U.S. Won’t Vote Against Nazis…For a Very Good Reason
Sometimes as the leaders of the free world, the United States has to make decisions that appear, at first glance, to be counter to everything we believe in as a country.
Such is perhaps the case with an upcoming vote at the United Nations, where the U.S. has announced that it will not support a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. What would seem to be a no-brainer decision on the part of the Trump administration – why would the U.S. want to be seen supporting a fascist ideology that could have easily taken over Europe if not for our intervention? – is, instead, a tough decision based on an even more important fundamental value: The support of free speech.
The resolution, introduced by Russia, calls on all UN member nations to ban speech from pro-Nazi organizations and to implement other liberty-crushing regulations that will curtail the rights of the people to assemble and express themselves. This is why the U.S. cannot and will not be a party to this vote – if there is anything more important than opposing the hateful, twisted views of the Nazis, then it is to oppose the very sort of fascist techniques that they employed in their dark reign over Germany. Thanks to a little thing called the First Amendment, Americans have the right to express any views they wish – even if the vast majority of their fellow countrymen fund them abhorrent. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that this is one of the major reasons why our country is the greatest cauldron of freedom the world has ever seen.
This isn’t the first time that the U.S. has voted against this resolution, of course. It comes up every year, and the U.S. always votes against it with very little publicity. The resolution passes overwhelmingly, and most of our European allies either vote for it or abstain from the vote altogether. It is relatively meaningless in the first place, but it is attracting special attention this year for one obvious reason: Donald Trump.
Trump has been assailed by his critics as some kind of secret Nazi – a would-be dictator who traffics in white supremacy and refuses to condemn hate crimes against minorities. Never mind the fact that none of this bears any relation to the truth; it has become a meme in LeftyWorld, so his critics will undoubtedly use this vote as just another bit of “evidence” that Trump is the second coming of Hitler.
For that reason, reports the Associated Press, the U.S. is expected to go out of its way to make sure our country condemns Nazism in clear terms.
“U.S. officials are working overtime this year to try to explain that no, America doesn’t support pro-Nazi speech — but can’t vote for a resolution that calls for outlawing it, either,” the AP reports.