Max Stephenson writes about members of the US senate scoring some rather cheap political points by refusing to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:

This sad episode tarnishes once more the nation’s standing as a leader in human rights and democracy in the world community. That this negative vote occurred at all is testimony to the much-discussed “broken character” of our politics. That it apparently occurred for the reasons it did is doubly distressing as it signals a deeper corruption of the democratic choice-making process in the United States. In the present instance, that process was hijacked neatly by a profoundly misguided, but well-positioned and vocal set of actors who, apparently, for their own narrow political purposes have managed to tar their nation in the eyes of the world and once more to deny the nation’s disabled even a symbolic claim to equal standing with their fellow citizens. This Senate action must be reversed. It not only is morally and substantively indefensible, but also profoundly anti-democratic.

The whole essay is worth reading.

Sigh. I understand the frustration with the UN that many on the right feel, that it is a mechanism for entangling the US with other countries. In my class on social justice, we examined the Texas secession movement and looked at various proposed constitutions, all of which had some provision specifying that the Republic of Texas would have no dealings with other countries except for trade. That kind of backseat governance sounds great in theory, but it didn’t actually work for Switzerland. Are there other examples where isolationism actually works?

Thus the question comes down to what type of entanglement are you going have?

The pragmatist in me thinks it would be more useful to support the UN when it is doing something it might actually be good at such as brokering voluntary agreements about cosmopolitan human rights questions, and to hold out when it wants to send your troops into hairy peace-keeping situations. The US seems to be doing the reverse: rather routinely sending troops to places that make little sense to our democratic populace, with their Black Hawk Down scenarios.

IOW, I don’t actually envision the US ever sending troops to Faroffistan to deal with their failure to provide wheelchairs ramps and government materials in braille. Rights covenants tend to be attempts at expectations- and example-setting and idea diffusion more than policy enforcement. Those seem like very good uses of global governance, even for conservatively minded people to me.