Redoing The UN

[This will be a little longer than usual. I hope it's worth your time.]

Reality time. I got all huffy and indignant last week at the failures of the United Nations, and I indicated additional costs to New York from maintaining their headquarters here. I indicated the advantages both to the United States and to New York City of terminating an association with the organization. But I did not actually propose that we do so.

Would we be justified? What I said about the organization's failure still stands. The high hopes I, and others had for the United Nations have, unfortunately, not proved to reflect its actual accomplishments, but the path of withdrawal, however warranted it might be, would likely take us where we don't want to go. A stick without a carrot may be effective in the short run, but it is not liable to provide the long term results we desire.

Murphy, whoever he may have been, predicted that whatever we tried to do would fail. He did not say so, though others have, that every action has unanticipated consequences. Unanticipated and undesired. Withdrawal from the UN certainly would. “What if” analyses would uncover a lot of them but not all. If we wait until all results are predictable, however, no action would ever be taken, so we have to work with best guesses.

Some things are clear. Those nations – and there are many of them – that distrust the US or dislike us for any reason will certainly detest us even more. And it's also certain that people will remain people and they will continue to place personal and national interests above those that are international. It's easy to speak piety, but practicing it isn't likely unless there is something to be gained thereby. The rich will remain rich, and the poor, poor. The strong will continue to be powerful and want to dominate the weak. Because people – and now I'm talking about national leaders, but we're all the same – won't change. There has to be something that convinces the population that they will benefit from what is offered, or a tyrant will have free rein.

Carrots are indicated. An unsupervised infusion of money won't do the trick, since those leaders will often find a way to siphon off most of it for themselves, but development and training programs for the uneducated and for those without a way of earning a living may be helpful. One possibility is for the United States to send to the poor nations, perhaps the poorest first, a group capable of evaluating what resources or services can be developed in each nation – preferably to fill a need that is not being filled already and is thus “needed” by the rest of the world – and then a team to supply needed materials and help them implement the recommendations of the group. Other countries must be discouraged afterwards from trying to compete. The goal would be to have each nation able to provide some things the world needs and thus make cooperation between countries to everyone's benefit. Mutual dependence may help nations; development will help individuals and make them less susceptible to the promises of tyrants. New nations that apply for UN membership should be required to submit development plans that will benefit their own citizens.

We might also send materials and workers to assist in the building of homes and other necessary buildings in countries that are too poor to be able to do so on their own. The Peace Corps and Habitat For Humanity are among the models which might be considered. The personnel performing this function would also be useful in teaching farming and other techniques that would aid individuals and families in areas that are not national priorities.

Another inducement – and one that would lessen the strain on New York City – would be to move the UN to somewhere accessible nearby where land is less expensive. The sale of property in mid-Manhattan, both land and buildings, would bring in a large bankroll which might at least pay for the beginnings of the establishment of a UN campus, more modern and congenial than the one imagined in the 1940s, close to the city but outside it, with buildings (including a museum in which nations would be able to display whatever about their countries that they deem significant), residences for representatives of all nations, and the conveniences of a small town (restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores, etc.) and would lessen the congestion in the city while turning Turtle Bay into taxable property. And it would lessen the city's security costs and the abuse of our laws by those with diplomatic immunity. Payment by the various countries involved, of less than they were paying for rent and other expenses in the city would also contribute to making the campus viable. (And they'd have to work with each other in governing themselves.) Such a facility would also provide privacy for the workings of the organization. True, the diplomats would be separated from fancy restaurants, theaters, and expensive shops, but the purpose of the UN is not to amuse diplomats, but to get the world's work done. And it's also a sad fact that school class trips to the UN would be all but eliminated, however it would be for a good cause.

As for the UN's functions, security should be provided for all nations, possibly based on agreement that all borderlines are sacrosanct and a standing UN army will be activated automatically, and with only limited discussion, whenever one country's troops, “irregulars,” or ordinance, cross a border without permission. It would constitute a universal military alliance, making local pacts irrelevant. We always search for ways to avoid confrontation. It's certainly virtuous to do so, but there are some “red lines” we must draw and enforce if we hope to get nations to respect each other's borders. Sanctions may be good warnings, but assured action is more likely to achieve the purpose.

A single international economic body makes sense and would eliminate the need for multiple, often competing agreements. All nations should contribute to it, with contributions based on territory, population and some fiscal measure like gross national product. All monetary grants (except as noted) should be in the form of programs that are paid from its funds. Forensic accountants should be employed to make sure that the money used doesn't go into the pockets of officials and other skimmers. Money may be disbursed when a country's economy demands, but the forensic accountants should monitor this as well. (And, perhaps, the accountants should also be monitored.)

Steps should be taken as well to help the organization act more honorably. One of its goals is the promotion of human rights. So says its charter, but the UN doesn't always live up to its ideals. The UN Human Rights Commission regularly contains nations that have poor records – they are among the worst offenders of the UN principles – but their democratic election is appropriate. However member nations should be required to appraise each other's record annually by completing a rating form of all members annually. Their appraisal can be evaluated by everyone to see if it is unbiased and if the choices of members in the commission corresponds to it; and if the agenda and the views of the group seem to make sense. Of course some nations may decline to perform evaluations, but this, too, should be public knowledge.

Similarly every nation should evaluate the performance of the other nations in regard to their compliance with other rulings by the UN. Here, too, the evaluations would have no purpose other than to educate the world's population about what members believe – or at least say – about each other. And it may put some countries in the position of having to justify and live up to their claims.

A single judiciary should be established making it both unnecessary and impossible for individual nations to prosecute “war criminals” from other countries. Many prosecutions are justified, but others are primarily for political purposes.

Perhaps the published evaluations (the UN already publishes a great deal) would put nations in the position of rethinking their stands on various issues and various procedures. It would certainly help the public understood the stands of the member nations which would be the case if their biases (points of view, if you prefer) are already known. As such it will lessen the need for prolonged and repetitive arguments in the General Assembly. Discussion of real issues is warranted, but prolonged vituperation can be avoided.

And that brings us to the worst problem – the one that led me to consider the UN in the first place. It is the veto which is used to provide a stumbling block to action. Whatever its original justification, its primary implementation is for the purpose of preventing the UN from taking action. What might be useful is to turn the founding nations into a crisis committee of five and require only a majority vote for it to bring any item to the full Security Council at which two vetoes would be necessary to block any action. Speeches made in the Council could also be evaluated by the world's population in the light of previously stated positions. It would still be possible to block action but it would be harder and political causes would be more obvious.

Would such changes help? Would they have the effect of making the UN into a true advocate of world peace? Are they practical? Are they practicable? Of course not. There are many consequences I haven't foreseen or considered.  But discussion of them may cause members to rethink both the procedures of the organization and the decisions it reaches. And it may be enough to hold us over until meaningful changes can be made. And it may provide time for us to revise our parking laws.






February 12, 2017

One “Man,” One Vote

It's been a while since the presidential elections. There have been many news cycles and the issue is quiet now, so it's a good time to address it. Donald Trump was elected president. But Hillary Clinton got more votes than he did. Neither got a majority. Neither had the trust of the American people. Yet the election and its results were the source of more passion than we have experienced in recent years. There have been protests and riots by Clinton supporters who refuse to accept Trump as their president. Assorted “hate-crimes” have been attributed to those who voted for Trump, and they're viewed as racists.

The media have echoed many of these accusations, and press coverage has often paralleled that during the campaign, with those who oppose the new administration continuing to find fault with the new president and his transition team. Despite the fact that it is moving faster than some of the previous administrations, they have accused it of failure to act and of poor performance and disunity in general. They made no such accusations when those they supported had been elected, and they didn't use the post-election period then as a time to sow discord among the electorate. That's not really much of a surprise in view of the idea that the first thing that a party (and its partisans) must do following an election I to begin preparations for the next election.

There's an important additional issue that the election has raised. Though the situation is not unique, there is much angst about a minority president. On four previous occasions (and this makes five although the vote discrepancy is the greatest now) we have elected a minority president (in this instance a “minority president” is defined as a candidate who has fewer votes than another candidate – there have been others in which the winner had a minority of the votes but had a plurality – Abraham Lincoln, for example, received only 39 percent of the popular vote in 1860 but nearly 60% of the electoral votes), although this happens for no other office. It results from the existence of the Electoral College, which occupies a disproportional part of the Constitution, and which was altered by the Twelfth Amendment. And while it interposes “electors” between the voters and the candidates, within each state the slate of electors is chosen by majority vote. The electors are free to vote for candidates other than those they claimed to support, but that has not happened. The system certainly puts the voter closer to the choice for leader than what exists in many other democracies – a selection by members of the winning party.

It's important to remember how we arrived at this system, and the history of our country tells us. We have a federal government (courtesy of the Federalists naturally) that represented the union of several pre-existing states that feared the loss of their significance when the new country was formed. Their advocates wanted assurance that the states would remain the representatives of their people and their territory. They believed that many decisions were best made locally. They didn't agree that “one size fits all.” James Madison's Electoral College was one of the mechanisms by which they retained authority locally – perhaps for the better. Were we to declare now that popular vote should be the decisor of presidential elections, the strength of the states would be significantly weakened, and large parts of the country would have little chance to meet with the candidates (and, indeed, the candidates would have little interest in most of the country) since their primary involvement would be in the large cities. The majority would be of much greater concern then the minority.

And that raises another question: What is our responsibility to minorities? We certainly emphasize the view that the majority should not be able to impose its will on those minorities in which we find ourselves, or with which we identify. We're sensitive to cultural and economic differences – even if we deny any differences among our “majority” citizens. We've even ascribed “minority” status to women, who are in the majority. The term, and the concept of protection of minorities, have come to be more issues of politics than anything else. And in the process we have chosen to take our stand for majority “rights” on a political issue – a constitutional one – as we reject it otherwise. We favor minority rights as long as they are beneficial to us or to our philosophy.

As I noted, in all likelihood by the time this essay is published the Electoral College will not be among the most important matters we're considering. There won't be many Google^® searches for it. However if the concept is wrong, it is wrong even between election cycles, and it is worthy of debate before it becomes an point of contention once again. But if we decide to eliminate it, with the consequent strengthening of the federal system and the weakening or elimination of any significance of individual states, we should consider the results of such an act. A nation in which a dirt farmer and a banker, a Hollywood movie star and a Detroit mechanic, a retiree in Florida and an entrepreneur in Alaska, are all treated identically and with indistinguishable expectations and obligations, may not be the answer to our problems.

One man one vote is sacrosanct, but in many ways it's insufficient.




November 17, 2016

Transgender Bathrooms

The protests continue. Since the presidential election of 2016, and the victory of Donald Trump, there has been a continuous series of protests about anything he or his administration does. The issue itself is not critical to their actions. Indeed, most of the protesters don't even wait to evaluate the facts, but the protests begin on the order of whoever is at the other end of instructions and orders from the social media. Time and place of the protest are provided, and the search is just for angry people. The reason for their anger is irrelevant. There will be leaders to focus it when you get to the site of action.

How many, or how few, attend a protest doesn't matter either. Even if there are only a few there is guaranteed press coverage – often disproportionate to the number of (often artificially) incensed participants. Their rage may be based on the failure of their candidate to win, or a general fear of the one who did, but the expression of their passion is aimed at whatever happens, and whatever will make news and get publicity. It has little to do with the importance of the issue, or right and wrong, but provides a vent for anger and the opportunity to join in the fellowship of protest. And the media is happy to cooperate – to “advertise” the cause du jour.

And the current one is transgender bathrooms. President Obama's interpretation of an 1972 anti discrimination law which includes, in Title IX, the prohibition of discrimination based on “sex,” was that sexual orientation, including sexual dysphoria (“a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there's a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity” – according to Google) was included. The George/Christine Jorgensen case had been in the news about two decades earlier, but transgender issues were probably not what Congress had in mind when they passed this legislation. Nonetheless, President Obama decided that schools that receive federal funding are subject to the law and that, as part of this prohibition, they must permit transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice, and he issued this as an Executive Order. Congress was not asked what they had meant. and President Trump has withdrawn the order. Since the issue of transgenderism was not explicitly discussed by the founders, and obviously not granted to the federal government as a responsibility, nor denied to the states, he views it is as a local, not national, decision. That's how the Constitution allocates authority.

There are many issues involved. It's not a simple question. One subject worthy of discussion, of course, relates to the relative powers of the President and that of Congress; another relates to the relationship of the federal government and the states; and another to the level of concern of the public for “minority” groups. Whether ethnic, religious, racial, or other, a group is defined as such in order to have it included under the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution so as to get special treatment for that group and to make it a federal rather than a local issue.

Do transgender issues fall under this rubric? That's not for me to say. It should be – I'm a citizen, one of “We The People” – but it's not. Nor does it seem to involve the rest of the American people who have not been asked to weigh in, except as protesters. Nor has Congress, which has never expressed it's view of what was meant in 1972 by “the basis of sex.”

Without passing judgment on those with gender dysphoria, it is hard not to wonder about the rights of the majority as some demonstrate to demand the rights of the minorities. It is likely that the majority of the population are not transgender. That doesn't mean that the majority may impose its will on them, but it should make us wonder if our catering to this minority comes at the expense of the feelings of the majority. Are those with gender euphoria (I suppose that's what you'd call those satisfied with their sex), who might prefer not to share their restrooms with those of the biologically opposite sex, without rights? The question is not whether the majority should control the minority (although in a democracy many would argue that it may do so) but whether a minority should control the majority.

The problem relates to the definition and understanding of protected groups. Some are specified in the Constitution and, until it is changed, are the law of the land. But the understanding of what the Constitution and its amendments mean is often decided by the courts, or the President, or a group of protesters. And many believe that this is not the way an important issue should be decided in a democracy.

Should transgender students have the “right” to use the restrooms of their choice? Is this a “one size fits all” issue? What are the rights, if any, of those who are not transgender?

Executive fiat doesn't seem to be the way to answer this question to the satisfaction of our citizens. The voice and views of the non-protesters as well as those in the streets, should be sought and heard. And considered before decisions are made.

Minority, Plurality, Majority Rule

Every now and then the president we elect doesn't get a majority of the popular vote. It's happened several times, and there are two variations of the problem. There are instances when, because there are more than two candidates, none gets a majority of the votes, but the one with the plurality is elected. That, however, isn't always the case. Sometimes in a presidential contest a candidate with a minority of the popular vote – and less than his opponent – wins more than half the electoral votes, and, thus, the presidency. It usually triggers a debate over whether the Constitution should be revised in accordance with our “one man [person], one vote” principle, but no action is taken and the debate dies out until it happens again.

It did. And, at least for the moment, the debate has died out.

Indeed, the angst regarding the Electoral College has abated for the time being. People objected to a minority president with 46.2% of the popular vote. (He had over 56% of the electoral vote.) His opponent would also have been a minority president. (Most of us – and that includes me – opposed them both.) But we aren't of one mind on the issue of whether we favor majority rule. Some have marched to protest the results of the last election, but the calls for an end to the current way of electing a president are no longer prominent. On the surface the matter seems obvious, but it is far more complicated, and there is much to be said for the view of our Founders. That, however, is not the subject of this essay, so let me return to the point.

We're great believers in democracy which, we insist, requires majority rule. The concept needs some tweaking because all issues are not binary, and there are times when we accept the view of the largest number – a plurality rather than a majority. And the rule applies to large or small numbers. For example, a majority vote by a full Supreme Court may mean that five people decide our laws, irrespective of the wishes of our legislators or ourselves. The Court has that right, and we support the majority.

Yet we back minorities elsewhere, and the media report immediately even on minuscule minorities when they protest. The reason for their protest is irrelevant. Whether it is about elections, immigration, policing, abortion, or any other cause – and irrespective of the number of participants, even if small – the media and public sympathy support virtually any protest. Minorities say they represent our values and we owe it to them to express our admiration. For example, if a group protests the wealth of the “one percent” (a minority but that's irrelevant in this case), it doesn't matter that the group is far smaller than the one percent or, if their lottery ticket is a winner, they'd be part of it. We sanction their indignation. And if they are members of a “minority group” named by the government, we approve even more strongly of the virtue of their cause, whatever it is. We love minorities.

Similarly there's no protest of the Senate rule allowing a smaller minority than in the election, by threatening filibuster, to block critical debates – to prevent the discussion of and action on issues that bear on our everyday lives. A problem relating to the Senate rules that may appear daily gets little more than a shrug of the shoulders and acknowledgment that that's the way the “game” is played. In fact we often admire what they do – not giving in to what they claim is evil. We laud them for preventing the majority from running roughshod over the minority, as we do in other situations. They may be simply following party discipline and creating issues for the next election, yet they claim to be a minority that stands up for principle.

Sometimes, however, the minority has too much power. We're advised to pick our arguments carefully, but sometimes we argue and oppose for their own sake. We don't take stands on what really affects us, reserving our wrath for our opponents, rather than their positions. And we lend our support to particular groups because of who they are, rather than the issues for which they advocate – while we avoid the real problems we face as we join a popular protest.

It's clear. Filibuster reform should precede changes in the Electoral College. The Senate is where the most disruptive minority functions – or refuses to do so. It should have to deal with the real problems we face rather than posture and politic.

And the rest of us should decide the limits of minority rule.