Posted on 02/22/2014 5:19:23 AM PST by No One Special
One hundred years ago this coming Aug. 4, the day Britain declared war on Germany, socialists in the German Reichstag voted for credits to finance the war. Marxists — including Lenin, who that day was in what now is Poland — were scandalized. Marx had preached that the proletariat has no fatherland, only a transnational class loyalty to proletarians everywhere. “In 1918,” wrote Louis Fischer, Lenin’s best biographer, “patriotism and nationalism, born of the ‘subjectivism’ Lenin so disliked, were ideological crimes in Soviet Russia.”
These are history-shaping virtues in Ukraine today. Because the nation-state is the necessary framework for durable political liberty, nationalism is a necessary, although insufficient, impulse sustaining liberty. Marx, whose prophesies were perversely predictive because they were almost invariably wrong, predicted the end of nationalism. Economic forces, he said, determine political, cultural and psychological realities. So capitalism, with its borders-leaping cosmopolitanism, would dilute to the point of disappearance all emotional attachments to nations. Ukraine’s ferment is an emphatic, albeit redundant, refutation of Marxism.
The political elites who cobbled together the European Union hoped that the pooling of national sovereignties would extinguish the nationalism that, they think, ruined Europe’s 20th century. They considered the resulting “democracy deficit” — the transfer of national parliaments’ prerogatives to Brussels bureaucrats — a price well worth paying for tranquillity.
Now comes turbulent Ukraine, incandescent with nationalism and eager to preserve its sovereignty by a closer relationship with the European Union.
Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, is resisting the popular desire for constitutionally limited government and for a national existence more independent of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presence. Yanukovych wants to trade Ukraine’s aspirations for Putin’s billions.
Russia is ruled by a little, strutting Mussolini — the Duce, like Putin, enjoyed being photographed with his chest bare and his biceps flexed.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The Cold War is now being fought here.
No, we are still in politics and voting.
Do not claim some stupid, obscene thing, as the Cold War being fought here.
Bammy and his minions are running a Marxist (cold) War on America.
Yep, and the target is the American people. They must be destroyed before the forces of darkness can gain the control they desire.
See post 3.
Things are bad, but we are not there yet.
Given how hard the European socialists have worked over the last three decades at stamping out national identities in Europe, does it even make sense that Ukraine would look toward the EU to preserve its sovereignty?
I wonder if George Will even bothers to read the pap he churns out anymore.
One thing's for sure - I don't bother to read the pap he turns out any more. I didn't notice the author was George Will before I clicked into the thread. Saw his name and the source, read three lines, and quit reading. The FR comments on a George Will thread are inevitably more interesting than his commentary, even the ones that say "bfl".
This is from the Washington Post. Somehow, some way, it has to be the fault of America.
So, while not reading the column, you prefer to read the comments of others who have not read the column?
“So, while not reading the column, you prefer to read the comments of others who have not read the column?”
Just one way of making life easier.
The new cold war is with China.
watching live, Ukraine parliament voted by 328 to legally declare Yanuk no longer in charge!!!
Ukraine's situation has some resemblance to that of Croatia and Bosnia after Yugoslavia broke up. Milosevic tried to use the ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia to annex parts of those countries to Serbia. Putin may be able to count on the ethnic Russians in Ukraine to favor Russian domination over a truly independent Ukraine. Putin may not be interested in just annexing the Russian-majority districts of Ukraine but prefer to have the whole country under Russian overlordship.
When it’s George Will, yes. A lot of FReepers are smarter and more thoughtful than George Will. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve read a lot of your posts lately, and I would put you in that category. :-)
Gee, I didn’t know George was a neo-con.
That's what we would do if it was Mexico.
The Russians have legitimate, hard fought interests in Ukraine. They will not cede it to the EU.
The very LAST thing we would want to see is a divided Ukraine where the Western half is a dependent, welfare state of the EU with a far richer neighbor in the east to be jealous of.
Civil war in Ukraine could easily get EU countries, if not the US involved.
And that could easily escalate to world war.
Final? Rust never sleeps.
Little Russia (the Ukraine) declared independence in 1917. The Bolsheviks had different ideas, so over a few decades they eliminated millions of Ukrainians who didn't like to be told what to do. Legitimate? Hardly.
“The very LAST thing we would want to see is a divided Ukraine where the Western half is a dependent, welfare state of the EU with a far richer neighbor in the east to be jealous of. “
LOL!!! Personally. I would LOVE to see that. Russia, which from an economic standpoint is basically Mexico with nukes and an attitude problem, is going to create a far richer procterate area, than a free and independent western ukraine with open trade with a market 5 times the size of Russia? Good luck with that. Personally i think people re playing up split a bit much here. I don’t think either the Russians or most Ukrainians outside of Crimea actually want to split the country.
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