Yes, it’s true. I remember reading in history how the Stalin admirers could justify everything he did. If he made a pact with Hitler, it was okay. If he crushed the peasants, it was okay. It was the same for the working class. So now we have a thug, really a no good son of a bitch, who oppressed the Russian people as a KGB agent when the Gulag was in full operating condition. He takes advantage of his police state skills to rise to power. He manipulates and even kills journalist. He jails opponents. And there are bozos here on this conservative site who seem as a cool dude despite the fact that he’s an obvious autocrat and an expatiationistic chauvinist. Did any of these newfangled “conservatives” who admire Putin ever read Solzhenitsyn? I doubt it. They’re our version of the low information voter.
An interesting contemporary read:
I’m a conservative who’s read Solzhenitsyn and isn’t particularly fond of Putin, yet I find it hard to get real excited about the Ukraine situation. The notion that it’s a Stalinist/Hitlerian takeover just doesn’t have traction with me. To me it’s basically the loathsome EU versus the loathsome Putin. I’m content to stay on the sidelines and watch cat videos.
Only the Party apparatus has changed. The goal remains the same.
Shouldn't be a surprise, given the support demonstrated here for authoritarian policies like the Drug War, the Patriot Act, militarizing the border and local police, foreign military adventurism, Internet censorship, and "good old capitalist" multinational corporations.
A majority of people among all political stripes want a "man on horseback" leader like Putin and the Big Government apparatus he wields, as long as they get to use that apparatus against people they don't like. So a majority of people vote for either Big Government Faction, (D) or (R) - only to find that they themselves eventually end up being the Uniparty's real targets. Mitch McConnell was unusually candid the other day when he publicly swore to destroy the Tea Party.
Being a principled supporter of Constitutional liberty is much harder. That's why so few of them are to be found, these days - and most get labeled by one or both Factions as nuts.