THE UNITED NATIONS

Permit me to talk to you a moment about the United Nations. They have this pretty building, you see, on the east side of the island of Manhattan overlooking the East River, and they do lots of wonderful things for the world, like keeping the peace here and there, and helping to feed the starving children of the world. But they are also one of the most dangerous organizations around, one of the largest threats to our own liberty. Am I exaggerating? Well, let's see.

Even as I write this essay, the UN is trying to enforce global policies that would:

• • tax us without representation

  • threaten the existence of an independent American military

  • take away our Constitutional right to trial-by-jury

• change our Constitutional form of government

Do these things upset me? You're darn right they do. When King George of England tried to pull the same shenanigans with us two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers clearly saw the solution — declare independence. We have to do no less to protect our liberty today — withdraw from the United Nations.

There are those in the UN who challenge our nation's sovereignty. They say we are just part of a "global village" and that our national boundaries are old fashioned.

They want the UN transformed into a global government. They want the UN to have the power to tax. They want the UN to have its own army.

They have already created a UN criminal court that could try individual Americans without a jury, without warrants, and without bail.

They have even written up plans that would infringe upon America's representative form of government. The details are in a report entitled Our Global Neighborhood written by the UN's Commission on Global Governance. To quote from the report: "Mankind's problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is a World Government."

I cannot tell you how alarmed I am by the UN and its agenda. And that agenda is rapidly moving on America.

Worse, most Americans aren't even aware of the threat, they think the UN debate is about its over-bloated budget or its out-of-control bureaucracy. They think the real danger is that the UN is sending American soldiers around the world on peace-keeping missions, in UN uniforms, serving under foreign generals.

Yes, these are all evil things and should be stopped immediately. But these outrages don't actually threaten our way of life, not really. What does threaten our way of life is the true agenda of the UN.

Just think how strongly you feel about the Internal Revenue Service. How would you feel about a Global IRS? Well, the push is on to give the United Nations the power to tax. In fact, just a few months ago, the UN discussed a plan to tax email messages, so that you would have to buy the equivalent of an international postage stamp just to use the internet.

But it doesn't end there. Other taxes under consideration would give the UN more than a hundred billion dollars each year. And what would they use all this money for? To build its own army and install its own plans for global governance. That would mean a world government run out of that beautiful building on the East River. The UN would then have its own courts, its own regulations over business and commerce, and over our private property. They would have the ability to tax us to pay for it, and an army to enforce it all.

Are you worried yet? I sure am. Some of these plans are already in place through international treaties, environmental regulations, and the already-established World Court. And the incredible thing is, the UN would simply cease to exist if it wasn't for us. We are actually helping to destroy our own prosperity and freedom!

I say it's about time we put a halt to this. I say it's about time we reined in the statists and the bureaucrats. I think we should save ourselves a whole lot of trouble in the future, by pulling out of the UN now, while we still can.