[The Westerner]

Fascinating that the old commie is defending Christianity. Since when did he start caring?

[bray]

There is rumor GW brought him to Christ.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

The world has turned upside down. A former Godless Commie as the protector of oppressed and endangered Christians. Kanye becomes an evangelist.

Makes you wonder...

[Publius]

Back in the Seventies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke at Harvard and stated that if Russia wanted to be a positive force in the world, it had to have an organizing principle. Marxist Leninism was a failure and destined for the ash heap of history, so that was out. As he saw it, the only choice was a return to the Russian Orthodox faith. He also doubted that democracy would work in Russia because it was not a part of Russian cultural or political history.

At the time of the speech, Nixon asked Kissinger what it meant.

"It is a very conservative statement," answered Henry.

"More conservative than Barry Goldwater?" asked Nixon, naming his lodestar for conservatism.

"More conservative than the czars," said Kissinger.

Putin was part of a Russian nationalist movement within the KGB that took Solzhenitsyn to heart. Since achieving power, he made Solzhenitsyn required reading for high school students. He took a Russian Orthodox seminary than had been turned into government buildings by Stalin and returned it to the church. He took a basilica that Stalin had turned into a public swimming pool and rebuilt it to its original specifications at government expense.

Putin understands that Russian Orthodoxy is the only hope for holding ethnic Russia together because if it doesn't, he will be presiding over a majority Muslim nation in the not too distant future.

[ohioman]

Putin is actually a Russian Orthodox Christian. He got it from his mother and would sometimes wear a cross under his clothes during his younger KGB days. Strange World. After being the center of Godless evil for 70+ years under the Soviet Union, it is amazing to see the religious resurgence in Russia. It is less politically incorrect to be openly religious in Russia than the rest of the West. This is the reason the Left hates Russia more than it ever hated the Soviet Union.