[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
James Bascom, writing for the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property<\/em> | March 30, 2022 | Source<\/a><\/p>\n <\/i> Kremlin.ru<\/a><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#000000″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” ol_font_size=”13px” text_orientation=”justified” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Since the\u00a0<\/span>Russian invasion<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of Ukraine on February 24, most of the focus attention has been on the military and humanitarian aspects of the conflict. The war is, after all, a geopolitical earthquake, the worst fighting and refugee crisis on European soil since World War II. It is possible that the war in Ukraine will spread beyond its borders or escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Major conflict between the world\u2019s great powers is more likely than at any time since the 1980s, if not earlier.<\/p>\n But the most important and lasting aspect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not the death and destruction it unleashed. It marks a major turning point in history, a paradigm shift in the political and ideological framework of the world in the same league as September 11, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the two World Wars. All of these disasters, in their time, destroyed the world\u2019s ideological, political and even cultural frameworks replaced them with new ones.<\/p>\n For one thing, the post-Cold War optimism of the past thirty years is well and indeed destroyed. As John Horvat put it, the \u201cend of history just ended.\u201d [1]<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War division between communism and anti-communism gave way to the nearly universal belief\u2014a faith, really\u2014in democracy, free-trade, peace, and global integration as the final stop of humanity\u2019s evolution. Institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union personified this belief. Thomas Friedman expressed this faith in the 1990s with his so-called Golden Arches Theory, which stated that no two countries with McDonald\u2019s franchises have ever gone to war with each other (both Russia and Ukraine have McDonald\u2019s).<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In truth, this post-Cold War dispensation started to crumble almost as soon as it began. Political divisions between the U.S. and Europe have been increasing for years. September 11 and its aftermath were a major blow to this democratic faith and trans-Atlantic unity. European powers, especially Germany, drastically cut their militaries to the point that they are practically defenseless. American Presidents of both political parties have steadily reduced the United States military presence to a shadow of what it was a generation ago. In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that NATO was \u201cbrain dead\u201d and prosed replacing the alliance with a pan-European military that excludes the United States. The Western alliance also suffered a significant blow with the collapse of\u00a0<\/span>Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>in August 2021.<\/p>\n Western weakness and political disunity were major factors in Putin\u2019s decision to attack Ukraine. He assumed that the West would yawn and make an accommodation with Russia, just as it had done previously in Crimea in 2014 and Georgia in 2008 (Russia, Crimea, and Georgia, by the way, all have Mcdonald\u2019s franchises).<\/p>\n Surprisingly, the opposite has occurred. Literally overnight, Putin\u2019s invasion has united the Western countries and reinvigorated NATO as the main defensive alliance for the free world. European powers are now racing to rebuild their militaries. On February 27, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced \u20ac100 billion ($110.6 billion) in new military spending, meeting the 2% GDP target for defense spending for the first time in decades. \u201cOur goal is to have one of the most capable, powerful armies in Europe in the course of this decade,\u201d said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner [2].<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Calls for more military spending are resounding in nearly every European capital. Almost every NATO member has sent weapons to Ukraine, including rifles, ammunition, and anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n This unity is not only political. Western leaders and\u00a0<\/span>Putin<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>himself have all made it clear that the war in Ukraine is not only about Ukraine. It is a fight between two political systems, two ideologies. The paradigm of the \u201cend of history\u201d marked by liberalism, consensus, and \u201cdialogue\u201d has given way to a new ideological struggle, which will define the twenty-first century, just as the Cold War defined the twentieth.<\/p>\n During the Cold War, an Iron Curtain divided Europe ideologically and physically. Both sides could not have been more clearly defined. On one side was the communist world dominated by the Soviet Union, promoting world revolution, atheism, and slavery to a totalitarian, socialist state. On the other side was the free world, led by the United States, representing order, Christianity, freedom, and Western civilization. One alliance represented good, the other evil.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s standoff between Russia and the West, the political lines are also clear. The vast majority of Western and non-Western countries have united in opposition to Russia. The Russian invasion is clearly immoral and has isolated Putin from the international community more than Joseph Stalin ever was. Few in the West support Putin\u2019s bloody offensive in Ukraine, even among his most ardent supporters. China, Putin\u2019s most important ally, has remained neutral in the war.<\/p>\n The ideological division, however, is not so clear-cut. While polls show majority support in the West for Ukraine, many on the right and the left have taken Russia\u2019s side. Both Russia\u2019s and Ukraine\u2019s supporters, however, agree on one thing: the war in Ukraine is a proxy war in a broader fight between two irreconcilable ideologies.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n On one side is the cause of\u00a0<\/span>liberal<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>democracy, the foundation of the modern world. Even before the invasion, many Western leaders had declared that the great battle of the future will be to defend democracy. On his trip to Europe in June 2021, Joe Biden stated that he was going to \u201crally the world\u2019s democracies\u201d in the face of threats from \u201cautocracies,\u201d in particular Russia and China. The struggle, he wrote, is \u201ca defining question of our time.\u201d [3]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This rallying cry for democracy increased greatly after the Russians invaded Ukraine. In the speech where he announced new German defense spending, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the reason was to better protect the country from attack and \u201cprotect our freedom and our democracy.\u201d [4]<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>In a guest essay for the\u00a0<\/span>New York Times<\/em>, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote that \u201cnever in my life have I seen an international crisis where the dividing line between right and wrong has been so stark, as the Russian war machine unleashes its fury on a proud democracy.\u201d Mr. Putin, he wrote, was attacking \u201cthe very foundation of international relations and the United Nations Charter.\u201d [5]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In his State of the Union address on March 1, President Joe Biden clearly stated that the fight to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression is a fight for democracy. \u201cIn the battle between democracy and autocracy,\u201d he declared, \u201cdemocracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.\u201d [6]<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>On March 2, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the war in\u00a0<\/span>Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>shows that \u201cdemocracy is no longer viewed as an undisputed system. It has been called into question right before our eyes.\u201d Now, he said, Europe must agree to \u201cpay the price of peace, freedom, and democracy.\u201d [7]<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>In his speech to the U.S. Congress on March 16, Ukrainian President Zelensky presented the war in his country as a fight to defend democracy. \u201cRight now, the destiny of our country is being decided, the destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.\u201d [8]<\/span><\/p>\n Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau framed the war in Ukraine as part of a struggle to restore faith in democratic institutions. \u201cDemocracy is always stronger than authoritarianism,\u201d he said while lamenting: \u201cIf we\u2019re going to be honest with each other, democracy hasn\u2019t exactly been at its best.\u201d [9]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Trudeau is correct to say that democracy is faltering, but not for the reasons he meant.<\/p>\n In the past, leftists in the West generally sympathized with the Soviet Union, while rightists opposed it. Today, many people in Europe and America on both the left and the right support Putin and are disillusioned with liberal democracy. The left sees voting as an obstacle to imposing a progressive, \u201cwoke\u201d agenda on America. They are undermining or destroying the nation\u2019s institutions that stand in the way, whether by packing the courts, adding new states, or making voter fraud easier.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n On the right, many are disillusioned with representative democracy and see it as a major factor in the widespread social dysfunction of our times. In the name of \u201cdemocracy,\u201d the West has seen racial hatred in the form of\u00a0<\/span>Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and Critical Race Theory, monuments torn down, jobs shipped to China, election integrity harmed, borders violated by hordes of illegal immigrants, reputations destroyed by false \u201cMeToo\u201d accusations, unborn children murdered, the definition of marriage redefined, and schools teach children that they can choose one of 52 \u201cgenders.\u201d Brexit and the election of Donald Trump happened, in part, because voters rejected this suicidal trajectory of liberal democracy.<\/p>\n On the other side of the ideological divide is \u201cPutinism,\u201d a somewhat muddled and eclectic ideology that mixes Russian nationalism, statism, dictatorship, nostalgia for communism, Russian Orthodox mysticism, hatred of the West, and other beliefs from strange nineteenth-century movements such as Russian Cosmism and pan-Slavism. This ideology, expounded and promoted by philosophers such as Alexander Dugin, is understood by few people, even in Russia. Putinism has led to a virtual police state in Russia with few real freedoms, a declining economy, and international isolation. It is also very corrupt, with cronyism rampant and ruled by a\u00a0<\/span>nouveau riche<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>oligarchy.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n While they don\u2019t necessarily endorse him entirely, many rightists in the West sympathize with Putin or see him as an ally in the fight against what they consider the real enemy: woke Western liberalism. On his Fox News show on February 22, Tucker Carlson expressed this sentiment when he asked a rhetorical question, \u201cWhy do I hate Putin so much?\u2026 Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?\u201d [10]\u00a0<\/span>Former President Donald Trump called Putin\u2019s invasion \u201csavvy\u201d and \u201cgenius.\u201d Steve Bannon said, \u201cPutin ain\u2019t woke\u2014he is anti-woke.\u201d Many other politicians and activists on the right continue to praise Putin\u2019s Russia, including Candace Owens, J.D. Vance, and Mike Pompeo, who called Putin a \u201cvery talented statesman\u201d with \u201clots of gifts.\u201d In Europe, nearly all the right-wing populist party leaders such as Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, and Mateo Salvini support Putin.<\/p>\n Support for Putin also comes from the left. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, and British MP Jeremy Corbyn\u2014all socialists\u2014are some of\u00a0<\/span>Putin\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>biggest supporters. The first two work directly for the Kremlin, while Corbyn is one of Putin\u2019s most reliable defenders in the U.K. parliament. Far-left populist political parties all over Europe are some of Putin\u2019s biggest fans, including the Left Party of Germany (the former East German Communist Party), Podemos of Spain, Syriza of Greece, and France\u2019s La France Insoumise.<\/p>\n In America, the left has always favored Russia and Putin. Many will recall the famous scene in 2009 when Hillary Clinton, then-Secretary of State under President Obama, presented the famous \u201creset button\u201d to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In 2015, American Green Party candidate Jill Stein sat at the same table with Vladimir Putin at a Russia Today gala dinner in Moscow, during which she criticized the U.S.\u2019s \u201cdisastrous militarism\u201d towards Russia.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n This standoff between Putinism and Liberalism is a false dilemma. The West should not have to choose between two false solutions. Neither one can resolve the crisis afflicting the Western world. On the contrary, both ideologies are at war with it.<\/p>\n A central point of Putinism is hatred for the \u201cliberal\u201d West. In his speeches, Putin often attacks the West for its acceptance of sexual perversions such as homosexual \u201cmarriage\u201d and gender ideology. While condemnation of homosexuality is not incorrect, his sincerity in opposing immorality is doubtful. The facts show that\u00a0<\/span>Russia<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is one of the most morally corrupt countries in the world, with the world\u2019s highest abortion rate, the highest HIV\/AIDS prevalence rate and suicide rate in Europe, one of the world\u2019s worst drug problems, and a religious participation rate significantly lower than Western countries.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s hate for the West comes from his nationalist ideology that sees Western civilization as a mortal enemy of Russia, hell-bent on its destruction. In Putin\u2019s view, the West (and especially America) is synonymous with liberalism, which he sees as the source of the world\u2019s problems. He has long promoted a fusion of European and Asian countries into a \u201cEurasian Union\u201d that could oppose and destroy the Western alliance. His allies around the world are countries that oppose the West and especially the United States in one way or another, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and China. Putin sees the West as encroaching on Russia\u2019s \u201cspiritual space\u201d in Europe and preventing Russia from fulfilling its manifest destiny, to dominate \u201cEurasia\u201d from Lisbon to Vladivostok.<\/p>\n While Putinism is waging war on Western civilization from without, liberalism is destroying it from within.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In the United States, \u201cwoke\u201d liberals are waging a cultural war to destroy the remnants of order and tradition, whether by toppling statues of historical figures or inciting racial hatred with the Marxist BLM movement. For decades, liberals have undermined the natural family with the sexual revolution, first with so-called same-sex \u201cmarriage\u201d and, more recently, with anti-natural transgender ideology. Big Tech liberals, who claim to defend \u201cfree expression,\u201d have censored speech that contradicts the liberal orthodoxy. Religion, especially the traditional teachings of Catholicism, is banned from the public square in the name of \u201cfreedom.\u201d<\/p>\n The choice presented to the general public between Putinism and liberalism is a false dilemma. Both are at war with Western civilization, the flower of the\u00a0<\/span>Catholic Church<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and whose remnants are the last bulwark against the chaos engulfing the world. Western civilization can only be saved\u2014and indeed restored\u2014by returning to the traditional social and moral teachings of the Church. As Pope Saint Pius X wrote in his 1910 encyclical\u00a0<\/span>Notre Charge Apostolique<\/em>:<\/p>\n We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker \u2013 the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be set up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants: \u2018omnia instaurare in Christo.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While Putinism is waging war on Western civilization from without, liberalism is destroying it from within<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msfcc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Footnotes<\/h2>\n
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