Public Opinion
According to the polling organization Rasmussen Reports, in the year 2004 a minority of 44% of United States Citizens had a favorable view of the United Nations. This number continued to decline steadily, and two years later in 2006 that number had fallen to 31%. As of 2006 slightly over a quarter (26% as of 2006) of Americans say "the U.S. should not be involved" with the United Nations, with a moderate majority of 57% still supporting remaining a member. (The 2006 poll was of 1000 adults.) A 2008 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that 39% find it "very important" and 21% "not important" to strengthen the U.N. Some ranking leaders of the United Nations have suggested that the United States government has been projecting a negative image of the UN, although this allegation is denied by the US. Few observers expect the "U.S. out of U.N." movement to result in the US actually withdrawing for the foreseeable future.
Some controversy occurred in 1992 when US Army medic Michael New protested the United Nations by refusing to wear the UN insignia on his uniform during a peacekeeping mission to Macedonia. Michael New faced a court martial and was subsequently discharged for his disobedience to his commanding officer; to this day he still has the belief that he was correct to refuse service under the United Nations.
Read more about this topic: United States Withdrawal From The United Nations
Famous quotes containing the words public opinion, public and/or opinion:
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)