UNESCO Recognizes Palestine, Loses US Funding

Palestine today gained membership in UNESCO, a move that will likely bolster the Palestinian Authority’s bid for full membership in the United Nations but also put an end to American funding of the organization. 

Current American law calls for the defunding of any UN entity that grants Palestinians membership. 

Members of the agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, voted to admit Palestine despite attempts by the Obama administration to convince the international community to oppose it. The vote was 107 members in favor, 14 against and 52 abstentions

 “We sincerely regret that the strenuous and well-intentioned efforts of many delegations to avoid this result fell short” David Killion US Ambassador to UNESCO said after the vote.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters today the US would withhold 60 million dollars from UNESCO in 2011.

Palestinian admission to UNESCO comes weeks after the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill to drastically change the way the US funds the United Nations and its agencies. 

Committee Chairman and bill sponsor Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress, has repeatedly called on President Obama to counter Palestinian efforts at the United Nations by withholding funding. 

“Today’s reckless action by UNESCO is anti-Israel and anti-peace. It rewards the Palestinian leadership’s dangerous scheme to bypass negotiations with Israel and seek recognition of a self-declared ‘Palestinian state,’ and takes us further from peace in the Middle East.This is only the beginning. The Palestinians will now seek full membership in other UN bodies.” Ros Lehtinen said in a statement released earlier today.

“Existing U.S. law mandates that we cut off funding to any UN body that approves such a request. The Administration must stop trying to find ways not to fully implement this law, and instead cut off funding to UNESCO immediately. And Congress must pass pending UN reform legislation to cut off funding to any UN entity that grants any upgraded status to ‘Palestine.’ “ 

 Palestine’s request for full membership at the United Nations was presented to Secretary General Ban Ki Moon during the UN General Assembly in September and is in the process of being reviewed by a special UN Security Council committee. The committee is expected to report back to Council members on November 11th.

Can conservatives still govern?

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service

In light of disastrous setbacks for Republicans in the last two election cycles resulting in the fruition of long-deferred liberal dreams, some are debating that this may be the end of conservatism as we know it.

Democrats currently control both houses of Congress, both led by a Democratic President who has pledged wide-sweeping reforms in the face of widespread economic crises. Many blame Republicans and the administration of President George W. Bush for the current state of the U.S. economy and the resoundingly unpopular war in Iraq.

“Republicans lost in 2008 and 2006, not because they ran on conservative ideas but because they ran away from conservative ideas,” says Lee Edwards, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow of the right-leaning Heritage Institute.

“Can conservatives govern? That’s a reasonable question, given the glaring miss-steps and failures of the Bush administration,” Edwards said. “In 2001 the Bush administration, working with a Republican Congress, enacted a monumental tax cut of $1.6 trillion, the largest in U.S. history, which kept the economy humming until the financial collapse of 2008.”

According to Edwards, the core principles of conservatism should be: ordered liberty, individual freedom and responsibility, limited government and a strong national defense.

But David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Liberal-leaning Cato Institute, disagrees. He says that conservative values have become rigid in a society that has naturally become more liberal.

“The conservative ascendancy was also helped by the decline and fall of American liberalism – its swift descent marked by a tell-tale shift from concern for the common man and middle America to a preoccupation with minorities and special interests,’” he said.

And now, the center is farther to the left than it used to be, the left has moved toward the center and “many Americans have looked at the future of the welfare state and they like what they think they see – the entitlements,” Boaz said.

Quoting famed Libertarian and former National Review Editor Frank S. Meyer, Edwards said, “The freedom of the person is the central and primary end of political society. The state has only three limited functions: national defense, the preservation of domestic order, and the administration of justice between citizens.”

Edwards, has written more than 20 books on the history of conservatism, and said that history is repeating itself.

“American conservatism seemed on the edge of extinction after the crushing defeat of Goldwater in 1964,” he said. But, “Reagan wrote that the landslide majority (that defeated Goldwater) did not vote against conservatism, but against the false image of conservatism that our liberal opponents successfully mounted.”

“Starting in 1989, traditional conservatives, neoconservatives and libertarians have been fussing and feuding – partly because they miss the unifying threat of communism,” Edwards said, adding that in order to survive, Republicans must embrace ideological diversity within the party.

“What we need is a politics of inclusion, not a politics of exclusion,” Edwards said. Republicans need “a renewed fusionism that will unite all the branches of a now-divided conservative mainstream.”

Social conservatives have become among the most important constituencies, as they provide the necessary ground troops in the political wars, he said.

And what makes a conservative renaissance possible? “The philosophers would not have been able to write their books, and the popularizers would not have been able to publish their magazines, and the politicians would not have been able to run their campaigns without the support of conservative philanthropists. Men of means and vision,” Edwards said.

It will be hard to work with the new Democratic majority because “conservatives are uncomfortable with compromise, and they scorn accommodation,” Edwards said.”

Outlining the road back to power, Edwards said that conservatives are well funded, but need to master the new media and choose a charismatic figure to be this generation’s Ronald Reagan.