My previous analysis of the Iranian crisis focused on whether Israel or the United States will preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. This question does not require us to investigate which course of action is right or wrong, strategically sound or unsound. The question is whether a certain military action will be taken or not. Today’s column will leave this question and focus on the Iranian side. What does the Iranian leadership want? What are they trying to achieve? What unintended consequences are likely to follow?

On Saturday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is about to unveil “major achievements in the nuclear domain.” He said an announcement would follow in a matter of days. More than a week ago, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran would never give up. “We will respond to threats of war and oil sanctions.” Indeed, Iran is suffering from sanctions and the freezing of assets.

UN Security Council Resolution 1696 calls on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment and related activities. Several other UN Security Council Resolutions have been passed, basically restricting Iranian access to technology and equipment. The European Union has passed sanctions against Iran, as well as several nations – including Canada, Australia, Switzerland, India, the United States and South Korea.

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 A United Nations Treaty Will Undermine Both the Family & the US Constitution

 Imagine a law in America that could set children against their parents, centralize power away from the states toward the federal government, mandate increases in government spending regardless of taxpayer wishes, bypass the House of Representatives, and abrogate constitutional limitations on government power. Such a measure may soon come up for ratification by the US Senate: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Children have become today’s favorite political weapon. From gun restrictions to mandatory seat-belts, the way to neuter opposition to intrusive government measures is to present them as being “for the children.” But the first casualties in the politicization of children are parents and therefore the family. Professionals who advocate for other people’s children inevitably do so at the expense of those whose first responsibility is their own children.

The CRC illustrates how radically human rights law has turned from its fundamental purpose, to be a shield protecting individuals from government intrusion, to being used as a tool of government intrusion. As Geraldine Van Bueren, a law professor and one of the drafters of the CRC, approvingly observed in a 1999 article in the Human Rights Quarterly, these laws are not about protecting political prisoners or dissenters from repression, but about redistributing power and wealth among social groups:

International human rights law is a peaceful but powerful instrument of change. In essence, human rights is about peacefully redistributing unequal power. . . . The essence of economic and social . . . rights is that they involve redistribution, a task with which, despite the vision of human rights, most constitutional courts and regional and international tribunals are distinctively uncomfortable.

She bluntly states that “the CRC provides an ideology for state intervention” into social and economic life. It is not a limitation on state power but a rationale for expanding it.

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 In his recent syndicated column “A U.N. for the good guys,” Jonah Goldberg evokes the mindset of seventeenth-century puritanism. This is entirely understandable. Much of what the American left teaches, including its neoconservative element, resembles American Calvinism—albeit in a warmed-over form. In Puritan New England, Congregationalists—the only authorized communicants—were deeply troubled that unredeemed polluted their assemblies. Those who considered themselves visible saints were forced to break bread with those who could not properly prove their divine election. This led to a sectarian split that resulted in Rhode Island’s settlement by breakaway Calvinists disgusted by the toleration of impure religious assemblies in Massachusetts. This determined group of dissenters formed a purified congregation of the saints

In a similar way Jonah is looking for pure souls. He is agitated that Russia and China would not vote for “a fairly toothless U.N. resolution condemning the regime in Syria and calling for President Bashar Assad, the lipless murderer who runs the place, to step down.” Jonah points to a terrible spiritual defect in the governments that opposed the resolution. To him it is an outrage that the UN Security Council assigns seats to countries “because they are powerful, not because they are decent, wise or democratic.” This stems from what Jonah says is a “category error”: “There is nothing in the UN Charter…that says a government has to be democratic or even care for the welfare of its people.” The UN does something even more grievous from the neoconservative standpoint: It serves as a “counterweight to the United States” and allows morally reprehensible countries to thumb their noses at America..

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"And the Logos (Word) became flesh, and dwelt amongst us." (John 1: 14).

There is a mystery of the human soul which, by itself, implicates the platonic world of Ideas. In other words, it is as if we were rediscovering the pre-historical times, or, more precisely, the mythological experience of what we are as a creation of God. In this fashion, we must remind ourselves of the numb condition of Narcissus when he saw his own reflection in the waters and fell in love with it, or even the Myth of Eros who, according to Plato’s Socratic dialogue, the Symposium, was conceived by Poros («Resource») and Penia («Poverty») during the divine birth celebration of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

So, the numb condition of Narcissus can be understood as the fall of the astral or ether substance of the soul into material darkness. This fall is also present in the Myth of Eros, namely when Poros, just before his sexual union with Penia, fell asleep due to being enraptured by the nectar of the gods. Besides, this is probably the reason why a Portuguese occultist, universally known as Fernando Pessoa, said that whoever had invented the mirror had also poisoned the human soul. Therefore, according to the impenitent Heterodox, every man remains naturally powerless to face himself, even when he is symbolically capable of taking a bent posture to contemplate his own reflection in rivers and lakes.

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