The United Nations’ deadly negligence and disgraceful obfuscation in the recent Haitian cholera epidemic earn the justified ire of Theodore Dalrymple in his latest Law & Liberty essay.
But the United Nations was born with Original Virtue, and certainly with Original Legal Immunity, which is the nearest we come to innocence these days. The Haitian population has received no compensation for the introduction of one of the few plagues that it did not already suffer from. One’s blood boils to read of almost casual dishonesty of UN functionaries, willing dupes, and condescending editors of journals who preferred to save the image of the United Nations than prevent death on a large scale, and in the end did neither.