UNending Poverty
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Their silly “Secretary General,” Ban Ki-Moon, wants them attending yet another “summit” so they can lecture us wayward peasants for bringing mankind to the brink of extinction. Then they’ll pretend they not only can but are actually doing something to save us from our sins with their “Millennium [sic] Development [sic] Goals.”

Everything you need to know about this lunacy is reflected in the fractured grammar of two nouns’ modifying a third. Why are politicians and bureaucrats so hot for us to obey their every whim when they can’t observe even the simplest of language’s rules? Yo, tyrants: adjectives describe nouns, so add the suffix “–al” … oh, never mind. The violence bureaucrats do grammar is but a momentary concern since they never let jargon stand on its own when they can render it even more incomprehensible via acronyms. Ergo, we have not “Goals” but “MDGs.”

The UN concocted MDGs in 2000, when it decreed that eight threats menaced humanity — though it modestly excluded itself. Then, as if it could do something about these perils despite its paralyzing incompetence and corruption, it jotted them down in a rough “to-do” list — you know, the sort of stream-of-consciousness reminder normal folks might compile for running errands: “milk, Josh to football practice, drycleaning, bank, pick up Josh.” Fine for your purposes, but requiring quite a bit of polishing if you plan to present it to the public, let alone taxpayers you expect to bilk of the megabucks to finance it all.

Ah, but such worries never trouble the UN. It cavalierly confronts us with its laundry list, knowing we have no recourse or voice, that we must simply accept whatever these unelected, unaccountable, self-important bozos foist on us: “End Poverty and Hunger; Universal Education [shall we assume the verb from the first phrase doesn’t carry over and that they mean to Impose, not End, Universal Education?]; Gender Equality [here we go again, with nouns modifying nouns…]; Child Health [ditto]; Maternal Health; Combat HIV/AIDS; Environmental Sustainability; Global Partnership.”

Some of these are patent nonsense: why should anyone “Combat HIV/AIDS” when both are for the most part easily prevented? Just as the obese prefer copious food to being thin, so the majority of HIV/AIDS’s victims have chosen other activities over good health; why is that any of the UN’s business? And as for “Global Partnership”…well, the UN’s dimwits apparently imagine that calling war “peacekeeping” achieves that.

Others clearly augment the State’s enormous power. “Universal Education” means, of course, governmentally controlled indoctrination of kids in the art of being good serfs–sorry, citizens (“sit down, shut up, do as you’re told”) while the taxes to support its bureaucracy crush the rest of us.

A few may actually be as troublesome as the UN claims, but I have my doubts. Government is inept at everything except lying, thieving, murdering, and manufacturing crises — but in those crimes, it is a virtuoso par excellence. For instance, the Feds would have us believe that cyberspace is so dangerous and deceptive it requires their regulation, while those us trying to learn exactly how the goons squander our money can testify that the most deceitful websites belong to bureaucracies and politicians. So before we lament the UN’s sick kids and moms, I’d like to hear from doctors who aren’t on some government’s payroll that this is a genuine emergency. And then I’d like to know why Leviathan’s lackeys, who understand medicine about as well as they do education, whose wars destroy clinics, hospitals, and lives while their corporate collaborators contaminate our food, air and water, assume they should have any say whatsoever over health.

But it’s the list’s first item — “End Poverty and Hunger” — that most infuriates. What causes more poverty than all other factors combined? Yep: the State. And the more of its layers that prey on us, the poorer we become. For their first century or so, Americans suffered governments from the municipal to the federal levels; now we must endure the worldwide UN as well — whose “security” this week alone is rooking American taxpayers of another $5-7 million.

Taxes are only the beginning of our impoverishment at government’s hands. Its “regulations cost Americans $843 billion in 2000, or over $8,000 per household. Put another way, the total is about 10 percent of America’s gross domestic product — and more than half the output of the U.S. manufacturing sector”; its fiat money and inflation destroy our wealth; its professional licensing condemns workers who can afford neither the time nor money to jump through hoops while it completely prohibits other jobs (selling marijuana or one’s body — and yes, prostitution is immoral, but should we entrust morality’s enforcement to immoral government?); its tariffs “protect” native businesses from foreign competition and the lower prices that result, forcing consumers to pay more. And yet the UN vows to “End Poverty and Hunger.” What utter, arrogant insult! What unmitigated gall and hypocrisy! If these liars and leeches truly wanted to end poverty, they’d remove their snouts from the public trough.

Water will sooner flow uphill. New York this week is awash in the extravagance of egotistical bloodsuckers wasting the fortune they’ve plundered from us: “… a U.N.-area Italian steakhouse called Padre Figlio, [was] busy… booking tables for countries such as East Timor” whose “delegates will eat hearty Italian food with luxurious touches like black truffles, now in season.” Oh, indeed: Padre Figlio’s appetizers average $14 (though the shrimp cocktail will set you back a whopping $20), while the “Prixe-Fixe [sic] Dinner” is $39 – before wine, dessert, coffee, and tip.

So Padre Figlio’s “reservation for 35" East Timoreans will run at least $1569.75 – and that’s assuming they order only the appetizer and entree the prix-fixe menu allows, quaff nothing but water, and tip a mere 15%. Meanwhile, the 1.1 million Timoreans stuck back home rather than partying at their neighbor’s expense in Manhattan each earn about $500 annually, so this feast will rob three of them of their entire income this year — let alone the tab for the rest of the week’s carousing, hotels and limousines (“The black cars were literally triple-parked," said another restaurateur. "They [the UN’s sponges in general, not just the Timoreans] don’t carpool"), round-trip airfare, etc.

Multiply this by the UN’s 191 other delegations, and you’ll understand why “Ending Poverty and Hunger” is just another way of saying “End the UN — and All Government.”

Becky Akers, an expert on the American Revolution, writes frequently about issues related to security and privacy. Her articles and columns have been published by Lewrockwell.com, The Freeman, Military History Magazine, American History Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, and other publications.