Late in 2011, U.S. funding for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was cut off because the agency had conferred legitimacy on Palestine as a nation. Two U.S. laws, one passed in 1990 and another in 1994, mandated that such funding could not be directed to UNESCO or to any UN agency that recognized statehood for the region controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization. This action delivered a heavy blow to the UN agency that receives 22 percent of its budget from the United States. But the Obama administration has stated its intention to have America’s taxpayers again be forced to pay tens of millions each year to the organization.
UNESCO has been a major part of the UN’s operations from the earliest days of the world body that was founded in 1945. Its major architects were two American communists, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss. The organization’s founding director general, Julian Huxley, didn’t hide its purpose when he stated that UNESCO would "stress the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world political organization."
As far back as 1955, Congressman Lawrence Smith (R-Wis.) studied UNESCO and concluded that it is "a permanent international snake pit where Godless Communism is given a daily forum for hate, recrimination, psychological warfare against freedom, and unrelenting moral aggression against peace." In that same year, the American Legion passed a resolution calling on Congress to repeal our nation’s participation in UNESCO.
President Reagan cancelled U.S. membership in UNESCO in 1984 because of its anti-U.S. stance and its dissemination of leftist propaganda. But President George W. Bush put the U.S. back in the organization, and resumed funding it in 2002. UNESCO thanked Mr. Bush in a self-indicting way by awarding Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez its annual Marti Award for 2005 at a celebration in Cuba. Chavez makes no attempt to hide his hatred for the United States and his friendship for Castro.
The State Department’s Thomas Nides explained that President Obama wants authority to waive the prohibition against funding UNESCO, a move that would have to be approved by Congress. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) has stated that a resumption of U.S. funding "would give a green light for other UN bodies to follow in UNESCO’s footsteps and support the Palestinian statehood push." She added that granting the waiver would send "a disastrous message that the U.S. will fund UN bodies no matter what irresponsible decisions they make." As recently as last summer, the House voted 407-6 against recognition of statehood for Palestine by the UN or by any other international forums. The Senate went along with unanimous consent. It seems unlikely that Obama will get the requested waiver.
For years, UNESCO published textbooks for children depicting our nation’s Founding Fathers as scoundrels. The agency has always promoted abortion and population control. In 1981, UNESCO tried unsuccessfully to have the world’s journalists licensed so it could get rid of its critics. In 1990, a UNESCO conference held in Thailand produced an educational program that turned out to be the model for the highly discredited "Outcome-Based Education" fiasco that has driven already poorly producing U.S. schools to even lower performance.
Perhaps the most outrageous statement ever given dignity by UNESCO was its publication in 1991 of Jacques Cousteau’s population control declaration. In the French-language UNESCO Courier published in November of that year, Cousteau stated: "In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it."
The United States should never have joined UNESCO, or its parent the United Nations. Cutting off funding for the one agency isn’t enough. Withdrawal from the UN and all of its stepchildren should be the goal.
