The Kremlin years ago imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers. Vladimir Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.
In his Kremlin defense of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond.
Crimea, said Putin, “is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”
Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.
This speech recalls last December’s address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:
“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?
Indicting the “Bolsheviks” who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, “May God judge them.”
What is going on here?
With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.
In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.
Western leaders who compare Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Hitler’s Anschluss with Austria, who dismiss him as a “KGB thug,” who call him “the alleged thief, liar and murderer who rules Russia,” as the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins did, believe Putin’s claim to stand on higher moral ground is beyond blasphemous.
But Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on “The Third Rome.”
The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today’s Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was—Moscow.
Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Putin is plugging into some of the modern world’s most powerful currents.
Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America’s arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.
He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.
In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?
The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.
Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that she was stunned when in Tbilisi to hear a Georgian lawyer declare of the former pro-Western regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, “They were LGBT.”
“It was an eye-opening moment,” wrote Applebaum. Fear and loathing of the same-sex-marriage pandemic has gone global. In Paris, a million-man Moral Majority marched in angry protest.
Author Masha Gessen, who has written a book on Putin, says of his last two years, “Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world.”
But the war to be waged with the West is not with rockets. It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia’s role, in Putin’s words, is to “prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”
Would that be the “chaotic darkness” and “primitive state” of mankind, before the Light came into the world?
This writer was startled to read in the Jan-Feb. newsletter from the social conservative World Council of Families in Rockford, Ill., that, of the “ten best trends” in the world in 2013, number one was “Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader.”
In 2013, the Kremlin imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers.
“While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view,” writes WCF’s Allan Carlson, “Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12.”
Will Vladimir Putin give the keynote?
In the new ideological Cold War, whose side is God on now?
Republished with gracious permission from Pat Buchanan.
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May Russia continue to move toward God, may Russia ask for consecration to Our Lady. May we, the United States, do the same. But for us, it will take going back beyond our founding, for we were always liberal, we were always corrupt, and we are now, if unchecked, well on our way to ruining the world.
Nice job, Mr. B!
Missus Baker, please recommend some books on the US liberal threat historically. Altogether, a fascinating piece guaranteed to miss many on America’s corrupted right.
Oh Mr. Buchanon. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then religion comes a close second. I see no sincerity to Putin’s new found faith. He’s still the old KGB agent and he has manipulated events to invade now into his third country. People in Russia have been killed for him to go unopposed. I can’t see how any Christianity can support that. The man is a meglo-maniac and is destabilizing Europe and expanding a Russian empire. Just talk to some Ukrainians and see if they consider his invasion moral and just.
Actually the whole premise of your article is suspect. No one should ever claim that God is on anyone’s side. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said “Don’t ever claim God is on our side; I want to humbly pray that we are on God’s side.” Probably not an exact quote, I’m going by memory.
I’m glad that Russia is returning to Christianity but don’t be fooled at how widespread it is. I suspect most of it is in name only. Russia is still Russia with all its problems and dysfunctions.
1. Putin’s Christianity is genuine.
2. Ask some Ukrainians, you ask? The ones in Crimea overwhelmingly supported its return to Russia. By the way, Putin didn’t send troops into Crimea. A treaty with Ukraine allowed ~33,000 Russian Federation troops to be based there. There were ~25,000 at the time the Crimeans voted to join the Russian federation.
3. By the way–What invasion of Eastern Ukraine? 1000 men? That the US/NATO “says” are there? With murky satellite photos to boot? An invasion is an Invasion, my friend, with tanks, missiles, troops.
4. NATO has been every inch the aggressor here, starting in the 90s, by adding 12 new members, all of them in Eastern Europe, bases (the Baltics, the Black Sea) lining Russia’s periphery; the on again off again on again plans for a missle defense shield–apparently against Iran, it was said– in the Czech Republic, or Poland (Putin offered the Americans Russian territory outside of the Azerbaijan border, they declined). The US has bombed its way across Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with nary a move from Putin to obstruct. And he helped the US save face on Syria, a year ago this month, at the UN
5. Washington has been playing games in Kiev since the get go. Read the transcript of the stupid Nuland-Pyatt (the US amb to Ukraine)phonecall, which one can find on line. She, of the eloquent diplomatic speak, is basically calling for engineering a coup. This is a must-read and puts things in perspective.
6. Please please please please please be wary of what you hear and see in the mainstream media, so called. Journalists and their editors get press releases on this stuff, authored by who knows what, and few appear to be really on the ground in these parts of Ukraine in question.
Well said.
Skepticism of Putin’s motive is unsurprising, yet God can write straight with crooked lines. Neither does the West occupy the moral high ground. I’d rather bet on a despot who opened the windows of Heaven, not realising the significance of his actions, than our corrupt and increasingly tyrannical elective dictatorship.
Should we aim our indignation at all of the KGB agents who became born again social democrats and sold their nations soveriegnty to the EU, accepted socialism and gay marriage, or are we to limit our indignation to just the KGB agents who became born again Christians and maintained their nations sovereignty, introduced a 13% flat tax and defended traditional marriage?
Which Ukrainians do you propose we ask? The ones in Donetsk?
One other thing. I guess Putin was counciled by his new found Christianity when he divorced his wife and took up with some hot young chickies. He must have heard that one from a homily at the weekly liturgy.
Maybe he was deeply unhappy in his marriage. Why anyone should be forced to suffer through a bad marriage, Christian or not, is ridiculous.
Religionist hypocrisy of Catholics or Baptists who take the moral highground (themselves often being something else behind the scenes) is one of the off-putting aspects of their rhetoric.
The new woman you refer to is an Olympic gold medalist and a parliamentarian. So much for the younger and “dumber” one.
By the way, any thoughts on my earlier comments above?
Well, I suppose it was just a matter of time until someone brought up Mr. Putin’s married life. Shall we now go down the list of conservatives who have sinned in one capacity or another, and therefore conclude that if a statesman happened to commit an infidelity or some other lamentable act, then he ought to resign from supporting the traditional institution of the family? Do we really know that he “divorced” his wife – and when we say “divorced” – did he apply for an annulment in the Orthodox Church (if that is even possible) – or did he just get a civil divorce (which in the eyes of God means nothing). If he got a civil divorce but is still married in the Church – he is an adulterer – but his wife is still his wife, his children are still his children, and God is still going to forgive him if and when he asks for forgiveness and repents. These are personal things – not pubic things.
We are talking about the President of Russia, not about a Priest or the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. We do not know anything, really, about Mr. Putin’s family life. We do know what his policies have been in the realm of family and economy. His political posture is, judging Russia in the perspective of the past several decades, far better than it is worse.
Next, I suppose we shall hear how wealthy he is and how many palaces he has, unlike the democratic pauper Mr. Poroshenko.
By the way: regarding that “invasion” – it seems that Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Putin have agreed a cease-fire.
It also seems that the Ukranians have come up with a “great idea” – they will build a giant wall on the Russian-Ukranian border.
So this is to be the result of the “struggle for democracy” then? A new Berlin Wall? Just the fact that Yatseniuk even dared float such a preposterous idea is horrible. Is this what the XXI century is going to be like? Reagan tears down the Berlin wall, just so Kiev can build a new one?
If that is to be the result of “free Ukraine” – then it is a pity that the Ukraine was ever allowed to leave Russia (Kiev hypocritically argues that the referendum in Crimea is illegal because “the whole country should have voted” – but when Sholzenitzyn said “the whole country of Russia should have voted whether Ukraine should leave” – that logic doesn’t work?); there would be no deaths, no embargos, no talk of building barbed wire walls to seperate families and people who, only two years ago were living in peace and enjoying football at the Donetsk stadium – newly built for the Euro 2012 – now destroyed.
Rather than direct outrage at Mr. Putin’s marriage problems; of which we know NOTHING really – let us perhaps direct outrage at Barbara Walters and the US media elite who broadcast – for the world to see – programs showing how parents are scared witless by “Gender Therapists” to subject their children to first anti-hormonal drugs, then estrogen and in the end inversion of their penises – all because these “Gender Therapists” have scared the parents into believing that their children – who usually start this process at age 2 – will “commit suicide” unless they are hormonally transformed into the opposite sex.
Not once have I seen any of these “doctors” and “therapists” propagated in the mainstream media make the obvious statement:
You can run a genetic test on a human being to see whether they are homosexual or not – it is a matter of genetics. Yet this is not done – instead – they say “if your boy puts on a dress, it might not be a phase – the boy wants to be a girl – let’s get started with the therapy.”
Barbara Walters – if the UNited States were a normal country – would be in jail for child molestation and child abuse – along with those “Gender Therapists” and those “Doctors” would have their liscenses revoked.
In a normal country – if a parent came to a doctor and said “my 2 year old boy says he wants to be a girl – let’s get started on hormonal treatment” – the police would take those parents to jail, and any doctor who agreed to the treatment would lose their license.
Putin saved Russia from this fate and saved Russian children from a similar fate if they were adopted by Americans and subjected to these horrible things.
Interesting analyses. Well done.
I only dispute the assertion that homosexuality is genetic. Perhaps some of it is. But far more, I believe, is psychological. A trauma at an early age, poor relationships with parents that feminize a man, cynical women, or too much media push in that direction etc.
Lots of mess psychologically, whether it is unfashionable to say so or not–I do not care, these have been my observations over and again.
Let me put out a comprehensive comment and then I’ll shut up.
First I applaud Russia’s return to Christianity. It is a good thing and their opposition to modern cultural dysfunctions is a great thing. I’m not sure it’s as widespread and deep as people think it is. I spent several months in Kazakhstan several years ago. At least a third of that country is culturally Russian and the Russians I interacted with a daily basis were not in the least religious. I did go to a couple of Russian Orthodox churches. The people attending were certainly serious in their faith, but my guess is that it’s only a couple of percent of the population. Hopefully it will grow.
Any person’s antenna should certainly go up when a politician uses religion, and that’s for any place in the world. It’s manipulative. A culture’s shared values don’t require an appeal to religion. Hitler used Christianity for his political ends. I don’t have any insight in Putin’s sincerity but my antenna has gone up. The man discarded his wife; he’s suddenly rich like all the other plutocrats that have cornered Russia’s wealth; people seem to die around him. He’s invaded three countries trying to angle for Russian expansion. Even if Russian was in the right in these three countries, you would have thought after WWII no one would use the ethnic identity argument for expansion. Even if Russian was in the right, humility and prudence would have prevented a leader from doing what he has done. It smacks of fascism.
So what do I believe? Putin’s religious sentiment or the facts before my eyes? None of that squares with a religious man. It squares with a former KGB agent. You people who are supporting him are anomalies in the western world. A large consensus in the western world has been formed about Putin, and it’s not good. They are seeing the facts, not the rhetoric. What’s shocking is that so called conservatives here are using the rhetoric of the blame-America-first crowd. In the communist world they used to have a term for people who provided excuses for the Communists: “useful fools.” I prefer the Americanized version.
I see. No one should use the excuse of “ethnic identity” for expansion, you say, but it is okay to use “fake WMD”, “Democracy!” (whatever the heck that is) and my personal favorite “humanitarian intervention” so bomb everyone back to the stone age, yes?
As for Putin lining his pockets—please! Mr. Clinton, Mr. Blair, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush have all made out like thieves–Clinton a crook from Whitewater on, Cheney a war profiteer of the first order; the Bush family close to the Bin Ladens, and Mr. Blair a lackey.
And Michelle Obama’s $10 million vacation bill–on tax payer money…
I am still waiting for your proof of this “invasion” in East Ukraine. Just as we are waiting for proof that Russia shot down the Malaysian jet liner (what happened to that story?)
Even if Russian (sic) was in the right in these three countries, you would have thought after WWII no one would use the ethnic identity argument for expansion.
Not sure what you mean by that – no one is talking genocide, but rather self-determination. Ethnic affinity seems as good a basis as any to elect to join one group or another. In fact, in the middle east, it seems many of its problems can be traced precisely to forcing together ethnically diverse groups into artificial boundaries. Can’t say I disagree too much with your caution about a politician using religious rhetoric insincerely – happens everywhere, especially in the good ol’ U S of A. And as for “Western Consensus” about anything – well, I take that with the same grain of salt as religious rhetoric by politicians.
Mr. Haupl,
We are both correct: homosexuality is sometimes genetically acquired, sometimes psychological. Of course I somewhat inaccurately use the term homosexuality in this context, because it is, by modern nomenclature, gender dysfunction and not the actual sexual orientation of these children that is in question.
The point still stands, however, that if a professional doctor is going to even begin thinking about such a radical form of treatment as anti-hormonal drugs, then estrogen, then a full blown operation, I would think that rather than rely on “gender psychology”, any scientist worth his worth would rely on genetic testing.
Of course, the reason they don’t is because statisticly, the percentage of human born homosexual on a genetic level is so miniscule that there wouldn’t be enough of them to provide the demamd for the operation of the Gender industry.
Yes, I agree with what you say here.
And the revelation of this “Gender Therapy” nonsense is new–and quite a shock to me (and I ahd thought myself well past shock here). The “Bipolar” industry was having its field day, now this. The gullibility of idiots knows no bounds.
Mr. Manny –
I agree with your views regarding the use of religion for political manipulation. However, please note that it all depends on the religion. Our antenas do not seem to be going up that there is a radical, secular liberal religion which has been created by the Mass Media in the West and which is being actively invoked by Western government to justify invasions of foreign countries.
How many American’s “antenas” go up when “democracy” is invoked to justify some foreign aggression, how many American’s “antenas” went up when “gay rights” suddenly became justifiable cause for condemning Russia and begining the sickening spiral that has led us to the present brink of war?
Westerners are conditioned by their liberal secularist religion to believe that “religions” are only Christian, Islamic, Jewish – but that liberalism itself is not a religion, and thus politicians invoking liberalism are not “invoking religion” – when in fact – they are.
I cannot speak for others, but my position has always been – since 2000 really – that Mr. Putin, like all Russian leaders, must be judged on the basis of context. In the context of Russian political history, he is the most liberal democratic statesman to have ever ruled Russia since – perhaps – Alexander I and Alexander II. By all of the standards of Western liberal democracy, respect for private property etc etc – his rule has come closest to what Westerners consider just.
I too can rattle off many stories about injustice within Russia or Russian lands. Believe me, living in Poland, I hear them every day. It is not my ambition to diminish their significance – rather, I always argue (and am usually ignored in this argument) that rather than compare Mr. Putin to Ronald Reagan or Ayn Rand, we ought to compare him to Joseph Stalin.
Joseph Stalin, may I remind everyone, was responsible for the murder of 30 million people. Mr. Putin may arguably be responsible for the murder of a handful of unfortunate souls who irritated him. Stalin was responsible for farm collectivisation, gulags, and the destruction of all private property rights. Mr. Putin has created a flat tax system, and while the concept of “private property” is still rather flimsy from what I have heard of how it is treated in Moscow, it is on the whole far more secure than at any time since before the Russian revolution of 1917. I could go on – but you see my point.
As for the idea of useful idiots – I remind everyone that to be a useful idiot, it is first a prerequisite that one be an idiot. Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed that he was convinced Stalin and the USSR were forces for anti-colonialism and the spread of global democracy. He could proclaim this because of decades of propaganda in the American press in support of a communism that numerous Americans wished to bring to American shores.
It is not a coincidence that now, just as President Obama is bringing what most closely approximates Communism in the American experience to the United States, so too the Mass Media have developed an anti-Russian narrative.
It would destroy the Obama administration and the stranglehold of the Democratic Party on the academia if Americans were to realize that ideas such as “one low tax rate for everybody” are not just ideas made up by silly and marginal candidates like Herman Cain or Steve Forbes – but have actually been applied in practice and produced an astounding economic growth and general prosperity. It would destroy the Obama administration and the stranglehold of the Democratic party on the academia if Americans were to realize that radical privatization led to rational resource allocation and not only to problems with oligarchs (I am not belittling the problem – but it is better to have oligarchs and a private economy rather than oligarchs in a growing public sector economy). It would destroy the Obama administration and the stranglehold of the Democratic Party on the academia if Amiercans were to realize that one of the most cathartic and greatest events to happen in Eastern Europe was the opening of all of the files of the various Secret Service agencies of the State, and the revalation – for the public to see – of who exactly was a Communist agent and where they were employed. Can you imagine doing to the CIA and FBI what was done to the Stasi or other Warsaw Pact security agencies? Wouldn’t that clean up American political life rather quickly?
So of course, there has been no change on the “party line” in the United States. Those who wanted a total state in America in the 1930s supported Stalin. Those who want a total state in America now attack Russia.
This same line of attack that is now used against Putin (and Orban) was used against the Kaczynski government – I remember it well. And although Mr. Kaczynski would have never cared to put himself in the political company of Mr. Putin – their policies were very similar in many aspects, and certainly their enemies in the West were all the same.
As I have said on numerous occasions – my fear is that others in Russia, others who had they been in control, would now already be in Kiev, may one day oust Mr. Putin and marginalize Mr. Medvedev and then – then I think we shall really be in a world of trouble.
Ah – and one other point towards Mr. Manny:
Sir – about these wars you invoke; the three Russian invasions – I will not attempt an apologia for Russia with regard to this subject, because that is beside the point – though in my opinion these wars were not as clear cut as Western media like to paint them.
Instead, I would like to point out that if we survey Russian history, we will see that Russia – being a vast empire, and now a vast federation of very different nations and cultures – has always had to deal with uprisings, seperatists and peoples who, due to a variety of political and historical circumstances – suddenly awaken to the prospect of independence. This problem does not “go away” with the birth of a new nation-state, it actually multiplies if the new nation-state is run by fools. A nation-state is always composed of several different groups, and if the state is badly governed, the prospect for further seperatism arises again. This ends either peacefully or violently.
Now Russia in general, on this note – has acted with greater humanitarianism than we give it credit for. First – Russia withdrew the Soviet army from all of Eastern Europe, from the Baltic states and even in Ukraine, only the Black Sea fleet remained at Sevastopol. Russia allowed for the seperation of the various nations which did not want to be part of the Russian federation from its’ lands.
Now – let’s be quite frank: Ukraine and Georgia had many many years within which to reform their economies and chart a pro-Western course. To say that they were disrupted by “Russian agents” is to say nothing of the fact that it was ultimately democratic voting which kept them from this course. Those Eastern European nations which were more successful and insistent in charting a pro-Western course did so.
Those that were not, were not – and now when their economies are crumbling – they try to hold both Russia and the West hostage to their incompetence. These little nation-states and their incompetent political elites try to pull the Great Powers into a conflict in order to preserve their estates.
Russia is not agreeing to this game – which is why all Russian military operations that you cite – even if (for the sake of argument) we agree that they were initiated by Russia and “Russia’s fault” – all of them have been radically limited in scope and aimed at a very limited strategic objective.
In Ukraine – the DPR was, as per Mr. Poroshenko’s orders, supposed to be surrounded and cut off from the Russian border, because that is where all of its’ supplies and influx of volunteers came from – the Ukranian army was routed, just like the Georgian army was routed when it attempted to take back contested territories.
Little countries will always be routed by big nuclear super powers. This is why statesmanship demands that little countries pursue their interests in a patient and prudent manner, not through wars which they will loose.
Yet the people running these little countries are often uneducated dupes who know nothing about geopolitics or simply agents of Western expansion who are willing to get their own citizens killed in ridiculous military adventures to satisfy their Western pay masters.
It all reminds me of those in my family who live in Belarus – they watched as the frontline changed several times during their lifetime. First the Whites, then the Reds, then the Poles, then the Nazis, then the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviet Poles, then …and on it went. People who lived in the country side could do nothing but pray for peace and accept the outcome – hoping it would not be genocidal.
That is, in my view, what most people in Donetsk are now feeling – and this is a fate that ANY intelligent Eastern European statesman who KNEW history would do everything to AVOID.
But when even the German fascist National Democratic Party is smart enough to be split amongst themselves as to whether or not to support the Svoboda party in Ukraine (after all, the Nazis in Germany know that their friends in Svoboda are all old SS-men), it pains me to see that Poland’s ex-Prime Minister, leader of the patriotic conservative right was – well -for lack of a better term – ignorant enough to rush headlong to Kiev and stand right beside the Svoboda Nazi leader who worships the Banderites who killed 200,000 Poles.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Shakashvili was equally naive and ignorant in Georgia if he really thought that sending some troops into Ossetia and Abhazia would reuslt in anything other than what he got.
That’s not statesmanship – that’s stupidity. Eastern Europe must be spaired stupid people if everyone else is to survive.
Mr. Rieth, can you cite a source re: a genetic cause for homosexuality?
Mr. Cheeks,
my source is my wife, an MA in biology and biochemistry who worked in genetics. I have dug up this general description on the internet:
Sex chromosome abnormalities are gender specific. Normal males inherit an X and a Y chromosome while females have two X’s. A single Y chromosome is sufficient to produce maleness while its absence is necessary for femaleness. Female abnormalities are due to variations in the number of X chromosomes. Male abnormalities are the result of irregular numbers of either the X or the Y chromosome or both.
The way my wife explains it, in terms simple fellows like me can underdtand, is as follows:
– There is an extremely small percentage of humans who are born either homosexual as a matter of genetics or with gender abnormalities (i.e. male body but femaleness genetically or vice-versa). Statistically, this is an extreme minority which, given that many homosexuals do not reproduce, will never grow in the general population.
These people require medical and psychological care as well as boundless compassion.
These people are the victims of the gay rights movement and the homosexual lobby which is using propaganda to convert children and young people who have no genetic homosexual or transsexual tendency towards sexual deviancy, much as a pedophile gets young boys and girls to accept their sexual meetings as “normal”
The homosexual lobby screams that gayness is genetic when it serves their purpose (we don’t have a choice), but screams it is psychological when defending the horrible practice of hormonally transforming children into the opposite sex.
Homosexuality, like all sexual abnormality and gender abnormality is a genetic disease that requires care, not a “life style”
The growth in the percentage of homosexuals in the West is a growth in psychologically conditioned deviancy, not genetic abnormalities.
Mr. Reith
Justifying Russia’s actions by historical context may be nice for Universities and intellectuals, but war is a reality that people in these invaded countries have to live with. And the countries around Russia have to live with the fear of their future prospects. Is it a coincidence they all want to join NATO? Understanding why and that perhaps Putin may be less of a killer than Joseph Stalin is pretty much meaningless to world stability.
I highly recommend to everyone in this discussion Geogre Will’s excellent article he put out yesterday on this very subject:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386990/vladimir-putins-hitlerian-mind-george-will
Manny, but what must not be lost sight of is that this sort of power politics is universal. Great powers have always sort spheres of influence. The West has been encroaching right up to the borders of Russia, which still considers itself a great power. It is not surprising that Putin is pushing back. We may decry that power politics leads to smaller nations being oppressed, but there is little that can be done. To try and idealistically overturn all power politics is foolish. Russia does not threaten European or world stability and peace as a whole, so far as can be discerned at the moment. It seems more than likely Putin will be content with restabilising Russian hegemony over those nations bordering it.
There is nothing the West can do without likely doing more harm than good; and the West has already escalated the conflict by supporting and encouraging the Ukraine to try and resist the Russians.
Mr. Manny,
They want to join NATO because the cash rewards are huge. Stay in line, pat on the head, get a bone. I know a bit about this.
Echoing the commentator above, if you can explain to us why NATO should have expanded to include 12 new members from the early 1990s to mid-2000s; to include Georgia as a “partner”, have bases parked in the Baltics and Black Sea, and to lobby for a “missle defense system” pointed at Russia without setting off alarm bells in Moscow, I shall be glad to hear it. Russia, compared to US actions of the past decade, have been relatively tame.
And people still read George Will? Hmm.
Mr. Manny,
There is no reason to read Mr. Will’s article – the title says it all. The people with the Hitlerian mind are the ones wearing Waffen SS emblems, bombing Donetsk for the whole summer, not Vladimir Putin whose father and city are remembered in Russia as heroic defenders against the Nazi onslaught. Any analysis which fails to take account of the reality of who Ukranians are and what the Nazi roots of the present regime in Ukraine are will, as it has from the Maidan to now, be rooted in a fiction and lead to further bloodshed.
However, of course, I did read Mr. Will’s article, for how else to critique it? Well, it does a wonderful job of creating a poor analogy. Replace “Putin’s Ukraine overture” with “Gulf of Tonkin incident” and we can write an equally meaningless article called “LBJ’s Hitlerian mind” which will likewise be a childish analysis of how the Gulf of Tonkin was President Johnson’s “Gliwice Radio Station”. We will therefore enlighten ourselves on the subject of Vietnam with equal success – that is none.
Mr. Will fails to even recognize the significance of the fact that Gliwice is now part of Poland (as is “Techin” (Cieszyn) thanks to none other than the Soviet Union Mr. Will conjures up as a bogeyman.
Speaking of bogeymen, which is it? Does Putin have a “Hitlerian mind” or does he want to revive the Soviet Union? Because, you do realize the two are contrary aims?
The Hitlerian mind, the mind of Adolf Hitler, was concerned with three things: a) pan-Germanism, b) racial purity as espoused in Aryan race ideology and c) the destruction of the USSR, which Hitler considered the epitomy of Jewish-Bolshevism. Everything Hitler did was aimed at these three goals, though we can debate which was a priority for the Hitlerian mind.
What is absolutely beyond debate is that the Hitlerian mind concieved of an independent Ukraine state, cleansed of Russians, Poles and Jews, and full of only patriotic NAZI Ukrainians. To this end, Hitler supported the founder of modern Ukraine, Stephan Bandera, who, amongst his other genocidal achievements, was responsible for the murder of 200,000 Poles.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union envisioned – at least by 1938 and 39 – peace with Nazi Germany, the partition of Poland (which at the time, if you care to look at a map, was far larger in an eastern direction) and the restoration of Ukrainian lands lost to Poland in 1921.
Contrary to the Soviet Union, the Hitlerian mind used Molotov-Ribbentrop as a tactical gambit to secure the eastern front in order to fight the spineless coward democracies on the Western front before turning east again. The Hitlerian mind was also, by 1941, slowly going insane and therefore did not consider the terrible consequences for Germany of turning to fight the USSR without having first destroyed Britain.
As one of its first acts with a view to this goal, the Hitlerian mind accepted the voluntary participation of thousands of Ukrainians in the Waffen SS and christened a new Nazi Ukraine which helped fight the Soviet Union.
That same Soviet Union which Mr. Will would have us believe Mr. Putin wants to restore was then allied with Mr. Will’s country fighting against the Hitlerian mind that Mr. Will attributes to Mr. Putin…while at the same time attributing to him a desire to restore the Soviet Union…
This is such a mess that while I understand that the Washington Post might want to publish this kind of “analysis”, I would hope National Review would know better, given their fine traditions.
Mr. Putin’s mind, like his country, are not “Hitlerian” – to make the claim is to make Russia either laugh or anger them, for no other country lost more men and women fighting Hitler than Soviet Russia. We can criticize the mind of Putin and the Russian regime, but if one does so by trying to draw an analogy with Hitler, that effort is laughable.
Please spare me.
In 2010, Russia had the highest number of abortions per woman of child-bearing age in the world.
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/policy/world-abortion-policies-2013.shtml
Russia is the world’s largest consumer of heroin. 2.5 million Russians are addicted to drugs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/russia-drug-abuse_n_1667786.html
25% of Russian men die before they are 55, which is down from 37% in recent years. The primary cause for the disparity with other nations is vodka.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-25961063
Russia is run by oligarchs and mafias, of which Putin is the Godfather. Sounds like a pious, God-fearing Christian nation, all right.
“A large consensus in the western world has been formed about Putin, and it’s not good. ”
What “Consensus”? A “Consensus” of a media/political/academic “Elite” does not a true consensus make. It’s like when someone tries to cite “World Opinion” when what they really mean is the opinions of an assortment of left wing reporters, professors and political types.
Mr. Jim,
We can provide sad statistics about the abortion rates, heroin consumption rates and mortality rates of Americans, and then top it off with the sentence:
“America is run by the Chicago Mafia, of which Obama is the Godfather” and then go from there to condemning the entire nation (and a nation consists of the dead, the living and the unborn – so a statistic for one moment in time is not a very good measure of the character of a nation).
I think that Mr. Buchanan’s argument here is that we are dealing with a different Russia – an older Russia – a pre-Soviet Russia reborn in modern times, weighed down by the ballasts of its’ Soviet past, but also somewhat uplifted by that past. We must deal with it as it is. To generalize about Russia as evil is to simply play into the hands of war propaganda.
For if all of these generalizations form the basis for policy – what other poicy can there be except a catastrophic and needless war?
Americans already used these kinds of generalizations for their policy in Ukraine when supporting the Maidain – and of course that led to war. If you now use these generalizations for policy towards Russia… you see where this will go.
Mr. Rieth, thank you very much! I appreciate your time and consideration!
I think he should run for president . US president that is !
Sir, I was not born in the United States, so am not elligable (and oppose amending the constitution to make foreign born citizens elligable). America does not lack for patriots, so I am sure eventually someone will appear and we can then vote for him.
Thank you all the same.