Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The UN is a great example of why you can’t have democratic institutions where the constituents have fundamentally different values. Saudi was recently the head of the HRC: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/28/why-o...

View on HN

Yeah this strikes me as similar to bill naming. I call the bill "Protect Children Act" -- Now anyone who votes 'no' must be against protecting children regardless of what the bill says. Most people can't be bothered to actually read the bill.

I can't honestly say either way if this human rights council is something we should be members of or not, but leaving sure makes for bad press.

This fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the UN. It's not supposed to be a democratic institution; the founders knew that if it were, a lot of really awful world leaders wouldn't bother showing up. It's supposed to be one where everyone has a spot at the table, the theory being that it is better in the long run if there is an official channel for dialogue between all countries. If the UN ever became a purely democratic organization, a bunch of countries would leave and never come back, to the considerable detriment of worldwide peace.

You may not like it, but that's what the goal has always been.

There is value in naming such countries to head up the HRC as well, it focuses the spotlight on them and hopefully - not necessarily - forces them to at least try to live up to some standards.

The US withdrawing from the HRC basically says 'we do not care about human rights' to the world. As if the last couple of days of imagery from the Southern border would require any further explanation.

Disagree. It just as easily could say "we do not think that your council actually does anything useful about human rights".

>The US withdrawing from the HRC basically says 'we do not care about human rights' to the world.

Similarly, voting against the PATRIOT Act basically says 'we do not care about patriotism' to the country.

Is the UN supposed to be a democratic institution? That was never my impression. I thought the point was that, no matter what else was happening in the world, we're all generally better off if the leadership of various countries have a standing body where they are basically forced to talk to each other all the time.

The UN is not supposed to be a democratic institution. I'm speculating about the dangers of world government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com