Imagine someone in your neighborhood who was, shall we say, less than a model citizen.

He malnourishes his kids and allows them no contact with the outside world. He locks them up in the house, often chaining them in the basement, and if they attempt to escape, when he’s lucky enough to have the neighbors return them to him, he beats them, often to death. Sometimes he even kidnaps the neighbors’ children, and treats them similarly. Little justification is required for punishment, often brutal. Sometimes nothing more than disrespect toward him (which could merely of insufficient continual praise), or even looking out the window at the neighbors, brings down the blows.

He has no job. He makes a living by selling drugs and by counterfeiting. He also collects guns, and supplements his income by threatening the neighbors with bodily harm if they don’t give him money and food, which he then eats himself, and uses the money to buy porn, while continuing to neglect his children, except those who are willing to join in the abuse and help protect him from the neighbors and police. He repeatedly promises to give up the weapons if he gets enough loot, but he never keeps the promises, and simply continues to accumulate them. He is obviously beyond rehabilitation.

What would we do with such a man?

Isn’t it obvious? We would never have allowed it to even get this far. We would arrest him, and try and imprison (if not execute) him for his multiple horrible crimes, and take his children away.

But what if he had some of the older children standing at the window, behind armor, with guns and firebombs aimed at the neighbors, with threats to start killing them and burning their houses if such an attempt was made? What would we do then?

In case anyone hasn’t guessed by now, I’m describing the government/thugocracy of the so-called “Democratic” so-called “Peoples” so-called “Republic” of Korea.

Why do we tolerate this regime? Why is it a member in good standing in the UN? Why, rather than negotiating with it, are we not coming up with plans to remove it?

Because the extortion works. The South Koreans fear the onslaught of artillery on Seoul that would result from a war, and both they and the Chinese fear the social and economic cost of supporting the regime’s starving masses. But if ever there was a case for liberating a people this is it. While they didn’t do it universally in Iraq (and of course, only people unfamiliar with the actual history claim that anyone thought they would), liberating the North Koreans would result in flowers being thrown at us. If they hadn’t all ready eaten them, that is.

But a sadder reason is that we’ve elevated the notion of “national sovereignty” to too high a level. China fears that if the puppy eater is removed on the basis of his abuse of his people, they could be next. The UN has become a club to coddle dictators, because our entrance criteria are set so low. They will all protect each other, fearing that if they don’t hang together they will hang separately. All of which, of course, points up, once again, the uselessness of the institution, at least in terms of maintaining the peace, or protecting human rights.