The Nature of Things

Many Americans like to think of our country as being "exceptional" - by which they seem to mean that it was divinely created and that we are outside of history and are not subject to its laws. That's all a lot of hooey of course. We are very much a part of history and, while the people who founded this country were certainly exceptional and enlightened far beyond the times in which they lived, we seem to have fallen very far from that ideal today, to the point where we no longer even honor science and learning. We seem to be turning in upon ourselves and refusing to see the world as it really is. But how does that world, looking back, see us? There is a clue from a recent report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The committee looked at seven different countries and analyzed the state of their racial relationships. One of the countries reviewed was the United States. While the committee did find several positive things to prais...

In the Palestinian people's long struggle to have their rights to a state of their own recognized, they finally achieved a tiny victory this week. The United Nations' education, science and culture organization known as UNESCO decided to accept Palestine as a full member even though the geographical boundaries of such a state do not exist.  This means that Palestine, rather than its occupying power Israel, will have the right to nominate World Heritage Sites in its own territory, such as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and this helps to achieve at least a few of Palestine's long-denied rights as a state. It is likely that other United Nations organizations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) will follow suit.  Inch by painful inch, Palestine may finally be crawling toward a kind of recognition and legitimacy as a world state. And what has been the response to all of this in this country?  Our governm...