Word: public
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...recently argued with a Boston public high school teacher about the importance of American students, and especially citizens, possessing an awareness of international affairs. "Does it really matter to us what is going on in Kosovo or East Timor?" the teacher asked. The teacher decried the amount of American tax dollars devoted to supporting corrupt governments, sponsoring American military campaigns in other sovereign states or maintaining impotent international institutions such...
...discouraged to hear this latent advocacy for isolationism, which seems so incongruous with America's interconnectedness with other parts of the world. But I have heard this teacher's view articulated by many of my classmates as well, suggesting that dominant public opinion towards the UN is either negative or just apathetic...
...been successful in putting these issues on the table for international discussion, and in eliciting governments' pledges to change their own policies. Would the issues of poverty, environmental degradation, human rights, public health and disarmament be better addressed through bilateral mechanisms, or by countries on their own? No, they would...
These problems involve the management of public goods and everyone benefits from a successful resolution. Unfortunately, few are willing to bear the cost of resolving the problems. Countries will not undertake the necessary reforms to mitigate global warming, curb population growth, implement legal frameworks that protect human rights or invest in universal vaccination programs to halt the spread of disease because the individual country would bear the cost of the reform without exclusively benefiting from the outcome...
...argue that the United States should devote less financial and political capital to the UN is to shortsightedly confine the definition of American national interest to the present domestic agenda. While health care policy, campaign finance reform, social security surpluses and tax cuts deserve public discussion, we cheat ourselves if we believe that these issues are the only ones affecting America today. The true challenge for policy makers is not how to escape the entangling alliances of international institutions, but how to bring events in other parts of the world into the daily consciousness of the American people...