By Patrick Buchanan
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 Martha 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?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
“In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God's side.”
ReplyDeleteThis belief is just as dangerous as it was when Lincoln sang the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
“In the new ideological Cold War, whose side is God on now?”
This is only a guess, but I suspect He sees in both sides the work of the devil.
MY neighbor, who happens to be a preacher, never wants to discuss whose side "Pussy Riot" is on.
ReplyDeleteNor does he ever want to discuss the divorce and/or abortion rate of the last few Islamic countries that the US has obliterated.
He doesn't care to hear my Navy stories either but he does salute me as a veteran.
I know what shame is.
It seems as if he doesn't.
.
weird.
Sadly, many Christians here in the states see the flag as a some sort of sacramental. Unfortunately since the "Reformation" most of Christianity has become the religious aspect of nationalism.
DeleteThe destruction of the family unit has NOTHING to do with liberty.
ReplyDelete.
It's actually the opposite.
Walter Block Says Slavery Is Better Than Welfare For African-American Communities
Deletehttp://youtu.be/jEl7BJVNFq4
JW: Troll.
DeleteJerry Wolfgang believes that currency debasement is good for the poor. Let them eat cake, right Jerry?
DeleteWalter Block said that family formation is better than welfare for blacks. Seems like a reasonable claim.
DeleteSo what was Jerry Wolfgang's reaction to this, and to the NY Times smear?
"These people ['the kooks in the liberty movement'] are either socially retarded or are merely trolling to get people to talk about them. They can't say anything that is intelligent enough to attract attention so they have to make shocking remarks to get attention."
An example of "shocking remarks", says Jerry, is Block's sarcastic remark about picking cotton, which only the "socially retarded" would take literally, as if Block really does believe that picking cotton and singing songs as a slave is better than liberty. Now, Jerry Wolfgang is not so much "socially retarded" as socially mischievous. So I conclude that he's a sympathizer of an antiblack conspiracy involving welfare statism.
Let's get an IP address (or several) for him, trace it to a street address, and let some people know where he can be found.
JW is an interesting guy, I've spotted him on youtube as well. Over there he exclusively posts on Misesian Libertarians/Austrians. For instance, he's posted on Walter Block Videos at least three or four times that I've seen. However, if you take a look at his posts, and his reposts (unlike here he's more likely to respond to someone on youtube), he's never attacking some groups you think a liberal like him would attack, namely, Conservatives in general, Republicans, Republican leadership, also no attacks on any CATO or beltwaytarians, nor groups, like Freedomworks. His posts are very oddly centered on Mises Institute affiliated libertarians, despite what appears to be his otherwise intense passion, demonstrated here, for boilerplate liberalism. Also, oddly enough, he's pro war. He also uses lots of racial slurs, and has called Thomas Sowell an uncle tom, and worse racial epithets, such as the n word. He's got not the characteristics of a government paid Troll, but I'd guess, someone paid to attack Mises affiliated libertarians.
DeleteDude, what the hell is your problem. "Get an IP address?" You're as loony as he is. Do the internet a favor and never comment again. Anywhere. It is never ok to threaten anyone just for making spiteful comments.
DeleteNot to mention, Wolfgang's God (US FED), is responsible for the largest population of caged blacks in the entire world...........ever.
Delete.
Why are progressives so racist?
"are either socially retarded or are merely trolling to get people to talk about them."
DeleteThe irony of JW making this statement if exceptionally funny. It's like he's a case study for psychological projection.
Where many see a problem, I see an opportunity. For example, Baptists could be encouraged to emigrate to Russia, land of vodka, icons, and despotism. There are also in America too many Calvinists, Pentecostals, and people who claim not have a denomination. So it's pleasing to see the World Council of Families doing it's part to prepare dark minds for the sowing of good idea.
ReplyDeleteSome of those sectarians might make an orthodox Russian gag in revulsion, but Lutheranism is not alien to Russia. It was found there, esp. among German immigrants, during the time of the czars, and its followers, too, need encouragement to get out of America.