Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the 1975 speech in which he laid bare the UN's moral squalor

In 1975, idi Amin - that barbaric, semi-human, psychopathic, wife-murdering, genocidal cannibal - successfully led a move to have the United Nations adopt a resolution stating that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. This vile lie, supported – inevitably – by every other tyrant, kleptocrat and racist mass-murderer at the UN was passed by 72 votes to 35. I distinctly remember at the time wondering if I’d misread the result of the vote. From that moment on, I’ve despised the UN, considering it a mouthpiece for evil.

Although America had a Republican president (Gerald Ford), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, was the US Ambassador to the UN at the time (he had also worked for Nixon). Fiercely anti-racist, and anti-Communist and pro-Israeli, Moynihan’s reaction to the vote was to deliver a blistering, excoriating verbal assault on the UN.

I’d previously only read extracts from the speech, but reading about in Douglas Murray’s excellent 2005 book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It made me look it up on YouTube. Moynihan isn’t a great performer (he had a bit of a stutter and his vowels are quite strange) but the speech itself – lucid, angry and righteous - – is magnificent:

I can’t remember the last time I heard such unfeigned moral outrage expressed so articulately by a leading politician: nowadays, it seems to be mainly a matter of shifty little careerists striking self-serving poses.

Still, one thing hasn’t changed – the UN is still rubbish.