I don't know how many head-of-state nut cases arrived in New York for the annual meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. But surely there are many others besides Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muamar Gaddafi. There is a class of rulers from Africa, for example, who govern recklessly in behalf of themselves but under the cover of one or another form of millenarianism. (The brutal clowns of South America are a bit different. They still believe that Fidel Castro is a model for building the good society.) This is, I suppose, the revenge of ideology over the London School of Economics.

Today was arguably the United Nations at its best. I know that sounds odd, since the day was dominated by the insane musings of Muammar Qaddafi. But while there is plenty wrong with the United Nations--and while liberals tend to overestimate both its moral legitimacy and what it can realistically accomplish--the international body does serve at least one genuinely valuable function: It provides a place where leaders and their representatives can gather in one spot and speak their minds--clarifying for the world who these leaders are and what, exactly, they believe.