Posted on 04/03/2014 11:46:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In his Kremlin defense of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond.
Crimea, said Putin, "is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus."
Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.
This speech recalls last December's address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:
"Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation."
Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?
Indicting the "Bolsheviks" who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, "May God judge them."
What is going on here?
With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.
In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God's side. The West is Gomorrah.
Western leaders who compare Putin's annexation of Crimea to Hitler's Anschluss with Austria, who dismiss him as a "KGB thug," who call him "the alleged thief, liar and murderer who rules Russia," as the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins did, believe Putin's claim to stand on higher moral ground is beyond blasphemous.
But Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on "The Third Rome."
The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today's Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was — Moscow.
Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Putin is plugging into some of the modern world's most powerful currents.
Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America's arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.
He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.
In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia's flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a "culture of death."
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?
The West's capitulation 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.
Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that she was stunned when in Tbilisi to hear a Georgian lawyer declare of the former pro-Western regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, "They were LGBT."
"It was an eye-opening moment," wrote Applebaum. Fear and loathing of the same-sex-marriage pandemic has gone global. In Paris, a million-man Moral Majority marched in angry protest.
Author Martha Gessen, who has written a book on Putin, says of his last two years, "Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world."
But the war to be waged with the West is not with rockets. 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."
Would that be the "chaotic darkness" and "primitive state" of mankind, before the Light came into the world?
This writer was startled to read in the Jan-Feb. newsletter from the social conservative World Council of Families in Rockford, Ill., that, of the "ten best trends" in the world in 2013, number one was "Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader."
In 2013, the Kremlin imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers.
"While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view," writes 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?
In the new ideological Cold War, whose side is God on now?
I’m not ready to jump on the Putin bandwagon but I can see why a lot of people would be. All of the things he is talking about, duty, honor, country, Christian values, etc., are things that America used to stand proudly for — and now, no longer does.
Americans may. Free Republic is a bastion of those values, and there are others, but the sad fact of life is that morally degenerate heathens have taken over the leadership of the nation and we no longer have any moral standing in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Zip. Zilch. Nada.
To be a traditional ally of the US is putting yourself in the position of being ostracized by the rest of the world community while being buggered by Uncle Sam. There’s no upside.
When Putin talks about all the things that used to be American watchwords, it does absolutely no good to jump up and down screaming “He doesn’t mean it!” The fact of the matter is, he’s saying things that nobody else is willing to say and he’s making himself and his agenda of sanity in a large country, where the rest of the world seems bent on suicidal hedonism. People are taking notice.
If America wants to regain the leadership position it earned in the past, it’s going to have to return the the moral values that went with it. That’s obvious. Until it does, it has no right to bitch when others look for leadership elsewhere.
God is on God’s side.
He will watch over His elect.
I’m rooting for Vlad,
least he’s a Christian, not a moose limb like obammy/
putin ping
Napoleon said God is on the side with the most artillery.
reminds me of a prophecy at Medjugorje that dates to the 1980’s: That the west would reject God and become full of pride, but that Russia would defend God. Sounded crazy back then...
Napoleon also jailed the Pope, and when he was warned that this was not wise, quipped: What will God do about it? Make my soldiers drop their weapons and flee? A few years later, they did that when they fled from Moscow...
Eyewitnesses and volunteers helping homeless children in Crimea said that invading Russian troops moved into orphanages.
Barry is God’s punishment for America’s abuse of its freedoms.
Abortion, gay marriage, Godless society, hedonism, moral relativism, etc.
NEITHER
Goofy premise.
How could anyone know?
Now if the question was “Whose side are you on, barry or vlad?” the answer would be easy.
barry: committed muslim loving America hating ignorant usefull idiot.
vlad: KGB communist.
uh, neither.
When the Jews turned their back on Him and he eventually sold them into captivity, Babylon: a pagan nation God decided to use their Kings as his own personal puppets. There were very evil kings sometimes doing good and I think they had no idea why.
I don’t believe Putin is good or, the chi-coms, or the EU, and not even the US. We have turned our back just as the Israelites did, and worshiped false Gods of gold and silver and wood and stone and built alters and sacrificed children in the fire. We deserve judgement as much as anyone, unless we repent. But who knows, God may use wicked men to bring about his wrath on evil in order to bring about good.
Maybe Putin will cure the world of it’s Muslim problem? Maybe Muslims will cure the US of its Washington DC problem?
Maybe the Chinese will cure Europe of its Godlessness?
No one knows what will happen, but one thing is certain, the wicked will be punished.
I know on a national level, we are no longer on God’s side.
It makes me sad and I see persecution of the Church coming to our own neighborhoods in the near future. It will make the Church stronger but I hoped to leave a better world than this to my kids.
BELIEVE first, then repent!
More anti-American/pro-Russian drivel from Puchanan. This traitor belongs on the first plane or boat to Russia. He doesn’t deserve American citizenship.
I would rather live in a country with legalized homosexual marriage and abortion but also with free speech and the right to bear arms than in a dictatorship where the people are unable to change their government. Americans still have freedom even if some of us have lost our way. Russian serfs have their chains.
My only thought is God doesn’t think he’s Obama.
>>>I’ll wait for the speech wherein Putin either quotes the Bible or mentions God.<<<
Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3d_yxJhmjk
Philip
well, Moscow was founded in the 12th century as an outpost of Vladimir-Suzdal, which was a Kievan Rus city, so the inhabitants would have been descended from those who accepted Christianity in the 10th century
Good post.
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