The Fearful Master - Chapter 16

THE FEARFUL MASTER

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE DANGEROUS SERVANT

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE DANGEROUS SERVANT

In 1816 Thomas Jefferson wrote:

The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to handle. Let the national Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation and its foreign and federal relations; the state Governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the state generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties; and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great national one down through all its subordinations . . . that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether the autocrats of Russia or France or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.¹

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer the question.²

Indeed, history has answered the question; not only the distant history to which Jefferson is here referring, but more recent events as well. In the two decades that followed the birth of this nation, men and women by the hundreds of thousands migrated here from all over the world, because they knew that here was the land of freedom and opportunity, where a man could make his own deal with life without being bowed by the oppressive yoke of government directing his daily life. Carl Schurz was one such immigrant, and his words written in 1853 serve as monumental tribute to the wisdom of such men as Washington and Jefferson:

Here in America, you can see daily how little a people needs to be governed. There are governments, but no masters; there are governors, but they are only commissioners, agents. What there is here of great institutions of learning, of churches, of great commercial institutions, lines of communication, etc., almost always owes its existence, not to official authority, but to the spontaneous cooperation of private citizens. Here, you witness the productiveness of freedom. . . . We learn here how superfluous is the action of governments concerning a multitude of things in which in Europe it is deemed absolutely indispensable; and how the freedom to do something awakens the desire to do it.³

All of this, of course, was no mere accident. As we have seen, the men who drafted our Constitution and set the infant nation on its way knew full well what they were doing. They were brilliant scholars of history who had closely studied the factors that led previous nations into misery and slavery. They were determined to spare us the same fate. So when they drafted the Constitution, they inserted, among other things, Article 4, Section 4, which states: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of government. . . ." [Italics added.] This means a limited form of government. They knew that the Union would not last if the individual states of the Federal Government itself were allowed to become despotic and unrestrained. The Constitution further stipulated: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Compare this with the ideological foundation upon which the United Nations is built. Instead of insuring that all member states have limited forms of government, the UN assumes that they have unlimited power over their subjects. The UN is not concerned about the fact that a majority of its members are governments which rule with police-state methods. Instead of assuming that any power not specifically mentioned in the Constitution is reserved to the individual citizens or their smaller governmental units, the United Nations assumes that the Charter is vague and broad enough so as to authorize it to do absolutely everything! This concept of unlimited power was made unmistakably clear when the UN World Court declared:

Under international law, the organization [UN] must be deemed to have those powers which, though not expressly provided in the Charter are conferred upon it by necessary implication as being essential to the performance of its duties.⁴

As a result, the United Nations has become a professional politician's paradise. It is a world forum, world court, world department of education, world welfare agency, world planning center for industry and commerce, world financial agency, world police force, and anything else anyone might want--or might not want.

The bedrock for world socialism upon which the United Nations is built can be found in Articles 55 and 56 of the Charter. Article 56 states: "All members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55." And the purposes set forth in Article 55 are as follows: ". . . the United Nations shall promote: (a) higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development; (b) solutions of international, economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation."

Since the United States is pledged to promote, among other things, the health of the world's populations, it would be well to take a look at the UN definition of "health." The constitution of the United Nations World Health Organization states:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. . . . Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provisions of adequate health and social measures.

Alger Hiss, one of the original guiding lights of the UN World Health Organization, expanded the concept even further when he said:

. . . it includes not only the more conventional fields of activity but also mental health, housing, nutrition, economic or working conditions, and administrative and social techniques affecting public health.⁵

This simply means that the United States is bound by treaty to uphold its pledge to promote unlimited government meddling around the world; to promote the very thing against which it fought a revolution two hundred years earlier.

Advocates of this Old World concept of unlimited government quite naturally do not call it Old World; they like to think that they have discovered something new. Nor do they call it meddling; they prefer to think of it as "providing assistance." Certainly, they would not want it called socialism; "national programming" is the term. Call it what you will, the end result is still the same.

But, of course, this is a study of the UN, not a treatise on the relative merits of collectivism versus individualism. Except as this subject is unavoidably implicated in what we have dealt with so far, let us simply summarize the whole issue by saying that socialism and all other manifestations of collectivism (such as fascism, communism, etc.) would be just fine except for two considerations: first, they have never worked (as the saving goes, socialism will work in only two places: Heaven, where they don't need it; and Hell, where they already have it); and secondly, they are immoral. History has proved the first point beyond all doubt, and logic substantiates the second.

Using the police-backed power of government to force people to perform acts that would be charitable if voluntarily performed, is like the Good Samaritan using a club to intimidate others into helping the poor traveler who had been beaten and robbed. At the point where he threatens to use force to accomplish what is, in his mind, a noble cause, he then becomes no better than the original attacker who, for the sake of argument, might have committed the robbery to secure money for what he considered to be a noble cause. This is just a refined version of saying that the ends justify the means. If we accept that thesis, there is no end to the legalized plunder that will be our lot.

Not all of the collectivists at the UN are promoting their schemes out of ignorance or innocence. Being indifferent to the moral implications, they also know full well that their proposals are not leading to the kind of workers utopia that they keep predicting. They know that free enterprise is far more workable and productive than socialism but they work tirelessly to promote socialism just the same. Knowing that all collectivist systems must have planners and rulers--the elite to run the lives of the rest of us--they hope to be in line for the top jobs.

Consider the following remarks made by Edward H. Carr, writing in the UNESCO Symposium on Human Rights:

If the new Declaration of the Rights of Man is to include provisions for social services, for maintenance in childhood, in old age, in inadequacy or in unemployment, it becomes clear that no society can guarantee the enjoyment of such rights unless it, in turn, has the right to call upon and direct the productive capacities of the individuals enjoying them.⁶

Someone always has to pay for these schemes, of course, and in the United Nations, Uncle Sap . . . er, Sam is elected. In 1953 the General Assembly voted to create a special UN fund for world economic development. A few years later, when it was learned that this fund would need five billion dollars, and that Americans would be paying approximately seventy percent of the total, Mr. Hans Singer, an Englishman, casually remarked: "It will be a heavy burden on American taxpayers, but you will just have to manage that. You'll get accustomed to paying the taxes."⁷

Brock Chisholm, director-general of the United Nations World Health Organization, during a speech in 1957 further revealed the prevailing attitude among UN socialists when he said that it was "manifestly absurd" for a "very small proportion of the human race" (he is referring to the U.S., of course) to enjoy a tremendous proportion of the world's natural resources." He said that this is "not a sensible arrangement" and must not last.⁸

Apparently the socialists in our own Government agree with this thought, for on February 17, 1961, the State Department delivered the following official memorandum to the West German government:

We must design formulae which . . . make allowances, as we do in our domestic taxation systems, for the principle that the richer among us shall bear a higher relative burden than the poor. In addition, we must come to recognize a principle on which the U.S. has acted in the years after the Second World War. That principle is that a sustained accumulation of gold and other international reserves by any one country is disruptive to any international community. Especially now when trade is expanding faster than gold production, we must learn to use our reserves on a communal basis. . . .⁹ [Italics added.]

On September 20, 1963, international socialists listened with delight as President Kennedy addressed the opening session of the United Nations:

More than four-fifths of the entire UN system can be found today mobilizing the weapons of science and technology for the United Nations decade of development. But more, much more, can be done. For example- a world center for health communications under the World Health Organization could warn of epidemics and of the adverse effects of certain drugs as well as transmit the results of new experiments and new discoveries. Regional research centers could advance our common medical knowledge and train new scientists and doctors for new nations. . . . A worldwide program of conservation could protect the forest and world game preserves now in danger of extinction--improve the marine harvest of food from our oceans--and prevent the contamination of our air and our water by industrial as well as nuclear pollution. And, finally, a worldwide program of farm distribution--similar to our own nation's "Food for Peace" program--could give every hungry child the food he needs."¹⁰

At the conclusion of a previous speech by President Kennedy expressing similar views in relation to NATO, Mr. Paul Henri Spaak, leader of the Belgian Socialist party, exclaimed, "This is perfect; I have found a successor!"¹¹

It should be obvious to any careful observer that there is no longer even the slightest challenge to socialist doctrine within the United Nations from any member nations, including our own. Any wishful thinking we might have entertained to the contrary was certainly eradicated by Secretary-General U Thant. Speaking on April 5, 1963, at Columbia University, he said:

Not so long ago, there were quite divergent views in the membership of the UN about the desirability and wisdom for governments to set targets and adopt national plans or programs. Today . . . there is a broad measure of agreement about the usefulness of projections, planning and programing as practical tools for economic and social development, while the controversy about the relative merits of private enterprise and public undertakings is transcended by the realization that the most important aim of development is to bring about expansion and change for the benefit of all.¹²

Translated into simple, understandable English, Thant said that everyone in the UN agrees that socialism is more practical and desirable than free enterprise.

The socialistic bias of the UN is clearly revealed on nearly every page of the monthly United Nations Review. One can find reports on UN proceedings dealing with setting prices, production quotas, inventories, stockpiles of raw materials, labor standards, wages and monetary policies. Every conceivable sphere of human economic activity is being analyzed and then planned for so that it will come under the ultimate control of the United Nations.

As the months slip by and as we enter into thousands of additional treaties, executive orders, and international agreements, the silken thread continues to be spun around the sleeping giant. The job is so near completion that already there are a multitude of United Nations regulations that reach right down to the daily lives of American citizens. An example is the International Wheat Conference which actually decrees how much wheat our farmers may sell in foreign countries and sets the price to be paid for it. The Federal Government enforces these decrees by the authority derived from an international treaty.¹³

The International Materials Conference is another example. Set up in 1951, its purpose was to clamp down import and export quotas for certain strategic materials such as sulphur, copper, zinc and tungsten. During the Korean War, we found that these quotas severely hampered the production of critical war materials and resulted in costly layoffs in some industries. When a subcommittee of the United States Senate looked into the matter, it reported:

. . . in effect, the International Materials Conference, an unauthorized group of persons in other countries, dictated to the United States how much of such critical materials could be allocated to the United States stockpile.

The so-called "entitlements of consumption" established by the International Materials Conference created a shortage of critical materials in this country for the benefit of foreign powers. . . .

When the Senate received this report, it immediately withdrew authorization for the use of funds to be used in support of the IMC. The executive department under President Eisenhower, however, completely ignored the action and merely diverted the funds from other sources for this purpose. The justification used was that the IMC derived its authority from an executive agreement, a higher source than Congress, and, as such, must be supported.¹⁴

Some Americans, as they see their country gradually becoming more and more helplessly ensnared in this web of foreign entanglements, seek comfort in the thought that the real power of the United Nations supposedly resides in the Security Council where we have the right to veto anything that we dislike. As long as this is so, they reason, we have nothing to fear. But these people are in for a rude awakening. For one thing, as we have already pointed out, the Secretariat or full-time staff of the UN wields a dominant influence amounting to virtual effective control from behind the scenes. Aside from that, however, thinking strictly in terms of the theoretical power structure, it is true that the original setup was supposed to place the authority to wage war and other important matters in the hands of the Big Five in the Securitv Council, each with the protection of a veto. The General Assembly was supposed to be merely a world forum where nations could express their views and pass harmless resolutions. In fact, it is doubtful that the American people would have accepted the United Nations on any other basis. But the UN Charter is a remarkable document and, as we shall see, things are not quite the same today as they were in 1945. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put it:

If a situation is arrived at where you can't accomplish a reasonable fair result through technical Charter amendments, it may very well be possible to agree on procedures which would get a very large part of the desired result. Now it would be much neater and cleaner to do it by Charter amendment, but if that process is frustrated by the fact that the five permanent members have the veto power on amendments, then other ways could be found. [Italics added.]

He said that the United Nations Charter was sufficiently unspecific and flexible to allow evolution in this direction, and concluded that, for this reason "future generations would be thankful to the men at San Francisco who had drafted it."¹⁵ Trygve Lie expressed the same sentiment when he said:

. . . there has been a healthy shift in power from the council to the veto-free General Assembly Thus, progress by no means alone depends upon textual revisions of the Charter. A continued liberal construction of the Charter we now have holds out great promise, and perhaps is the more practical way to strengthen the bonds of the world community.¹⁶

This philosophy, of course, is not original with Mr. Dulles or Mr. Lie. Centuries earlier Napoleon wrote: "A constitution should be short and obscure." While the United Nations Charter is anything but short, it certainly is obscure. A smart politician with a flair for legal language could justify almost anything on the basis of its provisions. As Dulles admitted: "I have never seen any proposal made for collective security with 'teeth' in it, or for 'world government' or for 'world federation,' which could not be carried out either by the United Nations or under the United Nations Charter."¹⁷

What has all this got to do with our veto in the UN? Simply this: We do not have it any more! When the United Nations called for military action to repel the Communist invasion of South Korea, technically speaking it was violating the terms of its own Charter. This has never slowed the UN down in the past, but this time the issue was important enough to demand the pretense of legality. The difficulty arose due to the Soviet's absence from the Security Council. When the United Nations was formed, it was understood that a Big Five failure to vote was automatically considered a veto. But, due to the "flexibility" of the Charter and "dynamic usage," the practice now is that failure to vote does not constitute a veto. At the time of the Korean invasion, this concept was right in the middle of being "evolved' and it was no time to put it to the test. Consequently, at the primary insistence of the U.S. a "unified command" was established under theoretical American control and a "uniting for peace" resolution was introduced before the General Assembly, where it passed with little difficulty. The resolution established the following profound changes in UN procedure:

1. If, due to a veto, the Security Council fails to act in a case of military crisis, the General Assembly can hold an emergency session to take up the matter.

2. In such a case, the General Assembly can call on member nations to make available their armed forces for whatever military action the General Assembly may recommend.¹⁸

Here, then, is one more thread. Loss of the veto is no small matter--as even Trygve Lie was forced to admit: "The Assembly by adopting the Acheson [Uniting for Peace] Plan, engineered a profound shift of emergency power from the veto-ridden Security Council to the veto-less General Assembly--a shift the full potentialities of which have still to be realized."¹⁹ It means that at some future date Uncle Sam will awaken from his long slumber only to find that be is completely at the mercy of a majority vote within a mob of angry Lilliputians screaming for his head; and that the harmless world forum that he thought he created has transformed itself into an all-powerful world government fully capable of performing the execution.

In an apparently calm acceptance of this grim fate for our country, President Lyndon Johnson, nonchalantly stated it this way: "In a world of 113 nations, 50 of which have had new governments in the past three years, the United States must be prepared for change."²⁰

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NOTES

1. From a letter to Joseph C. Cabell, February 2, 1816, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905), vol. 14, p. 421.

2. American Historical Documents, p. 152.

3. "The Bricker Amendment," speech by Robert H. Montgomery (Boston, June 13, 1955).

4. Reparations for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, International Court of Justice opinion. As quoted by Abraham Feller, general legal counsel for the United Nations, in his book United Nations and World Community (Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1952), p. 41.

5. As quoted by J. B. Matthews, American Opinion (May 1958), pp. 8-9.

6. As quoted by Ewell, p. 28.

7. Chicago Tribune (October 29, 1956), pp. 1, 20.

8. J. B. Matthews, "The World Health Organization," American Opinion (May 1958), p. 31.

9. Department of State Bulletin (March 13, 1961), p. 370-371.

10. "Kennedy--A Quest for Peace Meeting," Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (September 20, 1963), p. A-7. Shortly after the death of President Kennedy, President Johnson addressed the United Nations General Assembly and expounded almost the identical philosophy. In fact, Johnson proposed extending the welfare programs of the New Deal period to the whole world under United Nations direction and United States financing. See "Text of Johnson's Speech to UN," Los Angeles Times (December 18, 1963), sec. 4, p. 2.

11. Article by Michael Padev, the Indianapolis Star (February 22, 1961). Mr. Spaak, who was the outgoing secretary of NATO, was speaking about the leadership role that President Kennedy would now assume in his place within NATO economic policies.

12. United Nations Review (April 1963), p. 13.

13. Watts, UN: Planned Tyranny, p. 79.

14. Ibid., pp. 79-81.

15. Review of the UN Charter--A Collection of Documents, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations document #87 (January 7, 1954), pp. 286-288.

16. Lie, p. 424.

17. As quoted by Manly, p. 212, from Mr. Dulles' book War or Peace.

18. Everyman's United Nations (New York, UN Office of Public Information, 1959), p. 75.

19. Lie, p. 347

20. "Foreign Policy Critics Assailed by Johnson," Los Angeles Times (February 12, 1964), pp. 1, 7.

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