All of the exclusive alliances, spheres of influence, balances of power and all other expedients which occurred and failed for centuries outside of a universal organization have now occurred and failed this century inside the UN.  Unlike the UN, the Liberty Alliance will be composed of free nations dedicated to expanding human liberty to peoples yet free, its objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity.

This speech was given at the Hudson Institute, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and the Touro Law Institute Conference on The United Nations: “Hijacking Human Rights," November 18, 2007. Reprinted with permission of Congressman McCotter.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures . . . I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way . . . I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.  The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority.  It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms . . .

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.  They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife.  They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died.  We must keep that hope alive.

The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.  If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world – and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.

Regarding the Soviet Union, in the face of “experts’” arguments that Stalin’s imperialist dictatorship should be psychologically “understood” and indulged to purchase an illusory peace, Truman morally comprehended this evil empire’s threat to the United States and the Free World.  Through the United Nations, multi-lateral and bi-lateral treaties, his strategy to contain and defeat inhuman communism called for the United States to champion the cause of human liberty and dignity.

Regarding Israel, again despite “experts’” opinions to the contrary, Truman applied his principled strategy to the cause of Israel.  At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Jewish state proclaimed its existence; eleven minutes later, the United States announced its de facto recognition of Israel.  Then, on January 25, 1949, the Jewish state held its first democratic election; four days later, the United States announced its de jure recognition of a democratic Israel. 

Lagging America, on May 11, 1949, the UN admitted Israel.  Over time, this act has proven akin to a boa constrictor’s asking a mouse to dance:

– For decades the UN denied Israel admission into a regional group; only in 2000 was Israel conditionally accepted into the Western European and Others Group.

– From 1967 to 1989, the UN General Assembly passed 429 anti-Israeli resolutions; condemned Israel 321 times; and, of 131 UN Security Council resolutions adopted regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, 88 criticized, opposed the actions of, or found against Israel’s interests.

– In 1975, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 3379 and branded Zionism as racism.  It took 15 years for the General Assembly to repeal this abominable slander.

– During the 61st session from 2006-2007, the UN General Assembly passed 22 resolutions against Israel; and the UN Human Rights Council passed 10 resolutions condemning Israel.

– By April of 2007, the new, unimproved UN Human Rights Council had specifically condemned only one country – Israel – while other countries with severe, UN-documented human rights abuses, like Sudan, were merely advised of the body’s "deep concern."  And the Council will entertain more resolutions against Israeli.

Evidently, in the UN’s “diplomatic dance,” the boa constrictor is determined to lead.  Let us then suggest a tune:  Bob Dylan’s ironically titled song about Israel, “Neighborhood Bully,” which decries the UN’s bias against and double-standard toward the democratic Jewish state:

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.

On this note, it is revealing how the UN Human Rights Council’s bathetic descent into moral perversity has mirrored the United Nations’ squalid devolution into venality.

For global altruists afflicted with cognitive dissonance, in a likely futile effort, let us remind them of the UN’s recent, execrable acts against the human liberty and dignity it was founded to defend.

The UN “humanitarian” aid program, "Oil-for-Food," provided little bread for Iraqis but large bribes for Hussein, his regime, UN cronies and, likely, terrorists.  Estimates are Saddam's dictatorship siphoned $10 billion from the program through oil smuggling and systematic thievery, and illegal payments and kickbacks from international contractors – all beneath the non-judgmental gaze of UN bureaucrats, who were nevertheless judged culpable for gross incompetence, mismanagement, and, potentially, complicity with Saddam in perpetrating the biggest corruption scandal in human history.   

Secondly, widespread instances and allegations of the sexual exploitation and abuse of Congolese women, girls, and boys were leveled against the UN personnel sent to protect them.  The particulars of this barbaric sexual abuse are unfit for this forum.

Thirdly, the UN’s waste, fraud and malfeasance has turned tawdry graft into a global art, an epic debacle of avarice less worthy of a journalist than a satirist.  As one UN peace-keeping staffer informed the Inter Press Service News Agency:  "Corruption and kickbacks were taken for granted in most overseas operations."  Though not in New York Federal Court, where on June 7th the former top U.N. procurement official, Sanjaya Bahel, was convicted of steering $100 million worth of UN peace-keeping contracts to the family of a personal friend.  UN officials refuse to explain how Bahel was twice exonerated by its internal investigations, while a New York jury convicted him of fraud and corruption in half a day.

These are not the acts of the UN envisioned by President Franklin Roosevelt in his March 1, 1945, Address before Congress on the Yalta Conference:

(A common ground for peace) ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed.  We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join.

Weighed against Roosevelt’s words, the UN is deemed wanting, and the reason is revealed: a “universal organization” will include “peace-loving nations” and tyrannical regimes.  Consequently, all of the “exclusive alliances,” “spheres of influence,” “balances of power” and “all other expedients” which occurred and failed “for centuries” outside of a “universal organization” have now occurred and failed this century inside the UN.

Unlike Roosevelt, Truman viewed the UN as a future hope not an immediate panacea.  Though personally honest, Truman was versed in Boss Tom Pendergast’s political machine, and so understood the UN’s membership’s math boded ill for free people.  Today, according to Freedom House, of 192 UN member states, 89 are “fully free” and 103 are not.  Thus, a solid majority (54%) of member states know liberty directly threatens their survival, which requires the suppression of their own peoples and, through their UN membership, the entire human community.

While it is said words cannot hurt, the majority-ruled General Assembly’s resolutions and speeches can and do hurt free peoples, as Claudia Rosett poignantly observes:

What may appear to an American audience as irrelevant and even tedious theater is anything but harmless. The speeches on that U.N. stage are not, as a rule, meant for Americans, nor even for the multilateral audience in the chamber. Especially among repressive regimes, they are beamed to home countries and regional neighbors as evidence of the dignity and respect enjoyed by these governments at the world's leading conclave of nations. They feature as one more blow to the courageous Burmese monks, the hungry North Koreans, the desperate opposition in Zimbabwe, and the democrats who risk prison when they raise their voices in places such as Syria and Iran.

This holds true at the UN’s Security Council and its Human Rights Councils, from which a few bitter vignettes paint an abhorrent portrait. 

The UN’s Permanent Security Council includes a nuclear-armed communist China and an increasingly authoritarian Russia.  Their unsettling synergy of interests and actions on this body ominously echoes the heights of their Cold War co-operation.  Consider: 

Despite over a decade of U.S. protestations, communist China and Putin’s Russia are the top exporters of nuclear technology, chemical weapons precursors, and guided missiles to Iran.  In 2004, the U.S.-China Security and Review Commission declared, "Chinese entities continue to assist Iran with dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and chemical weapons-related production equipment and technology;” and further noted these transfers took place after the communist Chinese government’s 2003 pledge to withhold missile technology from the Iranian regime. 

Looking at the UN Human Rights Council, some members are more suited to a rogues’ gallery than a roster of righteous nations.  Soon the UN will enthrone as arbiters of global human rights regimes like communist China, communist Cuba, Putin’s Russia, and Saudi Arabia.  Only the UN would put oppressed people’s hopes in such blood-stained hands.

Our association with this insanity exacts a steep price.

Since 1945, the U.S. has been the UN’s largest annual contributor.  In 2006, American taxpayers forked over $423.5 million in dues (or 22% of the UN’s regular budget) and over $5.3 billion in total to the UN.  In 2007, Israel, unconditionally and on time, will pay the UN $9 million (or 0.419% of its regular budget); this amount ranks Israel as the UN’s 27th-highest dues-paying member.  In addition, Israel will pay the UN’s separate peacekeeping forces’ budget $35 million.  Nevertheless, Israel, the U.S. and all free nations remain the targets of the UN’s member regimes’ internal intrigues and corrupt practices. 

Two statistics define this dysfunction:  Only 46% of the UN’s members are free nations; but the UN’s top ten financial contributors are all free nations. 

In a crystalline instant are the UN’s symptoms manifest; its disease diagnosed; and its prognosis shameful:  the UN is a global Tammany Hall lethal to the liberty and dignity of our human family.

In our time, we face challenges equivalent to those posed to President Truman.  Once more, the United States, Israel, and the entire Free World face a global, generational War for Freedom against vicious enemies bent upon our destruction.  To win, our devotion to liberty must transcend their obsession with death.  This cannot be accomplished by fecklessly continuing to rely upon a debauched UN for our collective security. 

Recall Truman:  “(I)t must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”  So it remains in our global age, wherein a world condensed by an internet cannot endure half-slave and half-free.  Our survival at stake, all free nations must prudently diminish their participation in a debased UN; and unite in the cause of human dignity and liberty.  Encircled at the UN, we’ve no more time to entreat with wolves in our midst.  Best we hold them at bay in their lair, and forge a course for the world’s new birth of freedom.

Our new course is a Liberty Alliance.

Similar to the “Community of Democracies,” which could be transformed into this more focused and potent international organization for freedom, the Liberty Alliance must be founded upon the self-evident truth that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and it must be steeped in the wisdom that extending liberty to the enslaved will ensure liberty for ourselves.

The Liberty Alliance must be composed of free nations dedicated to expanding human liberty to peoples yet free.  Member nations must meet a mutually agreed upon criteria of human and civil rights.  Observer nations must be domestically expanding their people’s liberty and, upon attaining the agreed upon criteria for membership, shall be admitted to the Alliance.  Importantly, member nations which diminish their people’s liberty beyond the agreed upon criteria must be demoted to Observer status and, when necessary, expelled from the Alliance.   

The governing structure of the Liberty Alliance shall be determined by its member nations with the objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity.  In accordance with Truman’s doctrine, the Alliance “must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.”  Ergo, the Alliance’s emphasis must be upon liberty – wherein human beings individually and communally shape the nature, form, and functions of their representative institutions – not upon abstract notions of uniformity, like “western” democracy or “democratic capitalism” – presumptuous and too often destabilizing impositions upon peoples trying to seize their freedom and shape their destinies as they deem fit.  After all, Americans have a President and a Congress, and Israel has a Prime Minister and Knesset; both peoples are siblings in liberty.

Heeding Truman’s assessment, “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want . . . poverty and strife . . . (and) reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died,” in order to foster liberty, the Alliance must advance human liberty and dignity through diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural initiatives aimed at empowering and emancipating individuals, their communities, and their emerging democratic governments from dictatorial rule.  The Alliance must not have a military component; but member and observer nations will retain their powers to continue or commence security agreements with other free countries through bi-lateral and multi-lateral treaties.  Never must any member or observer nation’s rights be infringed upon by the Alliance.

Now, two sanguine hopes.  The U.S. and Israel will lead the establishment of the Liberty Alliance.  And, secondly, the Liberty Alliance’s headquarters shall be sited on the free soil once scarred by colonialism, communism, fascism, world wars, and the Holocaust – Eastern Europe, where, cradled in the intrepid human sprit, liberty’s lamp triumphantly pierced these benighted recesses of evil.

In heralding the Liberty Alliance, we do not invite the Free World to exit the UN.  Especially by participating in a Democracy Caucus, the United States, Israel and all free nations should remain in the UN to advance or defend liberty by keeping her enemies close.  But we must not be so mad as to pay through the nose to get kicked in our assets.  So, a simple proposal:  no free nation will pay more to the UN than its lowest-paying tyrants – like North Korea and Burma, who only contribute $170,660 (or .010% of the UN’s regular budget).  Free nations’ monies and personnel spared from the UN shall be dedicated to the Liberty Alliance.

Doubtless, discombobulated global sophisticates will decry the Liberty Alliance as undesirable and/or impossible.  They are overwrought and best ignored.  For as we know, “The day is short; the task is great.”  But we will not withdraw from it.  The United States, Israel, and all free peoples are cemented and steeled by the harmonic bonds of liberty, comity, and duty.  Like Harry Truman and the greatest generations of both our nations – to date – we will not bend, we will not break in our reasoned faith in a future graced by free nations.  “We (will) keep that hope alive.”

Toiling our way up to that day, may God grant all free peoples the strength to be as He in Marie Syrkin’s verse, "The Strongest:"

I’ll be the strongest amid you,
Not lightning, stream or mountain blue,
But dew that falling to the earth
Gives birth.

I’ll be the strongest in my hour,
And lofty tree and quiet flower
Will both drink gratefully
From me.

I’ll be the strongest in the land.
I’ll be the word that heals, the hand
That unseen and still, as from above,
Gives love.

May it be.  And may God continue to grace, guard, guide, and bless the people of the United States, Israel, and our entire human family.