Dean, if you wish to apply name-calling such as "twits" to people whose ideas you find distasteful, it's your agenda. But think about this, just a little.

As you must know by now, I don't ideologically fit any known specific framework. I treasure an armed citizenry, but I also strongly support abortion rights. So I am cursed alike by the anti-gun crowd and by the anti-abortion crowd. I find most religious ideas and homosexuality equally perverse. So I am cursed alike by the bible-beaters and by the homosexuals. I support substantial environmental protection (including and especially, population reduction) and the sanctity of private property rights. So I am cursed alike by land developers and by people who support so-called smart growth legislation that strips away private property rights.

I get away with this because I have the individual liberties of a free citizen of the United States. I don't have to draw strength from numbers. I don't have to become some radio monkey's dittohead. Nobody in this country can organize some judicial fiat to take away my property, jail me, or even kill me because of my opinions.

I happen to think that the United Nations Organization (to use the original term under which it was organized), is a potential threat to these and many other liberties of the United States of America and to the diverse nations which make up its population. The UNO ought to be nothing more than a debating society; that and only that was what our Congress agreed to set up, back at the end of World War II.

If this trend continues, people like me will not have such rights in the future as we have at the present time. Our rights to speak out will be trimmed by the pre-emption of 'diversity'. A UNO body -- unelected by our citizens -- will determine what is good for us and what shall or shall not be permitted us. This, in toto, would be the ultimate and most colossal political perversion in the history of western civilization.

Yet I perceive that there are people of power and influence, along with governments comprising individuals who hate this country and its freedoms, who work incessantly to supplant the Constitution of the United States with the UNO charter.

There is in fact an international conspiracy to rob Americans of their rights to keep and bear arms; every gun owner in this country is made painfully aware of them. Read sometime about the murky types of political action funds supported by international financier George Soros and others who wish to strip all humanity of the basic right of civilian self-defense.

Although I would not label international homosexualism an international conspiracy, I have no doubt that crowd would organize one if they had the strength in numbers to get away with it.

There certainly is an international conspiracy against private property rights, which you can learn about simply by examining agendae published by various UNO-sponsored committees organized to question such rights and replace them with socialist schemes of land control.

I could go on and on. Yes, I would agree that some of the rightwing people frequently sound as though they were frothing at the mouth. I think your head and temperament are in the right place even if I disagree with you on many issues.

But you do a serious injustice to the perspective of liberty by avoiding the issues they discuss simply because you find their style offensive.

I feel the need to bring this up since I am a right winger... World Net Daily isn't exactly a bastion of honest reporting. They are worse than you would think the NY times was after hearing about Jayson Blair.

Rob,

There is no single all-inclusive bastion of honest reporting, and perhaps shall never be. I can attest to that based on my own training as a journalist (University of Illinois, 1962, bachelor of science in communications), with a six month stint as a United Press International bureau reporter.

Every individual, group or interest that controls a news-gathering and reporting enterprise does so from the standpoint of greater or lesser subjectivity, which can include outright bias.

The New York Times, for instance, allowed Walter Duranty to post his presumably unedited reports from Stalin's USSR in the 1930s -- during the depths of the great terror, as Robert Conquest described that period, and in essence enabled their reporter to become the dictator's own propaganda machine in New York.

The same Times, although owned by a prominent Jewish family, purposely hid the initial and authenticated news reports of the Nazi mass murders of the European Jewish population in small columns in the back pages of the newspaper. As was related many decades later, the newspaper's management was timid about embarrassing Franklin D Roosevelt and his administration during wartime.

Does World Net Daily exercize their own biases and does this reflect what they report and how they selectively highlight certain issues in order to make their editorial point? Undoutedly they do. But I would make the point that no news gathering entity operates without such a filter that in fact tends to bias what is reported and how it is reported.

That is exactly what makes the internet such a valuable institution. It facilitates capabilities of switching from one site to another with the movement of the handheld mouse and the click of its button. You can switch back and forth from WND to Salon in an instant. I would guess nobody has a monopoly on truth. And certainly not on perception.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Uhhhh, Dean, hate to tell you this, but those folks at WND are not as bad as you make out.

I mean, they are crazy, yes, but not all THAT crazy. They certainly have a better grasp of reality than Al Sharpton (and probably Al Gore). They are far FAR more rational that the IndyMedia fruitcakes, or the ravers on Democratic Underground.

Discounting thier attitude and hysteria is reasonable, but thier issues are generally valid, just overhyped.

Gary et al:

Their issues would be valid if the UN had, or tried to gain, any ability to impose policy on the US.

The US has a permanent place on the Security Council. Hence, the UN really cannot do anything directly to influence United States policy, on anything, even if every other member of the UN wanted to.

This is what makes the arguments presented by the right-wing twits linked by Dean, and Mr. Harris' un-elected UNO police state, not merely unlikely, but entirely worthy of ridicule.

There is no country the UN has less influence over than the US. Not only is it the world's hyper-power, it contributes 20% of the UN's funding.

UN commitees may have written papers about alternate forms of government, or the abolishment of private property. But until the UN tries to force such changes on an unwilling nation, such research is academic, not evidence of a conspiracy.

Here they come with their damn "homosexual agenda" again. You know what? I'm a homosexual and I have known a lot of other homosexuals and most of us have the same agendas as anybody else: Finish the laundry, balance the checkbook, find happiness.

THERE IS NO HOMOSEXUAL FREAKING AGENDA. WE JUST WANT TO HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS AS ANYONE ELSE UNDER THE LAW.

We get taxed like everybody else, but it is without representation, without the same rights and privileges afforded to all other Americans. When will this get through?

D

What kind of idiot believes there is a secret "homosexual agenda?"

U.N. secret plans to take over the country? They can't even decide amongst themselves where to go for lunch! They are paper tigers through and through.

This sort of lunacy makes it very hard for those of us who actually do have strong criticisms of the U.N. to be taken seriously.

The UN is, and always will be, a bizarre hybrid of the Toastmasters Club and the Internal Revenue Service (or its bureaucracy at least). It's long sinced outlived its purpose as a forum for great power unanimity, and most of the real international "work" is done in diplomatic backchannels and at G8 and WTO meetings.

I think it's worth noting that the anti-New World Order crowd is opposed to all forms of international cooperation, not merely the continued existence of the "homosexual agenda"-pushing United Nations. At the end of the day they can always be counted on to talk about fluoridation sapping their precious bodily fluids and other nefarious plots of international leftism and make the right look bad in the process.

Well, one of your fellow travellers, sf.indymedia.org, had this little article on queer politics & schools:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_queering_the_schools.html

So which is it?
A. Crazy right propaganda
B. Crazy left propaganda
C. All of the above
D. None of the above

THERE IS NO HOMOSEXUAL FREAKING AGENDA.

They probably just haven't told you about it because they don't think you can keep your mouth shut.

(That's a joke, y'know. :)

Their issues would be valid if the UN had, or tried to gain, any ability to impose policy on the US.

First of all, WND is clearly inflating the threat. I didn't say that they had the truth, I AM saying that ignoring thier points because they are so hysterical is dangerous.

The UN has no power to IMPOSE policy on the US, but they have written diasterously stupid policies that they would like the US to adopt, and, under Clinton and a Democrat controlled congress (which we fortunately had for only a few years), the possibility that we would voluntarily adopt some of those policies (and otherwise rational countries like Great Britain have already done) was worrisome.

But the thing you have to get clear on is that the UN doesn't impose things by force. They weasel and persuade until you do it to yourself. Look at the UN as quicksand, if you stand around in it, you're going down, slowly but surely, and when you finally notice what's happening, it's too late.

This is the value of outfits like WND, they sound the alarm. They sound it a bit too SOON, and a bit to LOUD, but they sound the alarm. Who else is doing that?

It is a basic fact of political life that we give up a bit of our sovereignty to secure other things; usually safety...

As an (extreme) example of this, I give up my right to murder so that I don’t have to live in a city (state, nation) where others have the right to murder me. On a grander scale, states give up parts of their sovereignty so to make trade, defense, etc easier. This is basic Poli-sci 101...

When I read anyone complaining that sovereignty is being given up I wonder what the big deal is. But the deal is the thing...

I am more than willing to have my state give up sovereignty to the Federal government. Hell, historically the US Federal government has been a better guarantor of my liberty than state governments collectively have...

On a larger plane, if receiving better security for my life, liberty and property means that my nation needs to give up some of its sovereignty to the UN, I am ok with that. If that same deal can be worked out for Europe (that is, France gives up some of its sovereignty in exchange for the Big 3 rights), then they are getting themselves a bargin. The argument that any nation shouldn’t give up its sovereignty because, you know, they’d be giving up sovereignty! is fatuous at best...

Of course, since the UN seems unable to safeguard its own cafeteria, I won’t be rushing out to have it protect my rights any time soon...

I'm not sure I would agree, at all, that the Feds have had a better record of protecting rights. They've had a better record in some areas, and a worse record in others. It depends on what you're looking at, and what freedoms matter most to you.

The fact is that the Federal government is less accountable to the people. It always has been, it always will be, because it's far too large and remote and removed for the average citizen to truly ever be a part of, or exert a big influence on.

A theoretical "world government" like the U.N. would only be less democratic, more authoritarian, and less accountable. It's a lousy idea to expand its power.

Gary: Well, in point of fact, the U.N. has tons of critics, and there are tons of others who worry about U.S. loss of sovereignty. You'll find such things discussed regularly in political magazines other than WND--and they aren't busy conflating it with "homosexual agendas."

Gary: I guess I don't share your belief in the gullibility of the US.

If this article was critical of some policy suggested by the UN which was going to be implemented by the US, then I would have no problem.

What you call 'weaseling', most people would call debate, or diplomacy. If solutions are not being imposed, then you're using the 'sheeple' defense - suggesting that Americans are unable to determine the value of a suggested policy, and hence must be protected from such ideas, or persuaded not to even listen to them by publications such as WND.

Sounds elitist to me.

All I have to say is this: There will always be people who refuse to acknowledge the coming storm until it's already upon them.

Take it as you will. I'm not getting any further involved in this powder keg.

I've been hearing about the coming storm for 10 years.

Then I watched the POTUS I voted for piss off the U.N. and the U.N. sit and do what it always does: whine and bicker and talk about how the U.S. sucks.

I'm not impressed.

Transnational progressivism is something I've written about many times here. It's been written about in many political publications. Loss of U.S. sovereignty is something that disturbs me.

The Black Helicopter people bug me just as much.

After Blair fuses Britain with the EU in 2004, I say we consolodate the UK and French Permanent Sec. Council seats, then add India and Israel (nuclear democracies) and Brazil (South America has no say). But Israel is probably a no go, so maybe give Japan a seat.

The General Assembly is indeed mostly just a debating society, with no power to do much of anything accept toss bones to NGO's.

And the Security Council is setup to give an imprimateur of democratic consensus to actions of Permanent members, not to constrain them. It's for giving optional (as demonstrated by Bush and Blair) moral cover when a non-Permanent member needs to be bitch-slapped.
And to be an old-boys club so that the large powers are less likely to fight EACH OTHER, not to stop them making war on little fish.

The ICC, now THERE's something to be afraid of! Thank god not even Clinton could get that mess ratified!

You're certainly right about the ICC. I'm quite glad that, so far anyway, we've had the stones to stay out of that monstrosity.

And now the nut-bar black helicopter fringe ARE being validated about the ICC, with the insane suits being filed after Gulf War II.

Marcus,

I see that nobody get around to answering the material you brought to our attention about the homosexual agenda right here in the United States, right now. Never mind the damned UNO. Think of our public schools.

For the benefit of the rest of you, Marcus "dry-linked" on "Queering the Schools", and article by midwestern psychotherapist and writer Marjorie King, published in the spring 2003 issue of City Journal. Nobody could accuse that crowd of being right-wing twits, complete with theories of conspirators adding chemicals to our water supply, etc, etc. The sub-head of her article reads as follows:

"Gay activist groups, with teachers' union applause, are importing a disturbing agenda into the nation's public schools."

I discussed this matter with my wife, Stefi, who works frequently as a substitute school teacher in a large school district around here.

She confirms that school time and financial resources are wasted on hiring homosexual community specialists whose main purpose apparently is to induce children and their parents to acquiesce in homosexuality and its perversions as a normative activity in our society. One that ought to be accepted. One whose practitioners should be able to enter into marriage contracts. And all the rest. In the meantime, money is in short supply to pay school teachers to handle mathematics, science, English and other base curriculum items.

Why is everyone avoiding discussion about this matter, or treating it with a light wave-off of one's hand?

Do any of you imagine this will make the already-troubled and bankrupt public school systems of this country any more palatable to parents who are turning in millions to private schools which are more efficient, much more cost effective, and in which their children are not introduced to the modern notion that sexual and other perversions represent merely "alternative life styles"?

How about a serious debate on just this topic, just for once leaving out all the stuff about religion and "sin", and just concentrate on the issue of how far we will allow homosexualism to go in our society?

If any of you are interested, begin by reading what Marjorie King described is happening in our public schools in relation to this matter. You can check them out, and you will find that the editorial review board of City Journal include some serious heavyweights in dealing with modern urban policies and problems, including the way school systems are diverted from their original purpose.

Should it be a hate crime to want to keep your own children from exposure to practitioners or advocates of sexual perversions?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Of course it shouldn't be a "hate crime" to "keep your own children from exposure to practicioners or advocates of sexual perversions." I don't see what that has to do with homosexuality, though. It almost seems as though you intend to imply that homosexuality is in itself a "perversion." Like it or not, some people are simply attracted to other members of their own sex, or to both sexes. Most did not choose consciously to do so.

It is sufficient to object to activities such as those described in "Queering the Schools" on the grounds that they are not educational but political in nature, in the same way that one would object to teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" in science class on the grounds that it is not science but religion. Sure, kids should learn to tolerate each other -- there is no excuse for making a person feel inferior simply for being their honest self -- but that's a long way from celebrating difference for difference's sake. Moral and political education is the parents' responsibility and should be left to them.

Jerry,

I have previously stated that I find most religious ideas and homosexuality equally perverse, in the one case involving self-abuse of one's mind and in the other case self-abuse of one's body. (I would add drug abuse to this category of self-inflicted damage, but that is for another discussion.)

As long as these self-abuses are carried out among consenting adults -- or, especially in the case of religious proselytisation, among any other children but mine -- I have no problem. I truly don't give a damn if they pray each other to heaven; or screw each other to death; or inject, slurp, inhale, snort or lick up whatever controlled substances with which they choose to fry their heads. That keeps it in their private realm, and I consider it none of my damned business. Remember, nothing at all to me is a "sin" because according to my philosophy, the concept of "sin" itself is just a perversion of the mind.

But I want NONE of this to take place in a public school system that depends even upon a single thin dime of tax money for which I may be accountable. Is that too much to ask?

I also have a real personal interest in the outcome of some of this. I had a young cousin who died in the initial onslaught of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s. He was secure, smug, bright, well educated, had a lot of money, was a producer for the Disney TV crowd, was a homosexual by choice, got sick, and died a death monstrous beyond imagination. Because there is no cure for this, and there almost certainly is never going to be. You get it, they can keep you alive at great expense. But in the end, you are as doomed as if they strapped you into an electric chair and pulled the switch. That is exactly what they brought to themselves and to this country. And you're damned right I'm pissed.

The whole point of Marjorie King's article in City Journal was that homosexuality in numerous public school systems in this country is being moved inexorably into the realm of homosexualism and homosexualization. It begins with discussions about differences and winds up in recruitment. At which point it threatens my family and my civil liberties, and I draw the line and swing the battle axe.

On the other hand, I am reminded from having discussed this with one of my sons, a true and hardened objectivist, who asked me outright:

"You consider yourself a constitutionalist who rejects government intervention at all levels into the affairs of private citizens. If so, what justification can you have for a public school system at all?"

And you know what? That is getting to be a tough question to answer.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Once again I find myself in cross generational agreement with Arnold, at least his conclusion.

I don't think the schools have ANY business trying to indoctrinate students about sex, drugs, political correctness, etc. Which they very much do.

And I'm a few decades younger than he, bisexual and very experienced with a variety of drugs.

Taking money aware from instruction for political operatives is insane, especially in places where budgets are tight. But also note that money does not correlate well with school performance, in my opinion due to the teachers unions and the PC indoctrination in Education Depts. of our universitys.

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I'm against gun control. I'm against the U.N.. And I'm for homosexualism, especially Lesbianism, tribadism, and perversions between consenting adults, preferably within committed monogamous relationships.
(I don't know about "international homosexualism", let each country have its own style of homosexualism as well as heterosexualism: American, British, Irish, French, Dutch, Japanese, etc..)

The public schools should be teaching reading, writing, math, science, history, and the Constitution. I'm for vouchers if you want more.