The Nation's Pulse

...He has blasted the anti-Zionism resolution, a measure whose passage he' energetically fought, as "a reckless act, an obscene act...

...dismissing his statements as "irreverence, flippancy, and irresponsibility," and promising, with appropriate bluster and bravado, that "the Africangroup will not allow itself to be intimidated"—certainly these are not surprising...

...Applying the coup de grace via a kind of what-have-you-done-for-us-lately test, Good intimates that Moynihan may never even have been a real liberal, and although Moynihan has said publicly that it would be dishonorable for him to do so, Good predicts that the white-haired Irish charlatan will soon be angling fora seat in the Senate...

...In short, Moynihan has been a forceful and articulate representative of this nation in a hostile forum permeated, to borrow his own phrase, with "the politics of resentment...

...His task is a more modest one, but one worthy of his best efforts nonetheless: to respond to the lies...

...rather, the only uncertainty centers on whether the UN can possibly prove more unreasoning and unprincipled on the present issue than on the last...

...Adopting the language of the New York Times, he has tagged Amin for what he is—a "racist murderer"—and gone on to observe that this despot's chairmanship of the Organization of African Unity is, regrettably, "no accident...

...But Moynihan's crime, in the eyes of his detractors, is precisely that he has responded too vigorously, too truthfully, too straightforwardly to the ever escalating litany of hatred and nonsense that it is his daily task to confront...

...We have shown that we can negotiate in good faith," he noted on one such occasion...

...Neither Moynihan nor any other intelligent American in this era labors under such delusions...

...Nothing so unites these nations as the conviction that their success ultimately depends on our failure...

...UNESCO...

...It has been Moynihan's burden or opportunity (depending on one's perspective) to represent this nation during the most depressing and demeaning session in the less than illustrious thirty-year history of the United Nations...

...Time, whose sophomoric contribution to developing proper U.S...

...Its feature presentation was Yasir Arafat, killer of innocents...

...It was clear to him that our proper role was continued involvement, that the path of honor demanded that we stay to fight the nonsense...

...That distinctly non-anonymous "senior American official" is reputedly irritated with his subordinate at the UN, and would probably not be displeased should President Ford be influenced to replace the Secretary's former Harvard colleague...

...Few critics have disputed the accuracy of any of Moynihan's remarks, but any number have found some disturbing feature about which they must nervously cluck...

...With a Moynihan representing us, however, perhaps con-tined membership in the organization we helped found remains worth the candle...

...Surrounded as he is by the representatives of the "assorted ancient and modern despotisms" that populate today's United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan has performed that task with more skill and honor than anyone else in memory...

...Similar resentments were aroused by a February 1967 article in Commentary, which accurately placed the blame for a good deal of racial animosity on "militants, Negro and white, caught up in a frenzy of arrogance and nihilism...

...The source of the above quotation is neither an isolationist, nor a critic of American involvement in the United Nations, nor even (by his own definition) a conservative...

...Negative reactions to Moynihan's ambassadorship from within the government are more difficult to pin down, but there have been enough disturbing indications to lend a modicum of credence to the current rumors that his position is in jeopardy...

...In addition to making general observations such as the one which heads this article, he has correctly warned that member nations of the UN had better begin calculating "the costs and benefits" of continuous criticism of this country if they value the survival of the multinational organization...

...The incomprehensible Garry Wills, reaching new heights of wordy ambivalence, dismisses Moynihan as "an imaginative and lovable phony...

...On those rare days when the UN performs as it was meant to—or at least, performs better than it usually does—Moynihan has been quick to voice his encouragement and approval, perhaps overlavishly...

...Newsweek, which earlier had praised the Ambassador as "one of the people primarily responsible for restoring a note of civility to UN proceedings,',' now frets openly over his outspokenness, headlining its reportage of the Amin incident "Moynihan's Outburst...

...policy in the UN suggests a "conciliatory, but not indulgent approach to Third World demands" lest one of these nations explode the bomb, remarks with its usual instinct for the capillary that Moynihan's course actually makes it more difficult and embarrassing for the reasonable developing nations to effect rapprochement with the U.S., and darkly hints that our Ambassador is little more than a posturing egotist in any event...

...Moynihan, Good warns, is "the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time...

...But they could not have anticipated that in three decades the UN would become little more than a pernicious daily exercise in active repudiation of every noble ideal embodied in its Charter...

...Should Moynihan nonetheless resign or be replaced, the United States will lose not only a forthright advocate, but also a man who deeply believes in the ideals of The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1976 9 the United Nations, however much its present members would pervert them...

...they had witnessed collective depravity on a scale that would shock a John Calvin, and most of them would not have been surprised if told that their new venture would be largely symbolic and usually ineffectual...

...But the Arafat show was upstaged by the traveling circus of Ugandan President Idi Amin, a bemedaled thug who is Arafat's equal in the work of murder and his superior in the creative task of articulating the hopes and aspirations of the UN's favorite group, the vaunted Third World...

...To be sure, Moynihan will not silence the Third World's noisy merchants of malicious slander, nor will he transform the United Nations into anything vaguely resembling an effective peace-keeping organization...

...As a consequence, Daniel Moynihan is (to lapse into the vernacular of the journalist) if not "beleaguered," at least "under fire," and may yet lose his job as the price of his discomfiting predilection for blunt honesty...

...Against this background, it is difficult to imagine how any reasonable response by Ambassador Moynihan could merit criticism, much less dismissal...

...Certainly the remarks of such worthies as Dahomey's Ambassador Tiamion Adjibade, calling Moynihan "deliberately provocative" and "unfriendly...

...For the moment, Ford is standing behind his Ambassador...

...This particular document had the temerity to suggest that many of the problems faced by American blacks might be due less to present white racism than to the matriarchal structure of a distressing percentage of black families...

...Much of what Moynihan currently says as Ambassador was presaged by-his March 1975 article in Commentary, "The United States in Opposition"—an eloquent critique of prevalent Third World ideology, coupled with a call for the United States to embark on a course of reasoned, active opposition...

...The various vituperative_ responses of Moynihan's erstwhile peers at the UN are, of course, to be expected...

...to remind those nations who are yet listening that the success of America is indispensable if they would remain free...

...During Ambassador Moynihan's tenure, the answer seems always to be "yes...

...But reasonable men do not dominate the globe in A.D...

...In the UN today there are in the range of two dozen democracies left...

...where Mother Goose figures, expelled by factional eruptions from unknown corners of the world, stretch their necks and ruffle their feathers to the applause of a robot-like if happy claque...

...Individuals who bear such labels do not normally criticize the world's foremost international body and its member states...

...Yet since his appointment as Ambassador in 1975, Moynihan has made a number of statements in roughly the same vein as the one noted above...

...Most of the new states have ended up as enemies of freedom...

...The background music—a shrill cacophony of venomous excoria tion of the United States, mindless horn age to every petty dictatorial regime tha laughably calls itself a."Democratic Peo pie's Republic," and whining, self-right eous bleats for ever larger shares o American boodle—continued much the 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 197 same, if perhaps a bit louder...

...Paul Good's lovely little piece in the December 20, 1975 edition of the Nation ("Moynihan: The Mask of Liberalism") is a typical example...

...10 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 197...

...In the year preceding Moynihan's appointment, the UN blithely violated its Charter by refusing to seat South Africa in the Generzl Assembly and by summarily bouncing the Israelis frorr...

...In a world dominated by reasonable men, his observations would be noteworthy only as literate and eloquent expressions of what anyone familiar with today's version of the League of Nations shouldknow to be commonplaces...

...This system works...

...strutting about with a pistol in his belt, threaten ing all the murder and mayhem imagin able if his desires were thwarted, all tc the accompaniment of a thunderous ova• tion from the assembly of internationa brotherhood...

...Somehow, however, summoning up re serves of indecency and bad taste beyonc the ken of civilized men, the United Na tions has, since Moynihan's arrival, man aged to surpass even these incredible ac complishments...

...Even the insulting jibes of British representative Ivor Richard, who recently chastised Moynihan for "cowboy behavior" and practicing the diplomacy of a "Wyatt Earp," are what one has come to expect from the postwar edition of the land once led by Churchill...

...After Amin's visit, the international assembly proposed and passed by an overwhelming majority- (72-35, with 32 abstentions) a remarkable addition to the lexicon of progressive political enlightenment—to wit, a solemn resolution that Zionism was at one with racism, replete with sober assurances that the United Nations would, of course, continue to fight racism at every turn...

...The reaction of many sectors of enlightened opinion-making in this country has been less praiseworthy...

...In a well-received address before the General Assembly, "Big Daddy" Amin yielded to no one in his disdain for the imperialist aggressors of the United States, and, lest he be accused of having no positive course of action to propose, called for "the extinction of Israel as a state...

...To the credit of most of his fellow citizens, Moynihan's efforts appear, to the extent such things can be measured, to have earned him a fair amount of respect and support among the populace...

...Hopefully, he will do so for as long as Moynihan can stomach what must in many ways be a distasteful challenge...

...Certainly, Moynihan is no stranger to either straight talk or the resultant controversy...

...1976, and at the UN often do not even hold their own...

...Moynihan is thus genuinely disturbed by the increasingly reasonable suggestion that the United States' involvement in the United Nations is no longer wise...

...totalitarian Communist regimes and assorted ancient and modern despotisms make up all the rest...

...Moynihan himself recently felt compelled to meet with the President to clarify his status, leading most observers to infer that if conditions become sufficiently uncomfortable, our envoy in New York may voluntarily abandon his task to a successor...

...The true-believer sector of the Left also scurries to disassociate itself from the United States Ambassador...

...Today, as Nicholas King has noted in National Review, the United Nations is "a hall for passing political rallies...

...to inform the world that the United States will not be moved by childish threats and hateful resolutions...

...But even this would not prove the highlight of the UN's current gala session...

...Hopefully as well, that will prove a considerable length of time...

...As an assistant to President Johnson in 1965, he caught considerable flak for a report entitled "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action...

...Not least, we have shown that this can be done in the unique and indispensable setting of the UN...

...Rather, the words are those of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, current United States Ambassador to the United Nations—a liberal, an intellectual, a Harvard professor on leave...

...The question, on any matter of import, is no longer whether the United Nations will take a reasoned or principled stand...

...Surely Moynihan, .as well as any public figure of our day, has been steeled by experience to withstand even the most destructive and personal criticism...

...And of course, Moynihan's famed "benign neglect" memorandum to President Nixon, which counseled a de-escalation of racial rhetoric in light of a decade of marked economic progress by blacks, earned him the undying enmity of every peddler of hate and media Cassandra throughout the land...

...He lacks, we are told, "racial sensitivity, the capacity to re-examine and re-evaluate previously held positions, and a largeness of spirit, [if] not ego...

...During a brief discussion with this author centering largely around that article, Moynihan, as yet unappointed to his UN post, rejected out of hand the view that his accurate characterization of today's United Nations argued for an American withdrawal from the organization...

...What is astonishing is that Moynihan's actions are deemed worthy of censure by assorted solons of media and government within his own country...

...The delegates who met at Dumbarton Oaks and later at San Francisco to launch the twentieth century's second experiment in international organization were not naive...

...Those persistently anonymous "State Department sources," report the media, have expressed displeasure at the tone of several of the Ambassador's statements, while pointing out that much of the offending language was not cleared with Foggy Bottom...

...Some of us, I suspect, remain skeptical, and wonder if we could not fight just as vigorously without our formally associating with and financing the myriad "enemies of freedom" who regularly gather in Manhattan...

...Whether and for how long he will continue to do so is, as James Schlesinger could testify, anybody's guess...

...reflective homilies about the need for American tolerance, cooperation, understanding, flexibility, and all the rest are what one usually expects to hear...

...Moreover, his approach reveals "intellectual know-nothingness," and he is "particularly unfitted to deal with people of color...