When U.S. Delegate to the United Nations John A. Scali delivered his remarkable speech lambasting what he called “the tyranny of the majority,” he expressed the views of most Americans who are dismayed by the hypocrisy of the UN in welcoming the Palestine Liberation Organization, while expelling Taiwan from the UN, South Africa from the General Assembly, and Israel from UNESCO.
Fr. Scali’s speech was long overdue — a breath of realism for a generation that has been taught to revere majority rule, one-man one-vote, and the United Nations, as values to be preferred over the checks and balances of the limited government created by the American Founding Fathers.
Those who have made a pseudo-religion out of the United Nations have trained our youth to believe that the road to peace lies in sub merging the United States in some form of world government, just as the 13 American colonies joined to form the United States.
Yale University President Kingman Brewster, Jr., summed up the goals of the world government advocates in an article in the 50th anniversary issue of the journal FOREIGN AFFAIRS. He urged us to celebrate our coming Bicentennial by issuing 11a resounding Declaration of International Interdependence.”
Mr. Brewster called on us to “pool” our sovereignty with other nations and warned that “we shall have to abide by lawfully achieved results even when we might have wished or voted otherwise.
Most Americans can now clearly see that, although the recent UN actions were taken by majority vote, they were wrong and destructive of the rights of little countries. Cut adrift from any lasting moral principles, the UN has been drowning in a sea of words, or, as Mr. Scari put it more diplomatically, “it will fade into the shadow world of rhetoric.”
The framers of the U.S. Constitution had the wisdom to protect Americans against a tyrannical majority. They specified many functions that can be performed only by very large majorities instead of by a simple majority, including approval of treaties, overriding presi dential vetoes, and enacting amendments to. the Constitution.
More important, our Constitution lists many things that a majority cannot do at all, such as denying freedom of speech, religion and press, taking private property without just compensation, and denying trial by jury in the district wherein the crime was committed.
The problem Mr. Scali put his finger on in the UN was forecast by Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1930 radio address when he said: moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters “The proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress the minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights — that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
The recent behavior of the United Nations demonstrates clearly that our rights are far safer under the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence than they are under the UN or any form of world government.
