Quoth the Great Orator: No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.

Fair enough -- the UN was designed to be the great level playing field for all nations and it's failed spectacularly. Impotent, corrupt, and a diplomatic forum for anti-Semitism, the United Nations has succeeded only at providing a bully-pulpit for the world's thugs and gangsters. Yet Obama continues to indulge in the great liberal fantasy, that if only we could equalize all nations and governments -- a utopian world awaits. We're constantly told that our western values aren't so great, and that the Irans and North Koreas of the world aren't so bad. This is their grand vision -- that all nations be forced into the same prison of mediocrity, where Burma commands the same respect as Canada, Syria the same as France or Great Britain.

Yet in these strange times, conservatives are derided for holding the world to a higher standard, and ridiculed for the belief that dictatorships and juntas and kleptocracies should join the free world -- instead of the free world joining them.