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This helps explain why the UN General Assembly, five years after the attacks of 9/11, lacks the moral clarity to even agree on a definition of terrorism. It is why the Security Council, despite its lofty rhetoric, cannot rise above narrow political interests to stop the genocidal violence in Sudan. Finally, this utopianism has nurtured a human-rights regime that rewards the world's most repressive governments with membership and voting privileges.

Of the 53 member states of the old Human Rights Commission, for example, at least 25 percent were considered "not free" by leading human-rights organizations. (At the nadir of its corruption, the commission nominated Libya as its chair and re-elected Sudan amid reports of ethnic cleansing.) During the last two decades, attempts to produce resolutions critical of human-rights violators routinely died in their crib—blocked in backroom maneuvers.

It's doubtful that any of this will change under the new regime. The General Assembly failed to set any criteria for membership in the Human Rights Council. Governments need only a simple majority of General Assembly votes to join. Thus, the proportion of autocratic states in the body (scaled down to 47 members) remains about the same. Iran did not make the cut, but China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia easily pocketed enough votes. The Islamic Conference, with 56 nations, can effectively block United States admission.

Moreover, the council appears to have the same hug-a-thug mentality: At the conclusion of its first and second meetings last year, members failed to produce a resolution on behalf of the victims in Sudan and singled out only one country among 192 UN member states for special criticism: Israel. "Most of the world's abuses were ignored," reported UN Watch, the Geneva-based human-rights group. Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, agreed: "In the face of atrocities in Sudan, attacks on civilians in Sri Lanka, and impunity for mass murder in Uzbekistan, this council was largely silent."

Unfortunately, this moral chauvinism is not limited to the UN bureaucracy and its affiliates. Two years ago, for example, Amnesty International noisily condemned the U.S. war on terror as "the most sustained attack on human rights and international law in 50 years." To be sure, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib (the catalyst for Amnesty's condemnation) is a despicable episode in U.S. foreign policy. But think of it: There was no mention of the atrocities under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein. No reference to the killing fields of Darfur, the child soldiers of Africa, the women sold into sexual slavery in Eastern Europe, or the hundreds of thousands of dissidents languishing in Chinese prisons.

Religious progressives echo the partisan cant of their secular counterparts. Just as the humanitarian crisis in Darfur hit a fever pitch, the World Council of Churches lambasted the United States in its "Decade to Overcome Violence." The Christian Century ran articles calling for a "season of repentance" for U.S. actions in Iraq and elsewhere. No other nation, it seemed, had anything to repent of. A 2005 study by the Institute on Religion and Democracy found that of 197 human-rights criticisms by mainline churches from 2000 to 2003, nearly 70 percent were aimed at America and Israel—but none at China, Libya, Syria, or North Korea. Few at the UN spoke up last year when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush the devil.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2