EDITOR'S COMMENT:
On June 20th, I sent out the following post:
THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (RATIFIED IN 1948)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/15749
Long-time NHNE reader, John White, responded to this post with a thoughtful and informative letter. Here's a brief description of who John is, followed by his response and a quick question-answer exchange with me.
-- David Sunfellow
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John W. White, M.A.T., is an internationally known author, educator and lecturer in the fields of consciousness research and higher human development. He has held positions as Director of Education for The Institute of Noetic Sciences, a research organization founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell to study human potential for personal and planetary transformation, and as President of Alpha Logics, a school for self-directed growth in body, mind and spirit.
Mr. White is author of The Meeting of Science and Spirit, Pole Shift, A Practical Guide to Death and Dying, Everything You Want to Know about TM and a children's book, The Christmas Mice. He has also edited a number of anthologies, including The Highest State of Consciousness, Psychic Exploration, Future Science, Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment and What Is Enlightenment?. His books have been published in ten languages. He is also General Editor of Omega Books (published by Paragon House) which is devoted to works about the nature of ultimate reality and higher human development.
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THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
By John White
The thrust of human history is toward ever-greater unity on all levels of our being, including the political, reflecting the unifying spirit of God. The Preamble to the Constitution puts it thus: "…to form a more perfect union." However, the way world affairs are going at present, we have nation warring against nation and faction fighting against faction, and the organization which is supposed to be a forum for the peaceful settlement of differences among belligerents -- the United Nations -- is, first of all, badly ineffective in performing that job and, second, has gotten "mission creep" and is attempting to become a world government to absorb all other governments into it. The 1994 UN publication United Nation's Report on Human Development states unequivocally, "Mankind's problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is a World Government" (p. 88). Now, guess who that world government will be.
The UN is neither democratic nor representative. The citizens of the world do not vote for their representatives to the UN in free elections, nor do the citizens of the world have the power to impeach unfit or undesirable representatives. They have no right of direct appeal and no right of direct redress of grievances or wrongs. Yet membership in the UN obligates its members to abide by a set of international laws (disingenuously called accords) which limit the rights of their citizens while pretending to grant them unlimited democracy. Every step the UN takes to assert its control over the planet, its resources and its people -- and even outer space -- is not open to debate except within the legislatures of member nations, and when a certain minimum of them vote in favor of something -- no matter how small an amount of territory or how few people the minimum collectively represents -- the UN arrogantly says that step becomes binding on all other nations, regardless of their nonacceptance or rejection of it. The UN regards itself as the ultimate world authority and is answerable to no one! That is not "the consent of the governed." That is naked dictatorship and tyranny.
In addition, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is hopelessly flawed. There is no transcendent basis recognized in it on which our liberty, our sovereignty, our rights, our justice and our human dignity are established. According to the Universal Declaration, human beings have rights because "they are endowed with reason and conscience." The source of humanity's reason and conscience is not named, even in explanatory UN publications. One UN publication notes, "Because man is a rational and moral being, he is different from other creatures on earth and therefore is entitled to certain rights and freedoms which other creatures do not enjoy." Nowhere is there recognition of God as the source of our existence and the goodness toward which humanity strives to build a peaceful world.
Rather, the human rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration are predicated on the idea that the UN controls everything, including the definition of rights, and no one can oppose that. In the UN's view, government, not God, is the source of all authority -- specifically, the UN itself as a world government. Article 29 states: "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." Article 30 states: "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."
Compare that with the Declaration of Independence: "…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. …whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The UN way won't work. When government bestows rights, government can abolish those rights because they are not inherent and inalienable. That, to repeat, is why our Founders created a federal government with minimal delegated authority and firmly constrained by the principles and practices of liberty. Throughout history, government has been the principal enemy of freedom. A world government which bestows rights would therefore be the world's principal enemy of freedom. The UN way is the way to global tyranny. That's the way freedom will perish from the earth.
Only a direct and unadulterated extension of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States of America can bring a truly free, peaceful and unified world. Of all political documents in history, only those two make the Perennial Philosophy workable by offering a theory and practice of enlightened government. Collectively, they address all levels of our being.
First and foremost, they recognize God, whom John Adams called the Spirit of Liberty, as the source of all life, all liberty, all sovereignty, all rights and all good. Next, in the Declaration of Independence, they enunciate the basic principles of liberty descending from God to be applied in the body politic. Then, in the Constitution, they articulate the architecture of liberty, which describes how our federal government is constructed, and the Bill of Rights, which enumerates the inalienable rights of each individual citizen, no matter what any government body or group of people may want to do otherwise. These make secure the blessings of liberty as they establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. Last of all, they demand and encourage elected officials and civil servants of integrity, calling on them to enact and enforce laws, policies and practices of liberty which honor the sovereignty of the individual citizen. At every level of human activity, from the physical through the mental and the social to the spiritual, from the individual through local, state and national government to the global human family, they declare God as the divine basis of our existence. Collectively, they make conditions for God-realization politically workable through the freedoms we enjoy to worship, speak, publish, assemble, travel and so forth.
God is the Founding Spirit of America, operating through the Founders. That is the source of the American Revolution. That is the truth which can set us free on all levels of our existence. It is universal and all-embracing truth, encompassing the entire cosmos. No other nation on Earth has such a basis.
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DAVID SUNFELLOW:
One question: Given all the faults and shortcomings that you outline with the United Nations (which I agree with), do you feel that it is still serving a vital (largely healthy) role in the continued enfoldment of humankind? It seems to me that it is clearly part of the evolutionary journey of humankind, and as such, even though it perpetuates narrow-minded inclinations that are not yet fully evolved, is worthwhile. Just having a forum where the various nations of the world, complete with their wildly different histories, cultures, beliefs, and agendas can meet and learn from one another seems exceedingly valuable to me.
What are your thoughts on this? Dismantle the UN? Modify it? Start over with another, more enlightened attempt: League of Nations v3? Forget the whole idea?
JOHN WHITE:
You ask whether the UN is salvageable. I don't think so. It is horribly corrupt and despite the good done by some agencies (WHO's data collection; cataloging world cultural and historical sites), I think it should be ended. Let it go bankrupt as GM and Chrysler should have done; then sell off the parts which seem to have value to the world. Perhaps some university or scientific organization would select the parts which best match its mission. But I'm tired of seeing UN diplomats abuse their privileges in the U.S. and I'm tired to seeing penny-ante "nations" have a forum to call the U.S. all sorts of bad names while making a mockery of UN bodies such as the Commission on Human Rights being headed by monstrous regimes. I'm also tired of seeing more than $1 billion a year in U.S. taxpayer money go to the UN, fully one-quarter of its annual budget, just so it can operate in the ways which I've indicated in my response.
The original purpose of the UN was to create a forum in which belligerent nations could peaceably settle differences. That is still a worthy goal. But I think Steven McIntosh's proposal in INTEGRAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE FUTURE OF EVOLUTION makes greater sense. The UN has megalomania.