America has become the Evil Empire that Russia once was.
Your list?
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.
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.
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
Half right. Libya had been tamed, thanks in no small measure to our work in Iraq. Iraq, otoh, was a destabilizing threat to the region and our ally Israel. Taking Hussein out was the right thing to do.
I’d like to see them re establish Constantinople
I won’t consider Russia truly conservative until they again criminalize homosexual sodomy.
Same with us.
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.
I think much of it is what "appears". The other side of it is that the Russian Federation inherits and promotes its continuation of the Soviet Union to the detriment of the Russian Nation; it remains just like the Soviet Union unable to build a rule of law distinct of the rule of the ruling party and generally is suffering from the Soviet mentality infecting its people as much as it infects its government. The desire to lecture the West is one of them.
None of that is to dispute the salutary aspects of Russian Federation's corrective of American foreign policy in the late presidencies, especially in thwarting Obama's aggression in Syria.
I submit it to my esteemed ping list. What do you think?
If you want to be on this right wing, monarchy, paleolibertarianism and nationalism ping list, but are not, please let me know. If you are on it and want to be off, also let me know. This ping list is not used for Catholic-Protestant debates.
What the New York Times euphemistically calls 'Western style democracy' would more accurately be defined as 'European style socialism'.
Let’s not get carried away here. Russia is corrupt and anti-democratic. It is not governed by the rule of law. You can still disappear if you disagree with the government. It takes “conservative” positions in a couple areas, like defending religion. Let’s not let that cloud our judgment.
“...Moscow has reclaimed its 19th-century conservative role...”
I think that’s stretching it a bit....
Many things can be said about Putin pro and con; but the guy loves his country, is a Russian patriot and is doing what HE thinks best to ensure it’s survival from internal threats (the lunatic left fringe of his party) as well as external threats (moslem infiltration and Chechen terrorism).
Personally, I believe he’s “KGB” through and through (FSB now, I think they call themselves). A lifetime of training and indoctrination doesn’t disappear overnight just because the party name changes. He’s an intelligence operative, and knows how to mind-mess with both foes and pretend-friends (as we are now) to get what he wants.
He’s still a product of his country’s recent past, and I think we put ourselves in danger by dealing with and regarding him otherwise.
Nonsense. Russia’s keeping with its past which is Leftist, despite what all the professors say.
They want to control people. What do a monarchy, dictatorship, progressivism, communism, Russia and Obama have in common?
The answer isn’t conservative.
The old German saying remains true:
“Russia remains Russia” (Russland bleibt Russland)
Putin made, in my mind, a very good choice early on to blend the “best of Russia” into modern Russia. That is, an ala carte selection of what he thinks was the best of Czarist Russia and Soviet Russia. Importantly, this is mostly symbolic. The critical thing will be what organizational structure he creates, and how well it functions with his successors.
Running Russia was never easy. The Czars were balanced with the noble landlords, who owned large country agricultural estates. But everything of moment happened in Moscow. Over time, this over-centralization became a problem.
Peter the Great build a new capital, St. Petersburg, and tried to embrace European ideas, that ended up making Russia a half-European, half-Asiatic nation. A wise choice because by World War I, Russia was the fourth largest industrial power in the world.
Had the Russian any other form of government than communists, they might have very well dominated the world; but the communists were so incredibly wasteful and inefficient that they kept Russia down. However, even they had one semi-reasonable idea, borrowed from the US. The idea of the balance of power in the government.
However, the balance was odd, between the communist party, the Soviet Army, and the KGB. When one got too strong, the other two would ban together, to cut it down to size.
Because of WWII, the Soviet Army was the most powerful, and only in Brezhnev’s later years were they finally cut down to size in a huge purge of their commanders. Since then, the KGB dominated, and with the fall of the communist party, the KGB effectively took over much of the inner workings of the government. Putin was a KGB man.
Russia is not easy to manage. Fortunately for them, their leader loves his country, is patriotic, and wants to improve it. There are worse things you can get in leaders.
-— They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats -—
Yup. If you read Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” you can see how the Revolution festered for decades. The dream was kept alive by the Bill Ayers’, coffee-house, low-lifes of the 19th century. It was a long time coming.
Right turn? Conservative? Honestly. Bob Costa types and leftist Liberals have much more in common with authoritarian leaders than conservatives do, homosexuality aside. That homo Adolph Hitler promoted heterosexuality to produce children for the state, Russia has the problem of population growth. I do not see Russia as a moral leader or to the right or conservative as to how those terms relate to America
Bump