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In his article ("UN harms U.S. ideals," Oct. 3) Chris Klick (Hanszen '00) claims that the national security of the United States is undermined by the ideals of the United Nations and that the United Nations only serves to legitimize dictatorships. Klick goes so far as to say that the United States should totally "renounce the United Nations."

Although well-intentioned, Klick's article was as wrong-headed and irrational as anything seen since the birth of the modern world. Repeatedly, Klick leads us down logical dead ends, factual cul-de-sacs and into moral morasses. Let us examine just a few of his missteps.

The most obvious chink in the argument that Klick presents is his association of the word "dictatorship" with the ideology of Communism, and especially that as practiced by the Mandarins leading the People's Republic of China today. It seems most neglectful of Klick to forget about the numerous other autocracies spanning the globe, as well as throughout history, for whom the United States has given significant support.

The regimes of Messieurs Marcos, Pinochet, Suharto, Noriega, Batista, Somoza; the oppressive kingdoms of the late Shah; and the present Kings Fahd, Hassan and Hussein all bear vivid testimony that the "ideals" of the United States have been put into sordid practice in the dungeon rooms and torture racks of almost every region of the world. Yet Klick does not see any "major moral errors" in any of this or the recent sale of "police helmets/handcuffs/shields used for torture" (according to the Commerce Department) to Saudi Arabia for, assuredly, peacable purposes.

No, the banning of nuclear weapons tests, whose major products are poisonous radiation and much environmental damage, is what Klick deems reprehensible. He appears to define morality on narrow-minded and jingoistic terms, to mean patriotism rather than taking a more universal definition, one that would include human rights and uphold the dignity of all peoples of the world.

One cannot take seriously the policy recommendations of Klick, if for no other reason than that he is merely spouting the words of a dead hero of the anti-Communist right whose time has long passed. If he had bothered to inform his readers that this "hero," Ayn Rand, had fled Soviet Russia for the United States in her youth and had nursed a hatred of it all her life; that this experience had colored all her writings as well as her Objectivist philosophy, then maybe we would have saved ourselves from a dreary polemic whose slant would have been more appropriate in a John Birch Society pamphlet than in a campus newspaper. Our solution: Renounce Objectivism and boycott Ayn Rand.

Massoud Javadi

Wiess '97

Nawaf Bou-Rabee

Baker '00

Akil Merchant

Wiess '96

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the October 10, 1997 issue.