Rep. Justin Amash (L-MI) has stated he is not opposed to the United Nations (UN) and other globalist institutions, describing it as a “positive venue” for U.S. global engagement, in a Friday interview with Reason.
“I’m not opposed to bodies where countries from around the world come and meet like the UN and can engage and discuss things,” Amash told Reason‘s Nick Gillespie. “That doesn’t mean that we should give those bodies authority over U.S. citizens to decide laws for our people, but it does mean that these can be positive venues where countries can come together and hash things out and work through differences.”
His stance will come as a surprise to many of his supporters, given that most other libertarian figures have been strongly opposed to the UN. Amash’s former ally, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), even said in 2015 he would be “happy to dissolve” the UN.
“I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States,” Paul stated. “There’s a lot of reasons why I don’t like the UN, and I think I’d be happy to dissolve it.”
President Donald Trump has made curtailing the UN’s authority a priority for his administration, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, which sought to impose unfair carbon emission caps on the United States, and from the Arms Trade Treaty, which would have imposed restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. In turn, the UN has condemned the Trump administration for what it claims are “human rights violations”, falsely trying to put the President on par with third world despots.
