the UN Women's Policy Rights Committee. Human rights disarmament, terrorism prevention. Iran sits on that committee. It's a Clown show. Everybody knows it. Climate is the same story with different buzzwords. Copenhagen 2009, that's Greta Thunberg's world premiere, was hyped as the last chance to save the planet. It collapsed into a weak non binding accord. Paris 2015 was sold as historic, but the reality was countries were performatively limiting their carbon emissions without any judge or jury or penalty or enforcement mechanism. The United States, the most powerful country on earth, was climate shamed by people who flew in private jets to the conference where they shamed them. This is what international law often means in practice. TED talks with motorcades and shaming America. All symbolism, no enforcement. When it comes to military action, the UN has never been more irrelevant than it is today. But there are a bunch of examples from over the years. In 2003, the United States went to the Security Council to get an Iraq war resolution. Since Iraq was refusing to abide by a wide variety of of UN Security Council resolutions. France and Russia balked the United States and its willing coalition partners when in any way, again, the UN doesn't mean anything, they don't get to decide yes or no. Bashar Assad's Syria is exhibit B. Russia, Ukraine is exhibit C. Statement, emergency sessions, strongly worded statements. The outcome is determined by NATO policy and American aid, not by a council chamber with Russia on it. And of course, Nowhere is the UN's moral compass more non existent than and again on Israel. UN recognized Palestine as a State in 2012 despite the fact that it has no borders and no government. They've also cranked out hosts of votes since that that activists have glommed onto as though these were some form of divine revelation. Then there's the UN Refugee Works Agency. It literally only works for supposed Palestinian refugees who have been quote unquote refugees for legitimately 80 years. That's not a refugee gang. And more than 100 staffers have been revealed to be Hamas terrorists. And of course, nothing the UN has done has been able to draw borders, disarm terrorists, or build a functioning Palestinian government. The UN doesn't even want to do any of those things. The UN uselessness was put on blast, most famously when Donald Trump showed up at the podium and mocked them all. He mocked the bureaucracy. He ridiculed the idea that the UN's job is to boss around sovereign countries. He threatened to cut funding and he has. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. The room have freaked out that Trump was undermining what they called multilateralism. But Trump's point was and is correct. The job of the American President is not to do what earns him plaudits from the UN General Assembly. It's to defend American interests. And mostly that involves ignoring the un. Over a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson's utopianism gave way to a brand new vision of a liberal, institutionalist world order, where presidents like FDR and Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama believe that if you write charters and hold conferences and pass resolutions, you can bureaucratize war out of existence. There is a competing view of geopolitics. Realist nationalists like Teddy Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan or President Trump, who say correctly, sure, nations have interests. Creating more committees in Geneva or New York is not going to repeal that. The best case scenario is that the UN is considered mostly necessary but useless. The worst case scenario is that it's necessary, useless, and dangerous because internationalism chips away its sovereignty and because internationalism is basically a way that for the worst people on earth to pretend that they have moral authority. So let's just knock over the UN building, build a park, give it to President Trump to build a tower, admit what over a century of evidence shows the UN and the League of Nations before it failed to prevent world war, actual genocide, pandemics, and every other human rights abuse imaginable. They have succeeded in creating an enormous, unaccountable bureaucracy that isn't worth the building it exists within today. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of bureaucrats who don't have to pay their parking tickets.