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We Really Can Get Rid of the United Nations Now

If ever there was any doubt as to the utterly worthless character of the United Nations — the universe’s premier wretched hive of scum and villainy — that was put to bed on Wednesday of last week. The end, not that there shouldn’t already have been an end, came when the successor regime to the West African Ashanti Kingdom — that being the nation of Ghana — proposed a resolution indicating that the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 15th through the 19th centuries was the worst sin against humanity, and called for reparations to be paid. And the vote was 123-3 in favor, with 52 abstentions. You probably already heard about this idiocy. If you haven’t, here’s the link to the resolution. Don’t drink anything while you’re reading. You might spit it all over your screen. The three nations voting against the Ghanaian gambit were Israel, Argentina, and the United States. Most of the 52 abstentions were European and other Western countries (the U.K., Canada, Japan, etc.). Hilariously, the Arab and African countries that have engaged in slave trading both before and since the flowering of the trans-Atlantic flesh market were the bulk of the 123 “yes” votes. This column will offer no defense to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was indeed a terrible sin committed against humanity, one which the United States and its citizens have paid an awful price in blood and treasure — a price a certain political party, which started a civil war over the preservation of slavery, does everything it can to force our people to continue paying. (RELATED: Democrats Silent on Party Paying Reparations for Slavery) No nation has spent more money attempting (perhaps largely in vain) to remedy the effects of the slave trade than has America. In fact, no nation has spent more money attempting (perhaps largely in vain) to remedy the effects of the slave trade than has America. Certainly, no nation has spent more blood — some 600,000 dead, in fact, from 1861-65 — in putting a stop to slavery. Furthermore, it was the rapid onset of mechanization, perfected by Americans as the Industrial Revolution took hold, which made slavery obsolete. We should not fail to recognize that until American-style capitalism (though predated to an extent in England, Germany, and some other European countries) entered the scene, virtually every society on earth made use of slave labor to do the work most wouldn’t do. Until American-style capitalism came along, there was no incentive for people to invent machines and processes that obviated the need for masses of laborers. There is an old story attributed to Milton Friedman from his travels in Asia, but which has roots much earlier, which goes like this: Friedman was shown a large government road-building project. Thousands of workers were breaking their backs digging with shovels, with no heavy machinery in sight. So Friedman asked his government host why they weren’t using tractors, bulldozers, or other equipment that could speed things up. And the official replied: “You don’t understand — this is a jobs program. We want to create as much employment as possible.” Friedman shot back: “Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to build a road! If it’s jobs you want, then why don’t you take away their shovels and give them spoons instead?” The point being that pre-industrialization, the key to prosperity for those with the power was to employ as many strong backs in whatever project — war, construction, sex, etc. — was on the menu. Until the Western capitalist came along and showed that there were multiple paths to prosperity, and developed technology at an expanding pace to prove the equation, slavery, and the gross inefficiency and mortal sin it involved, was the only game in town. Milton Friedman was the Western capitalist questioning the pre-industrial mindset and exposing it for its backwardness. Add the absence of a wage for those laborers, and you understand why, in pre-capitalist societies, slavery was universal. And it was universal. But the idea that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was worse than the trans-Saharan slave trade, or the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade in southern and eastern Europe, the various Asian slave trading networks, or the Arab slave trade of East Africa (most of the major ports along the East African coast were set up by Arab slave traders, after all), when those lasted much longer and almost certainly involved more victims, is, in a word, stupid. Dumber still is the idea that any of these ought to be pitted against each other, as the Ghanaians and the rest of the Third World kleptocrats at the U.N. would have it. And Ghana needs to keep its national mouth good and shut. Let’s remember a few things here. Let’s first remember that the transatlantic slave trade was a joint international enterprise — not unlike the United Nations, actually. The Portuguese, British, Dutch, French, Spanish, and even Danes bought slaves at African coastal forts, yes. Almost none of them came ashore for the purchases, and it just about never happened that the slave traders actually captured anybody. Somebody else did that. And that somebody looked just like the diplomats and government officials from Ghana. Roughly 12.5 million Africans, almost all of them from West Africa, were trafficked to the Western Hemisphere by those European slave traders. Eighty to 90 percent of them were caught — through wars, raids, judicial punishments, and other means — and brought to the slave ships by other Africans. The rest were mostly caught by Arab slave traders who had been in the game since Muhammad’s friends broke out of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, the name Ghana came from those Arab slave traders who predated the Portuguese. This is a country that literally chose an Arab slave-trading name as the name for its country, and it wants to lecture others about slavery. Perhaps we should defer to the Ghanaians’ expertise as the sales agents for the slave trade for the vast majority of their history. And the sales agents for the international slave trade made out like bandits. Slaves were traded for guns, gunpowder, textiles, rum, and all kinds of manufactured goods that a primitive kingdom needs to inflict tyranny on the local tribesmen. As such, there were some very big winners in the slave trade. Among them were… The Ashanti (Asante) Empire in what is now Ghana: One of the biggest suppliers. The Ashanti built enormous wealth and military power from the trade and fought wars specifically to capture slaves for sale. Go and look at a map of the Ashanti Empire, and it’s basically Ghana. Kingdom of Dahomey, which is essentially modern Benin, right next door — and Dahomey is the capital of Benin: Dahomey was famous for its annual “slave raids” and female Amazon warriors, most of whom were essentially slaves to the king; Dahomey kings openly resisted British abolition efforts in the early 19th century because the kingdom’s economy depended on the slave trade. Oyo Empire (Nigeria): In constant war against Dahomey over the slave trade. Not that the Oyo wanted to end it; they wanted to control it. The Oyo were slavers, but they were also best known as middlemen, organizing caravans and negotiating prices with Europeans. You’ll see an awful lot of Afrocentric types, the kinds of people who demand reparations for slavery, trundling around in kente cloth. The next time you see one, ask him or her why he/she is promoting the African slave trade. Kente is the cultural signifier of, principally, the Ashanti Empire. It’s more or less the same thing as people decrying genocide while wearing a swastika hat. And it isn’t like these people were only trading slaves to the Europeans. The trans-Saharan slave trade involved far more people for far longer — in fact, there are slave markets involving sub-Saharan Africans going on in places like Libya today — with some of the same people. But such belly-laugh contradictions have never bothered any of the creeps plying their trade at Turtle Bay. The hypocrisy involved here, of the descendants of the Ashanti somehow sitting in judgment principally of the U.S. (when a plurality — some 40 percent of all souls trafficked to the New World — were transported by Portugal to Brazil and not the United States), is a classic U.N. offense against rationality. It’s on par with giving Iran and Cuba control of the organization’s human rights commission. And don’t kid yourself. This flapdoodle comes as no coincidence in light of President Trump’s reticence to continue funding the various grift operations and scams the UN has been running. That’s just short of explicit in the ridiculous speech that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who can’t be forgotten fast enough, gave last week… (RELATED: Sovereignty First) Enough of this. The United Nations is no longer a serious forum for international debate or conflict resolution, if it ever was one. It’s a relic of the Cold War, which has done more harm than good, and it is right that Trump has stopped payment on that check. What’s next is to evict the U.N. from that prime Manhattan real estate and use the land to ease the housing crunch in New York — not that Zohran Mamdani won’t handle that problem with brutal efficiency, given the raft of kleptocratic policies he’s brought to City Hall there. Or turn it into a landfill. Or build the Giants and Jets a stadium. It doesn’t matter. Boot the diplomats out, raze the site, start over with something more honest. Perhaps Ghana can be the U.N.’s next host country. That would be a just reward for the 123 countries voting yes to this idiotic resolution. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Democrats Won’t Win the Midterms Who’s Teaching Those AI Machines Your Kids Will Learn From? Five Quick Things: Hormuz