It's like an epidemic

I'm interrupting the interruption to point you at this which happened or is happening or will happen today as Kofi Annan finally ends his time at the U.N.

Listen: I'm not an expert at his level of corruption or exactly what he does in the first place. I don't understand the U.N. -- I admit it. What does it do? On what basis does it do it? Why would we want to listen to it? How does it advance either the interests of the United States or the interests of the Gospel -- which are not the same thing by any means.

I don't get the U.N. But I do understand this:

He said in the text that the U.S. has a special responsibility to the world because it continues to have extraordinary power.

Annan summed up five principles that he considers essential: collective responsibility, global solidarity, rule of law, mutual accountability and multilateralism.

He chose the Truman museum for his final major speech in part because it is dedicated to a president who was instrumental in the founding of the United Nations. His text repeatedly praised the Truman administration but never mentioned Bush by name.

"As President Truman said, 'The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world,'" Annan said.

"He believed strongly that henceforth security must be collective and indivisible. That was why, for instance, that he insisted when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations," Annan said.

"Against such threats as these, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others."

Let's be clear about something: what Annan is proposing is that men like Hugo Chavez and the demonstrably-insane Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be given the same right to determine the fate of the world as men like Tony Blair and George Bush.

If you think that's even a plausible way to run the world, think about something: Cindy Sheehan is not in jail, and she hasn't been denied her right to speak. Michael Moore isn't in jail or being tortured for objecting in the strongest terms to the policies of the president. And we just had a free election in which the minority party -- in a bloodless way which did not require the mobilization of any military force -- became the majority party, and the party which was overturned wasn't then lined up in front of the firing squad.

What Annan is on about here is a problem only in his collectivist mind -- because what ought to be happening in the world is that there ought to be fewer and fewer authoritarian and totalitarian governments, and the expansion of free markets and republican democracy ought to be bringing market forces to bear on problems like poverty, illiteracy, economic development and globalizing markets. But because quacks like Annan think that what it takes to run the world is a central home office where lunatics like, well, himself become "legit", free government, free markets and free ideas are simply put on-hold. "Sorry: you're the problem, not the solution even though we have to admit that you guys have extraordinary power. It must be because you have nuclear weapons and not because people have a right to life, liberty and property."

Guys like Annan want to grandstand on the AIDS epidemic, but what about the epidemic stupidity it takes to think that the U.N. is actually doing more for the world than, for example, WAL*MART is. And believe me: if there was a pill that WMT could sell which cures stupidity, it would sell it to everyone immediately -- but I am sure that Annan would find such a thing oppressive.