“But now is not the time for this squabbling,” we’re told. “Putin’s assault is an assault on the West!” But how can we take their call seriously, when they are the same leaders who ask if we can have schools named after Thomas Jefferson; the same who pine over what primitive tribes our land was “stolen” from?
Putin has no such qualms about his own civilization (and it’s one of the core reasons our elites hate him so). This week, he said Ukraine is Russia’s land, steeped in its religion, culture, and history, so Russia is taking it. Another hard truth is that amid a Western elite who has forgotten who we are, it’s easy to look abroad at our enemies and envy the confidence they have in their own civilizations. Why don’t our leaders have the same?
The very question infuriates them even further. How, they ask, can we not follow when they are the experts? The experts who told us “America was never that great,” or who questioned the American exceptionalism they now call on to defend the West?
Really: Who can follow a political left or establishment GOP calling us to defend Western civilization when just last week our culture’s triumphs were submitted as proof of our awful patriarchy? When they were apologized for?
Can we really take Ukraine’s inviolable border seriously, while defending our own is called racist?
Are we actually expected to ignore Putin’s claims of ancestral land rights in Ukraine, while we teach our school children to feel ashamed for living on land we say was stolen?