For years the U.N. played off to the world that it held the reasonable minds needed to keep the world safe, playing off the distrust people felt about George W. Bush and his we'll-go-it-alone administration. This view was bolstered when the previously-believed-to-be-a-straight-shooter Colin Powell presented the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, which have not been found and are confirmed to not exist.

Now that America has a president who says he wants to and will earn the world's respect and return America to its position as most admirable nation in the world, the U.N. goes and does something downright particular.

Actually, it is one group within the United Nations, but the human rights body within the international coalition may have just pushed the anti-U.N. movement to new heights (and this comes after some city councils across the nation have gone so far as to pass anti-U.N. local laws, symbolic of what, I wish not to directly address).

The Human Rights council voted for a resolution that would ban criticism of religion, perhaps partially inspired by those Danish cartoons about you know who. I don't even want to end up near their s--t lists. 

While this will give great fodder for those like Bill Maher, it will outrage most Americans, I believe. We love to criticize. Just look how readers reacted to a Catholic bishop who dared criticize the Tigers' Opening Day being on Good Friday. 

(As for that one, I say it's only a baseball game. It's not election day was placed on someone holy calendar. Skip the game; there's 161 more -- and if the Tigers can get it going, maybe even a dozen or so more than that.)

And what is criticism anyway? In plenty of Muslim countries, people get arrested or killed for thoughtful analysis of policies that are based on religion. 

While this resolution is really only a recommendation, it hurts the efforts of the U.N. to help nations with food, with science, with humanitarian relief, with political conflicts.

If this is where this particular council was going, Bush was right to abandon it. I wonder if we had stayed participants if we couldn't have kept some crazed initiative like this from even reaching a vote. 

It will only hurt, and to the nations and people who dislike us and feel this is necessary, they will on day see that this kind of restriction on the freedom of speech, thought and expression will only hurt.