Same Old Same Old

Maggie Gallagher on the UN and Europe:

As far as I can tell, the United Nations is like just about any other large bureaucratic institution — a mixed body of people and ideals that does some good and is at least as susceptible to corruption as any other human thing. But in Europe, faith in the United Nations is reaching biblical proportions.

Which is why when the U.N. secretary-general reaches for the language of science to establish an absolute truth (global warming is a human-caused catastrophe) grounded in an obvious falsehood (“we all agree”), I find it creepy…

And yet “the masses,” aka the public, must be goaded into right action by their betters’ judgment.

I don’t see what Maggie is so surprised about. Europe is the continent that brought you papal infallibility, the divine right of kings, nationalism, fascism, communism, and so on and so on. Europe’s faith in big solutions by big institutions claiming unlimited power is nothing new.