"For years, foreign policy critics, politicians and outraged members of the general public have been urging the US to defund and quit the United Nations. Some have advocated that a rival or successor organization should be established. Now there is a movement calling to 'defund and replace' the troubled organization with a new world body: The Covenant of Democratic Nations. This writer has been a participating witness to the birth of that movement...
The Covenant conversation launched in earnest on January 23, 2017, when a panel of like-minded voices assembled in the crowded Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office Building. Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ,) who currently supports a bill to defund the UN, opened the proceedings by declaring, 'This is a critically important issue. The United Nations started out with a noble charter ... but the United Nations has not only failed their charter, they have distinctly moved in the opposite direction and done actual harm ... They have become an anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, anti-freedom mob ... We need some type of alternative-a Covenant of Democratic Nations ... We need to repeal and replace.'...
In many ways, the League of Nations began with a speech: Woodrow Wilson's 'Fourteen Points.' The United Nations began with a short, written declaration. For the Covenant of Democratic Nations, the conversation has now begun."