Russia’s Right Turn. Moscow has reclaimed its 19th-century conservative role.

The American Conservative ^ | February 11, 2014 | William S. Lind

[cunning_fish]

An unfortunate legacy of the Cold War is the negative attitude some American conservatives yet harbor toward Russia. Conditioned for decades to see Russia and the Soviet Union as synonymous, they still view post-communist Russia as a threat. They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats. Joseph de Maistre was not alone among 19th-century conservatives in finding refuge and hope in Russia.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is emerging once more as the leading conservative power. As we witnessed in Russia’s rescue of President Obama from the corner into which he had painted himself on Syria, the Kremlin is today, as the New York Times reports, “Establishing Russia’s role in world affairs not based on the dated Cold War paradigm but rather on its different outlook, which favors state sovereignty and status quo stability over the spread of Western-style democracy.”

In his own Times op-ed on Syria, Putin wrote, “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it.” Sen. Robert A. Taft and Russell Kirk also doubted it.

Moscow appears to understand better than Washington that the driving foreign-policy requirement of the 21st century is the preservation of the state in the face of Fourth Generation war waged by non-state entities, such as those fighting on the rebels’ side in Syria. Russia has rightly upbraided Washington for destroying states, including Iraq and Libya.

[Lazamataz]

The magnetic poles of Earth never did flip, but the ideological ones did.

America has become the Evil Empire that Russia once was.

[icwhatudo]

1950’s: America, pray for the conversion of Russia
2010’s: Russia, pray for the conversion of America

[little jeremiah]

Your list?

[cunning_fish]

>>William S. Lind is the former Director of the Center for Cultural Marxism at the Free Congress Foundation.<<

Wow. I didn’t know it.

[DemforBush]

I’m not really going for Lind’s argument here.

Russia may not be the danger they were during the Cold War, but they haven’t exactly shown themselves to be allies, either. Russian interests and spheres of influence continue to come into conflict with those of the U.S. We are rivals, and as two of the three superpowers on the planet (China being on its way to becoming the third), that’s not likely to change. The golden era of U.S. - Russian relations in the 19th century was a different time, when Russia acted primarily to protect her own interests by thwarting British ones.

The other thing is, Putin is a thug. We use that term a lot on FR, but Putin is the real deal. I cannot fathom why so many admire the guy. Strong and decisive doesn’t offset corrupt, repressive, and a whole lot of other bad things.

[Rennes Templar]

“Putin is a thug.”

Putin came to the defense of the church with the Pussy Riot incident; he has lectured the US on our moral decline; he has drawn the line against the gay movement. Thug or not, he is acting like we would want our spineless conservative leaders to act.

This, by the way, is why he and his Olympics are getting excoriated by the media.

[QuisCustodiet1776]

Have to agree.

[nathanbedford]

Thug or not, he is acting like we would want our spineless conservative leaders to act.

Let's put aside the disclosures made on this thread by enterprising FReepers who have brought William S. Lind's Marxist affiliations to our attention, and ask why any conservative would want a leader to act like a thug?

Conservatism is not merely a philosophy which picks and chooses among issues that grow like weeds favoring some and opposing others on an ad hoc basis. Rather, conservatism is a coherent philosophy grounded in the rights of the individual, secured by a rule of law, and guaranteed by a Constitution. The coherent philosophy required to sustain those institutions and the adherence to those institutions indispensable to sustaining the philosophy is far greater than our abhorrence of a particular practice, such as sodomy.

Hitler himself may have been a sodomite, many of his Nazi collaborators might have been sodomites, but he did murder gays in the Nazi party in the Night of the Long knives. Are we then to say, mass murderer or not, Hitler behaved as we would want our conservative leaders to behave?

Gays are as protected under our Constitution as are Christians, of whom I count myself one. I will not have my Constitution subverted or the rule of law discarded or conservatism perverted in the service of homophobia.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

You are right, Nathanbedford. And we don’t want to end up like our liberal foes, who give aid and comfort to their own enemies simply because those enemies are also enemies to the United States and Western civilization.

[DesertRhino]

A little Wikipedia surfing is a dangerous thing.

The man is a solid conservative and is not a Marxist. The center for cultural Marxism is an area of study inside the conservative think tank “Free Congree Foundation”. It was founded by Paul Weyrich. (also not a Marxist)

The man is responsible for the study and understanding of cultural Marxism. The Southern Poverty Law Center vilifies him as a man spreading fear of cultural Marxism, which they claim is imagined.

[DesertRhino]

Lind is not a Marxist. That’s nuts. Someone is using the wiki entry and not understanding what they read. The guy is dedicated to fighting Marxism. He directed the area of a very conservative think tank that is studying the spread of it.

[Jim Robinson]

I think wikipedia is full of crap. But that’s nothing new.

[DesertRhino]

This is from the Southern Poverty Law Center website.

“In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of “Marxism” that took aim at American society’s culture, rather than its economic system.

The theory holds that these self-interested Jews — the so-called “Frankfurt School” of philosophers — planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values — Christianity, “family values,” and so on — are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left.

The very term, “cultural Marxism,” is clearly intended to conjure up xenophobic anxieties. But can a theory like this, built on the words of long-dead intellectuals who have little discernible relevance to normal Americans’ lives, really fly? As bizarre as it might sound, there is some evidence that it may. Certainly, those who are pushing the theory seem to believe that it is an important one.

“Political correctness looms over American society like a colossus,” William Lind, a principal of far-right political strategist Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation and a key popularizer of the idea of cultural Marxism, warned in a 1998 speech. “It has taken over both political parties and is enforced by many laws and government regulations. It almost totally controls the most powerful element in our culture, the entertainment industry. It dominates both public and higher education. ... It has even captured the clergy in many Christian churches.””

William Lind,,, a popularizer of the idea that cultural Marxism exists.

[DesertRhino]

Wiki is fine for learning about how aggregate is classified into silt, sand, and gravel.

But for learning about conservatives, it’s absolutely worthless. The wiki editors allow amazing slanders, distortions, and misleading entries,,,while sanitizing the pages of leftists.

[caww]

[bd476]

DesertRhino wrote: "Lind is not a Marxist. That’s nuts. Someone is using the wiki entry and not understanding what they read. The guy is dedicated to fighting Marxism. He directed the area of a very conservative think tank that is studying the spread of it.

Fortunately it is possible for anyone to research as well as to look at the history of Wikipedia edits and I have been doing both for the past hour.

The Wikipedia article is still there. However from my research and in looking at the Wikipedia edit history, it appears that someone changed one word changing William Lind's title of "Director of Cultural Conservativism" into "Director of Cultural Marxism."

However the information that Lind was against the Iraq War and that he never served in the military is true.

Also true: William S. Lind co-authored a book with Senator Gary Hart in 1986. It is listed on Amazon:

America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform

I will ask for my earlier post to be removed.

[wardaddy]

ETL is gonna get you

My wife thinks Russia may be last sanctuary for whites

I tell her its even colder than middle TN this year

She pauses

[bd476]

Jim Robinson wrote: "I think wikipedia is full of crap. But that’s nothing new."

I guess that any place where people have freedom of speech, one is likely to find a lot of nonsense.
It's a shame that Wikipedia hasn't found a way to monitor each post and each edit as they go up on Wikipedia.