Nah, my argument is -- the US has certainly been known to screw up, but we still compare pretty favorably with a large chunk of countries on the UN, and I think it's a no-brainer that we're doing better than Sudan. I get very upset at us when we don't live up to our own ideals because 1) between those ideals (which I think are to a significant degree genuine, though our government is not always the best representative of this) and our position in the world, it's especially important that we set a good example and 2) it's my country, dammit, and I expect better. But I think that there is a real difference between being wrong and being wrongest. We screw up. It's a problem. We need to fix it. But I think that we've still got a pretty clear edge on Sudan, or for that matter China or Russia.

When the UN doesn't seem to be able to differentiate the US from Sudan, what that tells me is not that the UN is wrong because it disagrees with the US, but that the UN is wrong because it is clearly not actually thinking about the human rights angle at all. I'd be quite happy if the UN genuinely went around and criticized everyone in turn and objectively, including the US. In fact, I'd be extremely happy, because there really ought to be a group that can be trusted to do that, and I would love to see that group be the UN. I'm just not convinced that it currently is.