I said the other day that it was hard to understand why so many people had a positive view of the UN and its agencies; but is it?<\/p>\n
Could it be that it\u2019s the aims and purposes of the UN that render it somewhat immune from criticism. \u00a0For example, who can be against world peace, the end of poverty, the enhancement of social justice, the elimination of hunger, etc, etc? \u00a0Never mind that the organisation has feet of clay, just remember what it\u2019s trying to do. \u00a0How could you not be on the UN\u2019s side, and willing to defend it through thick and thin?<\/p>\n
This point is not confined to the UN, but is applicable, it seems, to any organisation or institution that has laudable aims. \u00a0It\u2019s a partial explanation of why the German National Socialist regime of 1933 to 1945 is so thoroughly reviled, whilst the policies of communist governments which resulted in far more deaths of their own and other citizens, are never viewed in the same way. \u00a0They, after all, were trying to create a better society, weren\u2019t they, one way or another: the new Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Thus it is that the means can be forgiven provided the Ends are ok. \u00a0We see the same today in the UK where political outfits that claim to be pursuing progressive<\/em>\u00a0Ends built on the idea of human perfectibility are given a relatively easy ride by the liberal-left media. \u00a0For example, what does it matter that a few hundred million pounds are lost, pilfered or wasted from the overseas aid budget when the goal is so laudable? \u00a0And if this is how you think, it's apparently unthinkable that others can think differently; hence intolerance grows.<\/p>\n I wonder, in passing, what the many global learning programmes teach about the UN. \u00a0Is it a questioning ESD2 approach or a more transmissive but less rounded ESD1 one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I said the other day that it was hard to understand why so many people had a positive view of the UN and its agencies; but is it? Could it be that it\u2019s the aims and purposes of the UN...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}