What? You're supposed to update these "blog" things regularly? Oh. My bad.
I came up with an incredibly clever notion a while back, and the recent issue of the UN asking the US to foot the lion's share of the bill for fixing up UN headquarters couldn't help but reignite my thoughts on the subject.
The US should found the Organization of Worthwhile Nations (OWN), and invite every country in the world which upholds "life, liberty and the pursuit of property." (Kudos to Kim du Toit for the pursuit of property idea.) Coming up with a few members to list is an easy task: Canada, Britain, Israel, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Mexico spring to mind right off the bat. The question becomes, though, just how "good" a country has to be before we let it in? We want to help somewhat marginal nations improve their lot, but not dilute the overall goodness of the organization. Libya and Cuba will definitely not belong to OWN anytime soon. Hopefully, Iraq will qualify before too awfully long.
When I initially thought of this plan, I just assigned the name "League of Nations That Are Worth a Damn." During the planning for this posting, I decided to come up with a shorter, more accessible name. The first thing that came to mind was the "Organization of Worthwhile Nations." I then checked to see what the acronym would be... "Oh double-u en... what's that spell? OWN? Oh yeah. That's a keeper."
Posted by Mitch at July 8, 2003 07:30 PM