Easter Weekend

We had dinner last night with some friends met through my wife's hospice work.  The wife suffers from alzheimer's disease, the husband and their son are devoted to her care, and Lora acts not only as a care provider, but almost as a surrogate daughter.  These are good people, in almost every sense of the word, who live for the most part a quiet, Morman life.  He has had the good sense to call Trump a "false prophet," words that, for the Mormans who have an active faith in contemporary prophecy, carry more significance than we might normally give.  Beyond that, I suspect we differ on almost every political point.  He brought up two points yesterday.

The first concerned the chinese purchase of a chicken farm in the US.  Ostensibly, they are raising chickens here, slaughtering them, shipping them back to china frozen, preparing and packaging them, then shipping them back to the US.  This has been on his mind for at least a couple of weeks.  On the surface of it, this makes little sense.  Even if the chinese owned the chicken far, the transportation costs would be enormous and easily avoided.   I am pretty sure this idea was fed by a fox news story -- like many others they have the vitriol of fox news yammering in the background throughout much of the day -- and I suspect the economics of it are irrelevant to them in many ways.  They are mostly concerned with the very "idea" of the chinese owning US property, and in the way they address it, I also suspect that it is a "self-evident" evil, but even if it were true, so what?  I suspect that the chinese own a considerable amount of US property, just as the US own a considerable amount of "foreign" property.  I very much want to ask that question, but Lora, in her wisdom, remarked "that's interesting" and changed the subject.

The second is in some ways more interesting.  It concerned the "ownership" of Yellowstone National Park.  They were concerned that the UN, as in United Nations, "owned" Yellowstone National Park.  Again, I'm pretty sure the source of this would be fox news, who seem to be the purveyors of half-baked alarmist thought, but let's consider.   It doesn't take much to come across information.  Here's the scoop according to the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank:

In 1972, our government signed the United Nations' World Heritage Treaty, a treaty that creates "World Heritage Sites" and "Biosphere Reserves." Selected for their cultural, historical or natural significance, national governments are obligated to protect these landmarks under U.N. mandate.1 Since 1972, 68 percent of all U.S. national parks, monuments and preserves have been designated as World Heritage Sites.

Twenty important symbols of national pride, along with 51 million acres of our wilderness, are World Heritage Sites or Biosphere Reserves now falling under the control of the U.N. This includes the Statue of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello, the Washington Monument, the Brooklyn Bridge, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite, the Florida Everglades and the Grand Canyon - to name just a few.

Most ironic of all is the listing of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The birthplace of our Republic is now an official World Heritage Site. The very place where our Founding Fathers signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - the documents that set America apart from other nations and created the world's longest-standing democracy - is no longer fully under the control of our government and the American people.

OK, so we are signatory to a UN treaty that, in some way, covers the Yellowstone National Park, among other things.  They seem to be aghast at the "very idea" that such things are "falling under the control of the U.N." and they conclude the brief policy statement with "We should not turn our backs on the Founding Fathers by surrendering the precious gift of sovereignty. We should treasure and protect it."  Of course this makes it sound like the UN is directly managing "Independence Hall," which would indeed be an "irony" if it were remotely true.

It isn't.  Yes, we are signatories to the treaty, but the treaty itself is much more benign.  Although I'm a bit reluctant to quote Wikipedia, it nevertheless points out that such sites are

listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as being of special cultural or physical significance.

There is a difference between "controlling" and "listing," though one suspects that being on the "list" does have some consequence and obligation.  Namely,

The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity. Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage,^[3] which was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. Since then, 191 states parties have ratified the Convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. Only Liechtenstein, Nauru, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu are not Parties to the Convention.

We are, in other words, obligated to preserve and protect, "treasure and respect" it, and we may even get a few dollars to help out in that respect.  Having said this, of course, we are not the only ones to "turn our backs" on the "precious gift of sovereignty" in this way.  Indeed, "Italy is home to the greatest number of World Heritage Sites with 51 sites," and perhaps even more "ironically," it is followed by China (48), Spain (44), France (41), Germany (40), Mexico (33), and India (32)." We have 23, fewer than either  the United Kingdom (29) or Russia (26).   

The bottom line, however, is this:  "each World Heritage Site remains part of the legal territory of the state wherein the site is located, UNESCO considers it in the interest of the international community to preserve each site."  Should UNESCO ever consider actually "enforcing" the terms of the treaty, who would they likely turn to?  You guessed it.  The UN would turn first to the US.  I would love to see the day when US troops, wearing UN blue helmets, stormed in to protect Yellowstone National Park against what?  Militia ranchers seeking forcibly to extract grazing rights?  Really?  Since we are irony deficient as a nation, I'll say it straight:  it's virtually impossible to imagine that anything other than voluntary enforcement by the signatory nations would ever be called upon.   Does it infringe upon our "national sovereignty?"  Of course it does, as does every treaty we sign -- that is to say, each time the Senate ratifies a treaty, per the constitution, we create a mutual obligation with another nation, which could be construed as an infringement on our "national sovereignty," if by "national sovereignty" we mean our perfect freedom to do whatever we damn well please.  The point being, however, that it was perceived to be in the mutual interest of the signatory nations to obligate themselves in this way to each other.  As history demonstrates, some "deals" (to use the donald's term) are better than others, but I strongly suspect this treaty is largely a symbolic recognition that the US and others have played, and will continue to play, a role in the common history of humankind.  How horrible! 

My point is not to "debunk" the good people who bought into some half baked conspiracy theory about our nation "turning its back" on the "precious gift of sovereignty"  to UNESCO. They are not stupid people, and don't deserve to be "debunked," but it is another subtle example of the "conservative" think tanks inflate a non-issue into an issue, when there are so many other things to worry about.   Free speech matters, but so too does "accurate" speech, and if anyone has an obligation to "accurate" speech, it's the news media.  As an aside, in the world of fox news, I'm pretty sure Obama somehow reached back in time and gave away the liberty bell, but if there really is an "irony" in all of this, I should point out that the treaty was signed in 1972.  Richard Nixon, a Republican, was the president who signed it.  If the thing really is one half, no one fourth, as horrible as the National Center for Public Policy Research suggests, they should also remember that it is a result of "conservatism" in its best sense the "conservation" of our common human heritage, not in its worst sense, the paranoid, conspiracy-laden politics, brought to the white house courtesy of Richard Nixon, which the conservative party has not seemed to out-grow.