Utah anti-UN resolution provokes debate and media vitriol.(Insider Report)

THE NEW AMERICAN has previously reported on the Utah joint resolution urging Congress to withdraw from the United Nations ("Utah House Passes Resolution to Get the U.S. Out of the UN," February 23 issue). Following passage in the House, H.J.R. 3 was sent to the Senate Political Subdivisions Committee, where it died in a 3-3 vote. However, the citizen activists of Utah's Get US out of the United Nations Committees who had persistently supported the resolution were not discouraged. As Representative Don Bush, the resolution's sponsor, told Utah's Deseret Morning News, "We have gone further with this than anyone has before and further than anyone thought we would." He is convinced that "we succeeded in that we got the public interested and discussing it."

In a story headlined, "Backers of anti-U.N. bill declare moral victory," the Deseret Morning News noted: "HJR3 stirred spirited debate on Capitol Hill and on radio talk shows on whether or not the United States should be a member of the United Nations, and whether the debate was a waste of time for Utah lawmakers."

Because the ultimate goal of members of Utah's Get US out of the United Nations Committees is to educate the state's citizens and to create support for federal legislation to terminate U.S. membership in the world body, the state resolution was just one facet of a broad-based campaign. As such, it served its purpose by ...