PRESENT AT THE DECREATION:

On the brink (LINDA WILLIAMSON, March 13, 2003, Toronto Sun)

Anyone who still believes the U.S. and its allies are "rushing to war" in Iraq should spend a few days here watching the fabled "international community" at work.

The word "rush" simply doesn't exist here, in any of the UN's six official languages.

Indeed, apart from the convoy of television news trucks outside this dazzling, Le Corbusier-designed world headquarters on the Hudson, there are few signs this is an institution on the brink of crisis and collapse.

Signs that it's an institution on the brink of irrelevance, however, are everywhere.

But then, the UN has always been other-worldly by design.

Established as an 18-acre chunk of "international territory" smack in the middle of the greatest city in the world, it prides itself on its detachment from the very country and city that allow it to flourish.

I first noticed this on my visit last Sept. 12, when U.S. President George Bush made his landmark speech calling for UN action on Iraq.

When I inquired when and where the president was speaking, UN staff repeatedly gave me blank looks - What president? Of what country? - despite the crush of world media and the fact NYPD and Secret Service types had the place surrounded for a five-block radius.

That same near-perverse detachment is very much in evidence this week, despite the high-tension, last-ditch, world-peace-at-stake issues before the the Security Council. [...]

As the world lurches toward war, the UN has set up a new "peace" display alongside its main-floor exhibitions celebrating its fights against illiteracy, land mines and polio. It is festooned with slogans from schoolkids, ranging from "Dump Bush, not bombs" to "Give peace a chance" to "Someone please kill Saddam Hussein!"

In an institution that too often celebrates moral equivalency, they're fitting - and about as significant as the rantings of many of the diplomats.

Somewhere the Candyman is smiling.

Dinesh D'Souza recently wrote an amusing but not terribly helpful book of Letters to a Young Conservative, part of the Basic Books mentoring series. I've mentored more than a few folks over the years as they faced their forbidden conservative urges and eventually came out of the closet to join the VRWC. One of the hardest parts of acknowledging that they feel the tug of the love that dare not speak its name (love of our ancestors and the wisdom and traditions they bequeathed us) seems to be the degree of deviance it requires from social norms. So, in the 60s, if you wanted the US out of the UN and Earl Warren impeached, you were considered wackier than a Hare Krishna. But here's the thing about conservatism, if you just stubbornly cling to the ancient teachings--like no entangling alliances or that the judiciary is the most dangerous branch of government if not restrained--sooner or later other people realize these things to be true.

Now, they'll never acknowledge that conservatives were right all along and that, if only they'd been listened to, much needless damage might have been avoided. However, it does save you from the dizziness that others experience as they follow every trend and fad that comes down the pike, usually driven by some hare-brained pack of intellectuals. And while the pain of watching the society you love perform lethal experiments on itself is sometimes hard to bear, the rewards of knowing you manned one of the few redoubts of resistance compensates in some tiny way. Plus, the spectacle that the experimenters make of themselves confirms you're justifiably low opinion of mankind and, once you accept the inevitability of their having their way, provides endless hours of amusement. This in fact is why comedy is so overwhelmingly (we'd argue exclusively) conservative--for it is conservatives who look at life as a comedy and it is precisely because so many of life's disasters are avoidable that they are so funny.

So, if you're a youngster and you're confused because you've begun to notice: that older people are smarter than you and your peers; that dead white European men seem to understand the world better than your teachers; that Margaret Thatcher has it goin' on; that no matter what they're talking about, Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy make you laugh; that you have this haunting suspicion that whatever it's doing, America is at least trying to do the right thing; that you have the opposite reaction of Gomez Adams when you hear French; that many of the same people who are apoplectic over gay priests think there should be gay Boy Scout leaders; that the only televised news you can tolerate is Fox News; that you're embarrassed that Bill Clinton was ever president of the United States; that you'd rather wake up next to Donna Reed than J-Lo; that it bothers you that nothing has "evolved" in recorded history; that Bob Hope is funnier than Tom Green; that it seems like guys who hunt and fish like Nature better than people who hate SUVs; that it made sense when Peter Parker gave up MJ at the end of Spider-Man; that you wouldn't actually trust anyone who wouldn't say the Pledge of Allegiance; that George W. Bush seems smart enough to be President; that rather than being embarrassed by younger players, Michael Jordan is embarrassing them because he works harder and cares more; that baseball on the radio is better than football on a giant-screen TV; that, whatever PETA says, meat tastes good and that appears to be why God gave us cows, pigs & fowl; that you hear some kid listening to rap and think he's too young for it; that you think young girls ought to cover their navels; etc.; etc.; etc.. Have no fear. Oranges are not the only fruit. Your friends and family may not understand you at first, but God loves you and we do too. You're not mentally ill, you're just a conservative. And the US should get out of the UN, like we've been saying for four decades...

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2003 10:48 AM