Putin arrives at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Tver region
Posted on 01/28/2005 8:43:55 PM PST by Destro
Why are the American media, both liberal and conservative, so unanimously anti-Russian?
Ira Straus
Branko Milanovic has asked JRL readers to respond to an intriguing question: "why are the American media, both liberal and conservative, so unanimously anti-Russian?" He has offered a series of plausible hypotheses to comment on, so I'd like to take him up on the challenge.
However, first we need to be clear about the subject. Milanovic clarifies that he does not mean that reporters are all subjectively hostile to Russia, but that they are led into invariably anti-Russian positions by their premises. Most of the responses to him on JRL have ignored this, and treated it as a simpler question of pro-Russian or anti-Russian subjective attitudes on the part of reporters.
The question instead becomes one of the premises: "Why are the implicit assumptions apparently held by every major analyst and reporters of the most influential US papers, (1) that whatever problem at hand where there is some Russian involvement, it is the Russians who are guilty until proven the reverse, and (2) that the only Russian policy that is to be applauded is a policy that is supposed to serve the interests of other countries but (not) Russia."
That such premises are widely present would be hard to deny; any content analysis would confirm it, once one thought of looking for it. However, since the premises are unstated one can of course quibble over the words with which Mr. Milanovic makes them manifest.
One might also quibble over just how widespread they are. Certainly what appears on the editorial and op-ed pages of the Washington Post is scandalous in its insistent, irrational hostility toward Russia, as well as the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. Most of the American media are more moderate and try to show some consideration to Russia, out of respect both for national interests and for Russia's dramatic and peaceful changes from the days when it was our enemy. However, the assumptions to which Milanovic points remain rather pervasive, and serve to sabotage the good faith efforts that writers make at being fair.
This is not a matter of whether one thinks that Russia is right or wrong in particular matters. Rather, it is a matter of assumptions that in most cases exclude awareness of the very possibility that a Russian activity beyond its borders is ever benign or that a Russian interest is ever legitimate. Serious criticism of Russia requires greater discrimination; otherwise there is no reason for it to be paid any attention by Russia, nor by Western governments since they accurately perceive that it's important for their interests to get cooperation from Russia.
Criticism of the media's anti-Russian assumptions is also logically unrelated to whether one considers the media to be on the right or wrong side on a particular issue. On Ukraine it seems Milanovic and I both think Russia was on the wrong side and the media on the right side; yet I find the Western media's "campaign" on this subject to have been wrong in approach -- indeed, more similar to the Yanukovych campaign with its polarizing two-camp spirit than to Yushchenko's. Why did the media misrepresent its own proclaimed cause within Ukraine? We can add this question to the ones Milanovic posed.
And we can add Dmitri Glinski's question (JRL 9022) -- why is there the relentless highlighting of the negative about Russia? -- something that could be done to any country to make it look black, but generally isn't done to any other country. China gets ignored for the same and far worse faults. Why the "double standard", as Russians constantly ask in what has become an all-national complaint?
Now, regarding Milanovic proffered explanations: I think it's worth obliging his request for comment on them, rather than writing yet another general discourse. His explanations seem sufficiently on target as to offer a basis for building on. Here they are, with my comments:
"(1) For seventy years, commentators have been anti-Soviet and since obviously some of Russia's foreign policy stances will coincide with those of the USSR, their knee-jerk reaction to argue against these positions in the past carried over to the present day."
Inevitably this is a factor. Probably the main factor.
Soviet Russia was the enemy on a global scale; the West opposed it everywhere. It was an ideological war, where both sides had to try to delegitimize the other's position everywhere; so we tried to delegitimize its interests everywhere. Further: each side pinned the label of "imperialism" on any interest the other might pursue or influence it might exercise beyond its border. At the same time, each side tried to delegitimize the other domestically. The domestic delegitimization more or less ceased after Dec. 1991, although the universalist human rights and democracy ideology endured and grew even stronger, with potential for application to delegitimize any regime anywhere. But the damnation of any external Russian influence as "imperialist" continued as before. From this follows, by a strict if perverse logic, the unstated premises that Milanovic finds in the Western media: that Russia cannot have any valid interests beyond its borders but should only serve the interests of other countries and must bear the presumption of guilt in any dispute.
But if this is a Cold War outlook, why do young post-1991 journalists chime in? One would have to explain this by a kind of "milieu culture", where the assumptions of analysis were deeply embedded. In many newspapers and think tanks it was habitual to produce anti-Russian analysis and to dismiss anything else as dupery of Russian propaganda. For fifty years, it was seen as a matter of life and death for Western civilization to think this way; the culture was backed by a series of circular arguments to head off any attention to other thoughts. The circular reasoning continues to head off new thoughts. Newcomers can always be expected to want to fit in.
Occasionally I also perceive a sort of "Cold War envy" among young writers: they would have liked to have been heroes of the Cold War but it was over before they got the chance. Now they can have a surrogate Cold War heroism by attacking Russia. And it's a lot safer to attack Russia today than in Soviet times, when the "opponents of the Cold War" could be expected to counter-attack vigorously. After the fact, it seems clear that it was right to fight for the Western side of the Cold War. At the time, the choice was a lot more forlorn: an arguable one made within a dangerous nuclear standoff, and more likely to get oneself attacked than applauded in the mass media.
"(2) Russia is viewed as a defeated power, say like Germany and Japan in the late 1940 and the 1950s. Hence Americans are annoyed by Russia's truculence. In other words, Russia should accept that it lost the Cold War, behave like a defeated power and keep a very, very low profile. In other words, do not box out of your league."
Russians fear that this is a major factor in American thinking. I think it is a minor one. Most of the media and public -- and most government officials for that matter -- seem unaffected by this attitude. To be sure, for a geopolitical analyst like Brzezinski, Russia matters so much that he devotes a large portion of his writings to proving that it doesn't matter. But he is not representative; he is, after all, Polish as well as American in his geopolitics.
"(3) Russia is viewed as an ultimately conservative force... Since "progressive" no longer means socialist but pro-market and "pro-democracy" and since the latter is identified with being "pro-US", then Russia is by definition on the other side of the divide."
Yes, Russia is criticized as anti-democracy and anti-American; no, it is not criticized as anti-market. Just the opposite: there are plenty of people who are angry at Russia for having betrayed Communism and gone "capitalistâ". Both Left and Right get to hate Russia nowadays on ideological grounds.
"(4) Russia is viewed as an anti-progressive and anti-Semitic force again harking back to the 19th century imagery...
"(5) East European propaganda has been very effective perhaps because there was some truth in it (Communism was in most cases imposed by Soviet arms), or perhaps because it is a simple story (big guys oppress small guys), or perhaps because there is a lot of ignorance among the pundits. On the latter, I wonder how many journalists know that Rumanians and Hungarians in their thousands were fighting the Soviets together with the Nazi all the way to Stalingrad (and after); or that "the nice and helpless" East European countries often fought among themselves (Hungary and Poland each taking a slice of Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938) so that territorial aggrandizement was hardly a Russian specialty."
Well spoken, evidently by one with roots in the former Yugoslavia, where the demonic side of some small Eastern European nationalisms was seen a lot more recently than 1938.
He might have added that the West is familiar with Polish suffering from Russian domination, and rightly so, but not with the earlier history of the reverse Russian suffering. This is pertinent to the present situation.
Russians remember well the Time of Troubles, with Polish interventions in Moscow, and still earlier periods of two-sided conflict. Lest we dismiss this as obsessing over ancient history, we should remember that Americans obsessed over Britain as the national enemy for a century after 1776 (some of them still do!), reconciling only in the 1890s and only half-way; Franklin Roosevelt treated the British Empire as an enemy even while embracing little England proper as an ally in the life-and-death battles of WWII; Eisenhower did likewise in the Suez crisis. This American obsession with undermining the British Empire, even when England proper was a vital ally, shows two things: (a) it is uncomfortably similar to the present US half-embrace of Russia proper while remaining hostile to almost anything that anyone labels "Russian imperialism"; and (b) there is nothing unnatural in remembering one's countries major historic conflicts, or in past historical traumas retaining a sense of "present-ness". Indeed, for a country like Russia, it is inevitable: the territory is the same and the neighbors are the same.
After withdrawing in 1991 to a geopolitical position not too far removed from that of the Time of Troubles, how could Russians fail to notice the historical analogies? The only real alternative -- integration into a common defense structure offering wider assurances, such as NATO -- was denied them (while their neighbors got in, with the criteria bent to discriminate against Russian interests much in the manner described by Milanovic); they were left to think of their own security in traditional historic geographical terms.
At present, the long national memory plays into Russian fears about Polish influence in Ukraine, whose revolution is seen as another step driving back Russia with an ultimate goal of breaking up the Russian federation (a goal that some Ukrainian nationalist emailers confidently informed me of when they found that my support for the Orange Revolution did not extend to support for further revenge on Russia). In my view the Russian fears are misplaced, but before dismissing them out of hand, we might consider that their fear is not of Poland and Ukrainian nationalists per se but of their influence on the superpower of the day, America. They point to the prominence of Eastern European ethnics in our democratization NGOs and quasi-governmental agencies, which help define who is to be regarded as "a democrat" in the former Soviet space and sometimes treat anti-Russianism as a criterion. Not to mention Mr. Brzezinski, whose thoughts, while clever and sometimes generous in what they propose for the future, always seem to boil down in the present to a need for Russia to cede more geopolitical positions and territory.
Indeed, as Mr. Milanovic has observed, if one were to judge America from its media, one would have to say that Americans think Russia has no right to any interests at all or to any actions to defend them. Is it surprising that Russians draw what seem to be the logical conclusions from what our media say -- that Western pressures will not cease until Russia has collapsed and broken into pieces? This is an all too natural conclusion in Russian eyes, even if our media are unconscious of the premises of their own arguments and would not imagine themselves ever to embrace such further deductions as that Russia ought to break up. Can we be sure that the media are right in their presumption of their own future innocence? Would it be too much to ask the American media to be more sensitive to how they sometimes seem to confirm Russia's worst fears?
"(6) Analysts and pundits know better but they try to play to the popular prejudices which are anti-Russian (which of course begs the question, why are they anti-Russian?)"
No. Just the opposite: the public does not view Russia as an enemy. Part of the elite acts that way despite the public. It thinks it knows better than the public, which has been hoodwinked into thinking Russia has changed: this has been a constant theme ever since the elitist Bush-Scowcroft-Eagleburger reaction against Reagan who they thought was naive about Gorbachev.
Polls regularly show since 1991 that, when Americans are asked who is America's main enemy, only 1-2% name Russia. About 50% usually have given the diplomatically correct answer that we have no national enemy. Substantial percentages name terrorists, Islamic extremists, or China as the enemy. Then comes a trickle naming various other countries, such as Germany or Japan, or France, or Britain; Russia is well down on the list. There is no mass sentiment of enmity to Russia. This contrasts to the Russian public, where similar polls regularly show about 25% naming America as Russia's main enemy in the world -- dwarfing the percentages that name Chechnya, Islamic extremists, terrorists, China, or anyone else.
"or to play to the preferences of the US administration..."
No again. A big role is played, however, by the exact opposite mechanism: the traditional adversarial relation between media and Administration. By attacking Russia, the media gets in a patriotic-sounding attack on the Administration for not being anti-Russian.
Articles and TV programs on Chechnya almost invariably make a major point of saying that the US government is failing properly to denounce Russia for Chechnya and is "giving Russia a pass" (a revealing phrase in itself). In most cases it seems it is this criticism of the US government that is the main purpose of the articles, not criticism of Russia or concern for Chechnya, about which most editorialists and pundits know little and care less.
The media also criticize themselves for not being anti-Russian enough. In a space of a few weeks at a time not very long ago, practically every major medium reaching the DC area -- PBS, another TV network, BBC, Deutsche Welle, NPR, Washington Post -- had a major program on Chechnya. Each one was a program styled to whip up sentiment not to promote comprehension. Each one deplored the war in near-identical terms, reaching for the "g" word, blaming the US and Western governments for not attacking Russia over this -- and, strangely, attacking the Western media themselves for ignoring the war. In reality, Chechnya has been over-covered when measured in proportion to other wars of similar scale and character. Sudan's mass murder-war against black Muslim Darfur has probably beat out Chechnya in recent coverage, probably because it has risked becoming a genuine and fast-moving genocide, but its decades-old mass murder-war against the black Christian-animist South has received far less attention. One of the pieces on Chechnya was titled, without realizing the irony, "the forgotten war". The desire to be in the opposition was carried to the point of reductio ad absurdum: the media was in campaign mode, and attacked its own campaign for not being loud enough.
On JRL readers may recall how Masha Gessen launched into an attack on the media for being pro-Russian, the meaning of it being that most of the media were not as relentlessly anti-Russian as her own writings and the Washington Post. But then, it would be bad form for American media to display a fixed hostile polemical attitude toward another country (and people are noticing that it is bad form in the case of the Post). It is only toward their own government that journalists can really feel proud of taking a fixed negativist attitude. But there they run into a problem: the public -- their audience -- resents it as unpatriotic.
Here is where Russia comes in to save the day. Attacking it is a convoluted way of playing domestic politics; the media get to act out a national-patriotic role and an adversarial anti-government role at one and the same time. Of all foreign countries, Russia is the most useful for playing domestic politics against. It was the main turf for politicizing foreign policy questions throughout the Cold War years. "Being soft on Russia" was the kind of charge that could always arouse interest. Today it has the further advantage of no longer sounding like "anti-Communism", a distaste for which among the literary classes restrained such accusations during the Cold War years.
Nowadays attacking Russia has a politically correct tinge to it, since Russia is a white Christian country. By contrast, attacking China still suffers from being susceptible to counter-charges of racism and anti-Communism. Perhaps this is the source of the strange double standard in which Russia is attacked just about any day for just about anything while China is virtually ignored day after day, month after month for the same and far worse.
Attacking Russia is especially "correct" when it is a matter attacking a Republican Administration for being soft on a Russia that is beating up on Muslims. One doubts that much of the American public shares the media's sensibilities on this. Picture bubba listening as Dan Rather launches into Russia for beating up on Muslim Chechens; he'll probably be telling himself, "there the liberal media go again, standing up for our enemies and blaming our allies the Russians for fighting back". Among Americans who write about politics, only Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter dare to say such things, but many more think it, in whole or in part.
The importance of adversarial culture for the media can be seen from the Bush I administration, which truly was anti-Russian. The media bashed Bush I for this; it became ambivalent on Russia, taking on a more pro-Russian hue than any time before or since. As soon as Clinton got a pro-Russian reputation, the media switched back to Russia-bashing mode. It was Clinton-bashing that was the real point.
In other words, the media should not be taken as a barometer of U.S. government policieson Russia. It is more often an indicator of the opposite.
What does it matter? A lot. The media drumbeat against Russia has an enormous impact on public policy, not only in the US but in every Western country, and in Russia itself. It makes it hard to think clearly, or even to see clearly. It fosters and fans conflict. It promotes a tit for every tat.
First, the effects on Russians. The media play an enormous role in convincing them that we're an enemy. They can see CNN, BBC and other Western media daily, at length; they hear from our government only rarely, and practically never from the American people. They can see the Western media's implicit premises far more clearly than the media themselves do. Mistakenly assuming these premises to represent Western policy, they draw what would be the logical conclusion: that we are their enemy. If Russia does in turn become an enemy again, the media will have been a major cause of it.
Second, effects on Western policy-making are just as damaging. Instead of helping the Western governments do their thinking, the media block out most of the space for it. They make it harder for the West to think out loud about such matters as how to build active alliance relations with Russia, or how to overcome the remaining Cold War standoffs. They make it harder to follow a steady course where cooperation has been agreed, They have done much to cause the West to be an unreliable partner for Russia, an unreliability that democrats in Russia noted with profound regret throughout the 1990s. They prioritize conflicting interests over shared interests, encouraging every minor divergence of interest to grow into a major opposition. Their audience ratings flourish on conflict; and no longer fearing it as risking war or nuclear incineration, they promote it shamelessly.
If we end up with a new Cold War -- and the risk is becoming a real one -- it won't be a small thing. It would mean a nuclear superpower once again ranged against us and the world plunged back into a bipolar disorder, only in more unstable conditions. In that case, the media will no doubt turn around and denounce as "reckless" those who carry out their painful duties in the conflict. The truly reckless ones, however, will have been those in this era who so freely did so much to bring it on.
I have just gone through 50 posts here without any mention of a giant of faith, literature and civilization like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn even by the defenders of Russia. That may say something about why Russia is not enjoying a good press here.
BTW, I have a piss poor view of most of Western Europe (far more so than of Russia), the United Nations, and the folks who killed 300 innocent schoolchildren in a former Soviet republic bordering Russia (I personally think it would have been wonderful if Bush had called Putin and ofered a blank check on American assistance to the extent desired by Putin and miltant public statement in support of Putin in that affair). I am skeptical of anyone who does not have similar piss poor views of those targets.
Russia does not have to be RodneyDangerfieldNation and Western expectations are not very high. Putin could have a very good relationship with us and vice versa to the great benefit of Russia and the US. Maybe he will seek that. Bush has not been very critical of Putin and, if anything, has been quite the opposite.
If you are Russian by ancestry, you may not appreciate the mythical lore of leprechauns and banshees or the near genetic attitude normal to my Irish relatives against many Brits (other than Churchill, Thatcher and Blair). As a Catholic, I may not appreciate the sufferings of the Orthodox in the 20th century as you do. You should play your strong trump cards such as the fate and suffering of the Orthodox under communism including your martyrs, the fate of the Romanovs which no real American can fail to hold against the Soviets (not against the Russians or the Orthodox), the magnificent witness of Solzhenitsyn (that exemplar of Russian culture) who helped shore up our "Cold war" mentality without encouraging any anti-Russian feeling whatsoever. Did not our domestic enemy Soros actually loot Russia during the Yeltsin era by corrupting local officials to buy the economic patrimony of much of Russia at 10 cents on the dollar or 10 kopeks on the ruble???? Perhaps the nited States can cooperate in his prosecution by the Russians for crimes of bribery. Perhaps the Russians would like to sue him under RICO in our courts for restoration of the loot.
In the middle of the 19th century, the US had an ally in Russia and vice versa. Russia's history has been hard but that would seem to guarantee that Russia is a more promising potential ally by far than any of the Euroweenie states.
I am afraid that derisive references to the US in the Cold War or to Cold War wannabes born too late to contribute does not help the cause of better regard among Americans for Russia. I know that I never regarded anti-communism as anti-Russian any more than it was anti-Cuban or anti-Chinese. The subjects of communist regimes were the bulk of communism's victims.
How much do Americans know about the Russian Orthodox Church? About Russian history? About Russian literature? We Americans need and deserve to be wooed to a regard for Russia that would benefit both nations. Likewise Russians need and deserve to be wooed as well. A Russo-American friendship or even alliance (now that communism is at least formally out of the way) is very much in the interests of both. Add India and much of Eastern Europe.
If Putin would publicly embrace Russian Orthodoxy convincingly and genuinely, it would help with American conservatives. At the very least, Moscow ought to be worth an Orthodox Mass. Better yet would be sincere conversion to Orthodoxy without which it is impossible for Russia to truly be Russia.
If Putin would further give credible assurances that Russia will not revert to the post-1917 "bad old days," so much the better. If those two things are in place, the US should be prepared to reciprocate in any reasonable way. We have much to learn from a restored Russia. I suspect we have a few things to help Russia with as well.
May God bless you and yours.
The point is, Russia just made an arms deal with one of our adversaries next to Iraq. Syria is under US sanctions, but Russia did this deal anyway. So Russia, IMO, is working to undermine our interests in the area, and is trading with a country that is engaged in activities, namely supporting the terrorists in Iraq, that are killing Americans.
One would think that Russia, given their Chechen problem, would be disinclined to trade with a country that is sponsoring terrorism.
By the way, current post Yeltsin hostility to Russia has zero to do with Russia selling arms to Syria, a traditonal client state of Russia since Czarist times (Russia had a special treaty with the Turks allowing her to serve as Syrian Christianity's protector).
Syria, is not under UN sanctions and America had no problem with Syria as an ally in the first Gulf War.
You sir are as wrong as the day is long, These are "YOUR ASSUMPTIONS" not mine I never said any such thing as you indicate here. The "NORTH" leaves very little to assume and the scripture in my KJV talks expressly about the mountains of Israel and the Birds of the Air and Beasts of the Field enjoying lunch via the Northern Confederacy! and yes there will be a few scattered Russians among them. A little Anti-Semitic perhaps eh! compadre?
Putin arrives at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Tver region
Nice attempt at moral equivalence - the last refuge of the morally bankrupt.
Look, the title of the article was about why much of the American media is anti-Russian. I'm sorry, but having Russia sell arms to Syria, given the current situtation, is a serious affront to our security interets, and shows that Russia deserves a lot of the grief they are getting, considering that Russia is trying to claim that they are an ally of ours. Allies don't do that.
Then, it reads more like the NORTH Atlantice Treaty Organization will serve the bidding of the Beast - not Russia.
Already NATO has fought 2 wars on behalf of Muslims against Christians.
And since this was written before the Syrian negotiations for such arms your point is moot, isinit?
Nitpicking at it's finest. Don't address the criticism.
The foreign policy attitudes that led to the Syrian arms sale didn't emerge between the time the article was written and the time the arms sale went down. And, quite frankly, you are showing yourself to be a shill for anti-American interests by trying to attempt this.
I don't give a rat's ass about the UN. They are under OUR sanctions - but Russia is so concerned about our national security interests that they are selling arms to a country we have under sanctions for sponsoring terrorism - at a time when fighting terrorism is our top national security issue. But you are doing your best to downplay that fact.
and America had no problem with Syria as an ally in the first Gulf War.
Yeah, and Japan was our ally in WWI. Guess we should have just blown off that Pearl Harbor thingy because of that.
Any more nonsense you want to spew into this thread?
(Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting johnathangaltfilms.com and jihadwatch.org)
How can you justify that tagline when you are apologizing for Russia selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism? You're a hypocrite.
I am addressing your premise of why liberal and conservatives come down hard on Russia/AKA The Northern Confederacy. The actions of russia clearly show a Anti-Bias to just about all normal thinking applied by most right thinking God Fearing societies. We see the country of russia aligning itsself with most of the radical elements on the world scene. This policy of radicalization destablizes everything it touches because it denys the power of civilized societies to develop Constitutional Republics instead of DEMONCRACIES. Supplying nuclear and germ warfare elements along with the technology to bring it on line to many of the world's most rabid "DEMOCRACIES", particularly those who are solidly in the ISLAMO-FASSISTs camp.
For our government to enjoin this kind of association with a proven nusiance to world society is nothing less than fool hearty and borderline madness to actually encourage. Freedom and Liberty do not embrace and do business with Evil demonic characters like "POOTIN"! He is KGB TO THE CORE and no friend of America. Do you still persist in asking your ridicoluous question? Frankly He/They are not regarded as even animal food. Out of respect for them (Animals & Birds)I consider it garbage to be burried!
Putin has embrace Holy Orthodoxy. He asked the blessing of Patriarch Alexy before accepting the presidency. He and his wife make frequent visits to monastic elders for advice--a very important part of Orthodox spirituality we in North America, unless we are blessed to live near one of the few scattered monasteries here, have difficulty partaking of. On his visit to President Bush's ranch, he caused a stir by refusing to eat beef barbeque on a fast day. I understand he has a private chaplain.
Under his government, monastic life is thriving again with many professions, and the Patriarchate proclaimed the glorification of Tsar Nicholas and his family as Passion Bearers--the particular class of saints to which I had always held they belonged, those who died as Christians not because their killers targeted them as Christians (in which case they would be Holy Martyrs) but because their Christian faith led them to meekly accept a death from which they could have escaped, in imitation of Our Lord. (SS. Boris and Gleb who refused to fight for the throne of Kiev because they were Christians, but were killed because they had a claim to it were the first saints so titled.)
The fact this is not known in the West (except among us Orthodox believers, who seem to have our own news sources) is probably due to the Russophobia of our press. At root, I think this is due to what the Monk Andrew christened "Pravoslavnophobia"--the fear or dread of Orthodox Christianity (esp. Slavic Orthodox Christianity).
The next line of defense among hard core Russophobes once they are forced by facts finally getting into their consciousness to admit that Russia is no longer communist, and won't go back to being communist, is always to propose that the Russian government has substituted Russian Orthodoxy for Communism as the state ideology.
Somehow the fact that substituting St. Nilus of Skora, St. Philaret of Moscow, St. Aleksandr Nevsky, . . .,the Royal Passion Bearers and New Martyrs of Russia for Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, . . ., the persecutors and murderers of the Passion Bearers and Martyrs is a HUGE change doesn't seem to get in. Russia, according to them is still a threat.
And I suppose maybe it is. After all, once one takes Orthodox Christianity seriously, and understands what it is, it can be very upsetting to Westerners world-view. We deprive freethinkers of almost all their anti-Christian talking points, protestants of their claim to have 'fixed' the Church or recovered the ancient Church, and papists of their claim that the Pope of Rome was always the head of the Church. The entire history of Europe looks very different when one tells it all, including the history of Orthodox lands--the Roman Empire fell in 1453, not 476; classical learning never vanished from Europe; far from women being kept down in the Middle Ages, rich widows who owned vast tracts of land could bankroll claimants to thrones; Saxons fleeing the Normans go to Kiev and Constantinople (why? wasn't England under the Pope?); the Church never suppressed literacy (in Western Europe it was the (Germanic barbarian) nobility who did so, but this only becomes clear when one remembers general literacy died out in Western Europe long before the schism, and the same Church championed literacy East and West) . . . All in all very, very upsetting to Westerners.
And those Russians. . .they had the timerity to keep the project going even after the Turks took Constantinople. Why if it weren't for them, rationalism and humanism (whether in the papal, protestant or secularist version) could have freely taken hold of all of Christendom.
Even the 'multiculturalists' have some cultures they won't embrace: the Orthodox Christian cultures of Eastern Europe and the Levant. My wife had to take a course on 'multicultural sensitivity' in psychology. The professor was oh, so tolerant, until my wife (who is Greek) raised a point about the Greek immigrant experience. The professor 'wrinkled up her nose' and said something disparaging about "Orthodox Greeks".
It isn't just Clinton who prefered the jihadists to the Orthodox Serbs.
Also as a Christian - where would I find it better to live in the open as a Christian? Syria or Saudi Arabia. As a woman where would you like to live? Syria or Saudi Arabia?
Is there any indication of spiritual progress in Putin's heart since then? Absence of evidence is not proof of absence of Faith. Few public leaders anywhere wear their religious creeds boldly on their sleeves.
You are doing your best to aplogize for it. And I realize why they are doing it as well - because in truth they are not a good ally of ours and seek to undermine our interests.
Which proves my point.
All foreign policy is a study in self interest - not buddy buddy politics.
You ask how I can justify my tag line: (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting johnathangaltfilms.com and jihadwatch.org) with what you call support for Syria (I do not by the way)?
My world view is the defense of Christians everywhere. Christianity is LOSING. It is being wiped off the face of the earth especially in lands of its origins.
Christianity is fighting a rear action guard for its survival. In this world I have to pick between two types of systems - the Syrian one - horrible as it is - at least protects and supports Christian life - both Catholic and Orthodox. While the other system of uur ally Saudi Arabia is on the other hand, the funder of jihad against Christians - never mind she is the largest purchaser of arms from the USA and from the West.
So screw your head on right and then figure it out - who is a greater threat to your existance (if you are a Christian that is)?
So then why do you have a problem with articles from left and right that rip into Russia?
Christianity is fighting a rear action guard for its survival. In this world I have to pick between two types of systems - the Syrian one - horrible as it is - at least protects and supports Christian life - both Catholic and Orthodox.
Ah, so even though Syria is supporting the insurrection that is killing American soldiers, you are more concerned that they grant a bit more religious freedom to Christians than other Muslim governments. Isn't that special.
How did Christians in Imperial Pagan Rome practice Christianity during the persecution while serving as the emperors?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.