Could Nikki Haley emerge as our Joan of Arc in the struggle against the folly of world government? It’s starting to look that way as America gets set to mark the centenary of the League of Nations.
The League of Nations was the 14th of President Woodrow Wilson’s famous — or infamous — 14 points (or peace principles). He unveiled the idea in a speech to Congress 100 years ago next month.
Wilson, a Democrat, tried to hornswoggle the Senate into joining the League. Luckily for those who cherish American freedom, Republicans gained control of the Senate, which rejected the scheme.
The hero of that showdown was Sen. William Borah of Idaho. (And the Chicago Tribune, which got a hold of the treaty while it was still a secret and, in a sensational scoop, published it.)
Borah gave a famous speech in the Senate, warning that if we accepted the treaty we’d have “forfeited and surrendered, once and for all, the great policy of ‘no entangling alliances’ ” — reference to a principle George Washington expounded in his prophetic farewell address. The Senate rejected the League of Nations unambiguously.
After World War II, the idea of world government emerged again in the form of the United Nations. America ratified the UN Charter in 1945, opening the way for the redemption of the Jews in the state of Israel.
For the United Nations, it’s been downhill ever since. It has made it its business to marginalize the Jewish state that it once helped bring into being. It’s a cockpit of Israel’s enemies.
Enter the heroic Nikki Haley. We’ve had several towering UN ambassadors — Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Bolton and Daniel Patrick Moynihan come to mind.
It’s hard, though, to top the performance of the former governor of South Carolina in her first year at Turtle Bay, where this week she wheeled on the General Assembly.
She did that after the Security Council tried to ask America to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Haley used our veto to stop that colder than a mackerel.
Then the General Assembly, which includes all 193 UN members, set a similar, but symbolic, vote. Haley promptly tweeted a warning: “The US will be taking names.”
Brava, I say. Good for her. And bravo for President Trump, who, she warned in a separate email, will take note “on each and every vote on this issue.”