Vin Suprynowicz

Skeptics of the United Nations have long warned that subsidizing an outfit that holds any Third World potentate preening on an upturned bucket stands as a moral equal to the president of the United States could lead to trouble.

Supporters scoffed at the notion that — humored long enough — dashiki-clad kleptrocrats from nations where opponents routinely “disappear” could eventually sit in judgment of jurisprudence and “civil rights” in the United States.

In fact, all it took was election of a president whose Marxist college professors and America-hating pastor and CPUSA childhood mentors predispose him to view the world through the same prism, and … bingo.

“We acknowledge imperfection,” Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said as he grovelled before the “United Nations Human Rights Council” in Geneva Friday. “Though we are proud of our achievements, we are not satisfied with the status quo.”

I happen to agree. Somehow, though, I doubt Mr. Posner means the Obama administration now vows to work hard to honor the Second, Ninth, Tenth and 14th Amendments by halting prosecutions of citizens for buying and selling firearms or painkillers — or engaging in any other form of non-coercive commerce — without a government “license” … or to eliminate whole classes of taxes (starting with the insidious “property” and “income” taxes) in order to stop “seizing the bread from the mouth of labor.”

(After I’ve paid off my house, I still owe the government “rent”? Why? Roads are funded with tire and gasoline excises, and could otherwise be tolled. Literacy has been plunging ever since government took over funding and management of “schooling” from parents — which is where most “property taxes” go, even from those who fund their own kids’ education. Fire protection should be by subscription. And as for “police protection” — where do I opt for “a whole lot less, thank you”?)

Now, getting rid of THOSE would be real progress on “human rights”!

Posner made his remarks at the start of a three-hour public humiliation (billed as a “debate”) on America’s human-rights record, the first time the government has subjected itself to the Council’s scrutiny.

(The Bush administration routinely spurned the 47-member cabal because of the participation of what it deemed oppressive governments and the group’s constant one-sided denunciations of Israel.)

Friday, countries including Iran, Russia, China and Egypt made public relations hay by pressing the U.S. to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison and to ratify international “human-rights” conventions which include government censorship of “hate speech” in the press — though they don’t seem to prevent Egyptian newspapers from routinely reporting the shopworn libel that Jews grind up Arab babies to make their bread.

State Department legal adviser Harold Koh whined that the U.S. is working hard to close Guantanamo. Through “diligent efforts,” the number of detainees has dropped to 174 from 242 when Obama took office, he simpered.

Oh, please.

The administration could easily have replied, “You wanted the prison camp at Guantanamo closed? We just closed it. Those whose guilt could not be proven were sent home. Those that were caught out of their nations’ uniforms, making war on the United States or plotting sabotage and civilian murders, were lined up against a wall and shot yesterday, as called for by the Geneva and Hague international conventions on war. Thank you. Thank you very much. No, really, you shouldn’t have. Flowers? You’re too kind.”

Meantime, delegates from European nations, as well as Turkey, famed for its Armenian Christian genocide, pressed the U.S. to abolish the death penalty.

The Swiss and Belgian ambassadors were among those calling for the U.S. to scrap life sentences without the possibility of parole for criminals who were minors when they bludgeoned innocent children or storekeepers to death.

(Are the Swiss and Belgians offering to take them?)

What on earth is this sovereign nation — the one to which oppressed people have looked for centuries as a shining beacon of freedom — doing down on bended knee asking for approval of its policies by such dungeon-ridden hellholes as Venezuela, Uganda, Cuba, Red China, Libya, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan?

Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based U.N. Watch, pointed out non-democracies were allowed to “hijack the session for political propaganda and to drum up anti-American sentiment worldwide” by “stacking” the speakers list with “rogue regimes.”

The group reported Cuba circulated an advance sign-up sheet so critics of Washington would dominate the three hours.

Cuba … which still lets people rot in prison for decades for writing anti-Communist POETRY.