U.N. vs. Jonah Goldberg
NRO on trial?

By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director, English First
August 30, 2001 2:00 p.m.

onah Goldberg, beware! The United Nation's "World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" could make you an international outlaw.

Even a cursory reading of this conference's Draft Declaration of Conference Themes, indicates you won't be alone.

People like John O'Sullivan and myself will be in the dock right alongside you because we dare suggest that America's immigrants would do well to learn English instead of depending on government translators:

97. We strongly condemn the persistence and resurgence of . . . linguistic chauvinism . . . in all their forms and manifestations, and state that these phenomena can never be justified in any instance, including as a means to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular those of persons belonging to national minorities[.]

Critics of bilingual education, like Linda Chavez and Ron Unz may also find themselves fleeing a U.N. indictment:

79. We recognize that a child belonging to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, . . . or to use his or her language[.]

Any critic of teaching African-American children Ebonics rather than standard English, a category which includes most African-American parents, is also in violation of U.N policy:

43. We recognize that people of African descent have for centuries been victims of racism, . . . Recognition should therefore be given to their righ[t] to maintain and use their own languages[.]

Because National Review Online regularly publishes articles on such topics, the U.N. human rights machinery could charge NRO with aiding and abetting discrimination:

105. We express deep concern about the use of new information technologies, such as the Internet, for purposes contrary to respect for human values, equality, non-discrimination, respect for others and tolerance, including to propagate racism, racial hatred, xenophobia, racial discrimination and related intolerance, and that children and youth have access to this material[.]

Thankfully, even this excruciatingly politically correct U.N. agency is unable to live up to its own standards on language rights:

25. We express our concern that in some States political and legal structures or institutions, some of which were inherited and persist today, do not correspond to the multi-ethnic, pluricultural and plurilingual characteristics of the population and, in many cases, constitute an important factor of discrimination in the exclusion of indigenous peoples[.]

The organization's website however, does not correspond to the "plurilingual characteristics of the [world's] population" since it provides materials available in but six languages, while there are an estimated 6,800 languages spoken worldwide.

Maybe U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will order himself arrested for this "crime against humanity."

And then Jonah could enjoy his honeymoon in peace.