Official View on the United Nations

[LibertiORDeth]

What is RP's view on the United Nations?

 

[bbachtung]

Ha! (In my best Chris Matthews' impression)

RP hates the ceding of sovereignty that membership in the UN has entailed; one of the two stated "justifications" for war with Iraq was to enforce UN resolutions.

RP wants us to get out of the UN immediately.

He regularly introduces bills to get the US out of the UN.

Here's a summary of his feelings on the UN:

The real problem, however, is not that the UN is corrupt, or ineffective, or run by scoundrels. The real problem is that the UN is inherently illegitimate, because supra-national government is an inherently illegitimate concept. The ultimate test for the ostensible validity of any government is whether its authority comes from the people it governs, rather than from the use of force or arbitrary edicts. In other words, legitimate governments operate only by the consent of those they govern. This is the fundamental democratic principle. It is ludicrous to suggest that billions of people across the globe have in any way consented to UN governance, or have even the slightest influence over their own governments. Yet so many of those on the political left in America, who claim to believe in democracy above all, vigorously champion the inherently undemocratic UN.

We cannot reconcile American sovereignty with our membership in the UN. Neither the UN nor any other international body has authority to make laws that bind the American people. Americans have not consented to laws passed by foreign individuals or bodies.

American citizens abroad, of course, are subject to the laws of their host nation. At home, however, American citizens are subject only to our domestic laws. Congress, and Congress alone, has the constitutional power to craft our federal laws. While constitutionally-ratified treaties can be legitimate, no treaty can legally usurp the basic function of Congress by transferring legislative authority to an international body. Not even the wildest interpretation of the Constitution would allow Congress simply to abandon its lawmaking power to another body. Yet this is what UN advocates would have us believe when the UN attempts to dictate or influence our domestic labor, environmental, trade, tax, and gun laws-- as it already has.

http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=392