These are Putin’s Knight Wolves, his Crusader Army in disguise.

Jon

April 07, 2014, 05:27 pm
God and Putin: Pat Buchanan’s startling insight

By Bernie Quigley

“Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world,” says author Masha Gessen, who has written a book on Russian President Vladimir Putin. “But the war to be waged is not with rockets,” writes conservative columnist Pat Buchanan. “It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia’s role, in Putin’s words, is to ‘prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.'”

Buchanan says he was “startled to read” recently that among the World Council of Families’ “‘ten best trends’ in the world in 2013, number one was ‘Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader.'”

“While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view,” Buchanan quotes the WCF’s Allan Carlson, “Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12.”

“Will Vladimir Putin give the keynote?” asks Buchanan.

It is a stunning possibility. The West, says Buchanan, has capitulated to “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.”

“In the new ideological Cold War,” he asks, “whose side is God on now?”

But how much of the decadent “West” which Buchanan well describes actually defines America? Does it, for example, accurately describe the South, Texas, the Lutheran Midwest, Mormon Utah and the Southwest? Vast sweeps would identify with the World Council of Families and shockingly, with Putin and with Christian Russia. Evangelical leader Franklin Graham has recently said as much.

Buchanan’s decadent West suggests instead an evolved and expanded state of Henry James’s novel The Bostonians more than 120 years on now, and the “plain living and high thinking” Miss Birdseye, who James describes as “a confused, entangled, inconsequent, discursive old woman,” and the historical archetype of “Boston reformers consisting of woman’s rights people, mesmerists, spirituality, utopians and faded abolitionists,” as described in C. Vann Woodward’s classic study of the Gilded Age in The Burden of Southern History.

They came to dominance here, there and everywhere, early on under William Lloyd Garrison’s anthem “Our country is the world. Our countrymen all of mankind.” They dominate still, an archaic residue of the northern military victory of the 1860s.

The northeastern families and their law schools and parlors still vastly influence culture and political temperament. They still bring their families even in triplicate to presidential races and incomprehensibly, supply the legal education of virtually every Supreme Court justice on the Supreme Court even today. Virginia, Duke, Michigan, Texas and Vanderbilt are still not good enough after all this time?

What if the country people today, the Baptists in the South, the Methodists in Texas, the Presbyterians, evangelicals and fundamentalists in the hills of Billy Graham’s Appalachia, simply turned away from New England dominance and tradition? Turned instead to an older tradition and an external leader like Putin to find a better path?

Jefferson, Washington and Franklin did as much when they turned to the French to defend against an actual blood relative who had suddenly become an annoyance. But possibly an American contender in 2016 — Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) — would do just as well as Putin.

The politicians, from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), are still stuck in “Munich” since the invasion of Crimea. So is Wall Street. But Russia could shake the world again. And Putin’s Christian Russia will play differently in Dillon, Texas, today where they baptize in the river and watch high school football on Friday nights, than it will in Miss Birdseye’s antiquated, antipodal Boston salon.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.

A Ukrainian Security Service officer has been killed and five others wounded in the eastern city of Slovyansk, officials from Ukraine’s interim government said Sunday. The casualty comes after Ukraine pledged a “very tough” response to those occupying government buildings.

A pro-Russian group seized police headquarters in Slovyansk Saturday in an operation that followed a similar pattern to events in Donetsk and Luhansk, where activists remain in control of government buildings. Police reportedly stopped forces from occupying buildings in other towns this weekend.

A report from The Associated Press describes the scene in Slovyansk:

“An Associated Press reporter saw no signs of any shots fired at the police station, which was surrounded by a reinforced line of barricades. Unlike on Saturday, the men patrolling the barricades were largely unarmed. One of the guards who asked not to be identified denied reports of fighting at the police station.”

According to Bloomberg News, the violence occurred just outside Slovyansk, where gunmen wearing camouflage fired at a government force.

“Over the past few hours we’ve witnessed the worst-case scenario playing out in Ukraine,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a Warsaw radio station, Bloomberg says. Tusk added that Kiev seems to have reached its limit in terms of tolerating the activists’ actions.

Citing two U.S. officials, Bloomberg says that intelligence reports warn that some demonstrators may have infiltrated Ukrainian cities near Russia weeks ago. In some of those cities, protesters are asking for referendums on breaking away from Ukraine, with the possible intent of being annexed by Russia.

From Moscow, reporter Jessica Golloher filed this report for our Newscast unit:

“Interior Minister Arsen Avakov says Kiev has launched what he called an anti-terrorist operation to recapture several government buildings overtaken by armed pro-Russian activists.

“In a post on his Facebook page, Avakov says that forces from all of Ukraine’s security units are now in the area and that there have been an unidentifiable number of casualties.

“Slovyansk lies in the mainly Russia speaking region of Donetsk — some 90 miles from the Russian border. Activists claimed multiple government buildings following weeks of pro-Russian demonstrations.

“Kiev has also told citizens to stay inside and away from windows because the operation could get violent. Kiev has consistently maintained that Russia is stoking dissent in the region, a claim the Kremlin denies.”

On Saturday, the White House announced that Vice President Biden will travel to Kiev to meet with members of Ukraine’s government and others Tuesday.

Update at 10:05 a.m. ET: Russia Uses Officers To ‘Stir The Pot,’ U.S. Lawmaker Says

Asked whether he believes Russia’s claims that it isn’t behind separatist takeovers in eastern Ukraine, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., says simply, “I do not.”

Speaking on Weekend Edition Sunday, Rogers tells host Rachel Martin, “What we believe is happening is that they’re putting their intelligence officers” in some areas of Ukraine, calling the officers special forces who are not wearing Russian uniforms.

Rep. Mike Rogers Discusses U.S.-Russia Relations On ‘Weekend Edition’

“They’re there to foment violence, to stir the pot, commit acts of sabotage” to disrupt the government in Eastern Ukraine, Rogers says.

When Rachel asks Rogers what he makes of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that Russia doesn’t want to expand beyond Crimea, the lawmaker says he doesn’t believe him.

“There are strategic land bridges,” Rogers says, “and I’ll give you an example from Crimea across the top of the Black Sea to Moldova. There’s a little strip of land between Moldova and Ukraine called Transnistria, I believe that they’re very, very interested. Transnistria has already voted at the semi-autonomous region of Moldova has already voted to go into the Russian Federation.”

Rogers added that in the case of Eastern Ukraine, he believes Russia will watch events play out in the hopes that they result in either a semi-autonomous region that the Kremlin can influence or another breakaway region that could be annexed.