In FocusnA Fashionable Steel-and-Glass Jacobin ClubnDaniel Patrick Moynihan with SuzannenWeaver: A Dangerous Place;nAtlantic-Little, Brown Books; Boston.nby Kenneth KolsonnWe all know what Senator DanielnPatrick Moynihan has to say. And wenknow to expect him to say it in hisninimitable way. Like Lyndon Johnson’sn”Treatment A,” which rarely failed himnin one-on-one arm-twisting situations,nthe Moynihan Treatment, which is performednonly in public, is irresistible.nArms oscillating, pencil poking, eyebrowsnquivering, voice undulating andnejaculating, juices spraying—the world’snonly 250 pound, splay-legged leprechaunnis, when airborne, a spectacle thenlikes of which has not been seen sincenthe World’s Columbian Exposition heldnin Chicago in 1893. And what was saidnof the Fair may as justly be said of thenMoynihan Treatment: as an educationalnforce and inspiration it will do its goodn”by the exaltation that it will inspirenin every man, woman, and child whonmay have any emotions, and even henwho has none, that may come to view it.”nNever has the Moynihan Treatmentnhad a more salutary effect than at thenUnited Nations, where it took a furiousnwind indeed to blow out the pollutionnleft by thirty years of hypocrisy, charlatanry,nand brutal intimidation. Forneight tempestuous months (can it havenbeen only eight months!), Moynihan, anrelentless, blustering bagpipe of moralnindignation, employed his incomparablentalents to challenge, most audaciously,nthe tyranny of opinion that had transformednthe U.N. from a motley cacophonyninto a fashionable, and mostndangerous, steel-and-glass Jacobin Club.nAmbassador Moynihan’s finest hournDr. Kolson, a political scientist, is anfrequent contributor to these pages.n— indeed the finest hour in the historynof the international organization—occurrednin the wake of its blackest, mostnshameful deed: the adoption of the resolutionnwhich equated Zionism withnracism. The vote was 67 to 55, with 15nabstentions.nWhen this sordid business was finished,nMoynihan took the floor. “It wasnour speech wholly,” Moynihan writesnin A Dangerous Place, which is partnjournal and part commentary on hisntenure at the U.N. and on the propernplace of human rights in our foreignnpolicy, “Washington having had thensense to leave us be.” Moynihan openednwith words that had been written fornhim by Norman Podhoretz: “The UnitednStates rises to declare before the GeneralnAssembly of the United Nations,nand before the world, that it does notnacknowledge, it will not abide by, itnwill never acquiesce in this infamousnact.” As if devoted to single-handedlynarresting the failure of nerve that hasnincapacitated the West even as it gazesninto the eyes of its assassins, Moynihannroused his rhetorical powers and unleashedna display of oratory so extravagant,nso furious, that the moment is,nand will be, remembered as much fornthe exhibition put on by the Ambassadornas for the infamy that provoked it.nThat was just the point.nThe argument of the speech is asncompelling as the ostentatious show wasnawesome. It focuses on the harm thatnwill inevitably be done by the resolutionnto. the cause of human rights. The dangernis, first, that the resolution “willnstrip from racism the precise and abhorrentnmeaning that it still precariouslynholds today.” This distortion of thenlanguage is sure to insidiously underminenthe idea that racism is an evil tonbe vigilantly combated. As political scientistnCharles H. Fairbanks put it in anmemorandum written for Moynihan’snnnuse: “To call Zionism a form of racismnmakes a mockery of the struggle againstnracism as the emperor Caligula made anmockery of the Roman Senate when henappointed to it his horse.”nThe second pernicious effect of thenU.N. resolution will be its erosion ofnthose claims on which the independencenand the legitimacy of nations now rest.n”Today we have drained the word ‘racism’nof its meaning. Tomorrow, termsnlike ‘national self-determination’ andn’national honor’ will be perverted in thensame way to serve the purposes of conquestnand exploitation.” When this happens,nMoynihan warns, it will be thensmall nations of the world that willnsuffer. For “how will the small nationsnof the world defend themselves, on whatngrounds will others be moved to defendnand protect them, when the languagenof human rights, the only languagenby which the small can be defended, isnno longer believed and no longer has anpower of its own.””nThe most profound point in Moynihan’snspeech is contained in the thirdnthreat which this resolution poses tonhuman rights, to wit: “the damage wennow do to the idea of human rightsncould well be irreversible.” Moynihanngoes on to explain that the very idea ofnhuman rights is inextricably wedded tonsocial contract theory; to the idea,nhatched in the 17th century, that mannis a being who can be conceived of asnhaving lived in a prepolitical state, anstate where his rights—if he has anynat all—accrue from this national conditionnand not from his political circumstances.nThus the destruction of thisnidea—this philosophy in which Westernncivilization is rooted—means nothingnless than the destruction of humannrights, because it means the destructionnof the idea of human rights, just asnsurely as the U.N. resolution contributesnto the destruction of the language inniS5nChronicles of Culturen