Mother Russia has done it again: this time, it pushed through a UN resolution affirming the link between traditional values and human rights. It did so against the protests of European and American delegations, who were primarily concerned about the implications that such an affirmation would have for gay rights.
The European and U.S. delegations repeatedly complained that “traditional values” is a vague concept used to justify violence and discrimination against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) persons.
Homosexual activists are not happy:
Support for traditional values is deeply troublesome to LGBT groups, as the Gay Star News reports. They are worried it will be used to defend the natural family, and fear they will be unable to de-criminalize homosexuality worldwide.
I am thrilled to see that there is a relatively powerful nation on this planet that isn’t an Islamic theocracy willing to defend traditional values before the entire world. I am elated to see Russia brushing aside as the anti-social insanity that it is the complaints of LGTB activists and their UN proxies.
Nothing but good can come from the public recognition and affirmation of traditional values. What Russia has done is worthy of praise from anyone who recognizes and values natural law and traditional morality. There are no points of foreign policy or Russia’s domestic policies that could possibly justify anything short of that, especially when those who complain about them have likely never uttered a word of protest against America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia or other geopolitically relevant dictatorships. There may be good reasons for tight relations with a repressive regime, right?
Not that I think Russia is even remotely as bad as the neocon media establishment would have me believe it is, of course. The point is that you pick your allies and your friends on the basis of common interest and mutual benefit. In this case, I believe that those who put natural law and traditional values first have no greater ally than Russia.
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Mixed feelings… Russia’s Resolution is full of nice words but it is proposed by a dictatorial regime which supports many of the world’s greatest evils. I have a hard time celebrating Putin’s Russia.
Make no mistake, history will excoriate the West for its handling of Russia and her former satellites from about 1995 on. We effectively drove Russia to embrace its latest Tsar. Perhaps she can only be ruled by force but I like to hink that attentiveness would have changed the outcome.
As it stands though, nothing Putin’s government does can be taken at face value.
Considering the source, I’m waiting for the barb in the phrasing.
Not that I doubt the US delegation really was freaking because homosexuality isn’t traditional, I just don’t think Russia does anything like this out of the goodness of her heart. (Russia is a her, right? Same way the US is Uncle Sam?)
Off the top of my head, I can see slavery, the nastier parts of Islam/Sharia, a lot of what China has been doing for ages, etc…. Humans are rather good at being nasty, and there’s going to be commonality in some of those things.
Russia is a her Foxfier: The Rodina, the motherland. As many of the subject nationalties of the Russians can attest down the centuries, she can be a rather harsh step mom.
Thank you. When one is getting one’s phrasing from old TV shows that have folks talking about Mother Russia, it’s best to ask. ;^)
Mother Russia suffered from bad press at the hands of the British Empire. Nothing she ever did was good enough, on the other the hand the Turks who ran a similar system, were the sick man of Europe, who with a modicum of Enlightenment could all be turned into gintlemans.
Check out the picture Mr. Lileks found.
Link for more at a page titled “The Russian Empire, 100 years ago, in living color.”
More photographs here;
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
Notice how diverse the Tsar’s realm was. By this time the peasants were already emancipated and Russia was well on its way to becoming the breadbasket of Europe eclipsing the Argentinians. The Stolypin reforms promised a fair deal to all of Russia’s inhabitants. Left to her own devices Russia would have modernised much in the same manner as the Japanese or any large agricultural country did. But God allowed some diabolically evil men (not all of the communists, if anything the nihilists were more responsible for undermining the moral fibre of the Russians), to perpetrate quite possibly the greatest crime in human history :
“Terrible and mysterious,” wrote Metropolitan Anastasy, second leader of
the Russian Church Abroad, “is the dark visage of the revolution. Viewed
from the vantage point of its inner essence, it is not contained within the
framework of history and cannot be studied on the same level as other
historical facts. In its deepest roots it transcends the boundaries of space and
time, as was determined by Gustave le Bon, who considered it an irrational
phenomenon in which certain mystical, supernatural powers were at work.
But what before may have been considered dubious became completely
obvious after the Russian Revolution. In it everyone sensed, as one
contemporary writer expressed himself, the critical incarnation of absolute
evil in the temper of man; in other words, the participation of the devil – that
father of lies and ancient enemy of God, who tries to make man his obedient
weapon against God – was clearly revealed.”
– from THE FALL OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: A SPIRITUAL HISTORY
Vladimir Moss
“…I believe that those who put natural law and traditional values first have no greater ally than Russia.”
I’m not buying it.
Perhaps my judgement is clouded from spending three years doing the cat-and-mouse thing with Victor and Akula submarines, but I do not trust the Russians.
There are strong currents in the Russian soul that run through history worn channels of fear and humiliation. Through their trials, coming mostly from foreign invaders, they have seen their salvation come, not from Christ, but from the motherland or strong-men. General Winter and Colonel Mud would save them from the invaders and then the long line of Peters and Stalins would assuage their humiliation by dominating their neighbors and briefly letting Russia play at being a world power.
The current russian strong-man is playing to one major theme: nationalism. His tactics and course resemble the ‘ism that dare not speak its name, but was highly favored in Europe about 80 years ago.
Any appeal to traditional values on the Rusain government’s part is meant to bolster Russian natonalism by contrasting the merely materialistic, utilitaran, and financially corrupt Russian values of national socialism with the absolutely bongers and suicidal values of Western elites.
The fact that someone can look to Russia and see a bastion of traditional values and natural law only goes to show how far we have fallen. When your culture is at the bottom of a thousand foot pit, even the belly of a worm on the ground can seem like lofty heights.
Ivan
The British approach to Russia, throughout the 19th century, was dominated by two considerations: Russian influence in Afghanistan, on the borders of her Indian empire and, after 1859, the fear of a Russian fleet in Constantinople, threatening the Suez Canal and, thus, her route to India.
Thus, Britain did everything possible to prop up the Ottoman power and to weaken Russian influence over the Ottomans’ subject Slav peoples. It also encouraged British politicians’ love affair with the rising power of Prussia, as the bulwark of civilisation in the East.
Make no mistake, history will excoriate the West for its handling of Russia and her former satellites from about 1995 on. We effectively drove Russia to embrace its latest Tsar.
How?
Russia’s political class made a hash of economic reforms, Poland’s did not. The latter had a difficult period of transition lasting less than three years. The former had an economic depression that ran on for more than a decade and had appended to it the rapid multiplication of street crimes. The failure of constitutional government in Russia under those circumstances is unsurprising.
You might ask yourself why we ‘drove’ Russia and Belarus into the arms of autocrats but refrained from doing so with regard to the rest of the former East Bloc.
G-Veg,
Again, there’s that whole thing about stones and glass houses. What “evil” has post-Soviet Russia supported, exactly? If we’re going to list regimes, the US has its own list of objectively “evil” partners in geopolitics, and a long history with many “evil” regimes both currently existing and long perished.
I see no reason for any American to be threatened in the least by Putin’s Russia, nor do I take seriously for one moment any sort of moralistic condemnation of Putin’s government when our own is arming/supporting Al-Qaeda rebels against Assad – as it did against Qaddafi and Mubarak.
Tony H,
“Through their trials, coming mostly from foreign invaders, they have seen their salvation come, not from Christ, but from the motherland or strong-men.”
What? What does this mean? Should they have surrendered and prayed while Napoleon or Hitler wiped them out? Would this have met with your approval? What’s the point here?
“Any appeal to traditional values on the Rusain government’s part is meant to bolster Russian natonalism by contrasting the merely materialistic, utilitaran, and financially corrupt Russian values of national socialism with the absolutely bongers and suicidal values of Western elites.”
I don’t care. All actions have objective effects independent of their subjective motivations. Russia’s acts are objectively aligned with natural law and traditional values. They should be encouraged and praised.
when our own is arming/supporting Al-Qaeda rebels against Assad – as it did against Qaddafi and Mubarak.
Al Qaeda is active in Libya. The current government of Libya is not an al Qaeda operation nor is it unfriendly to the Occident.
Bonchamps,
The point of mentioning the repeated foreign invasions and reliance on strong-men is to explain the Russian national character.
I believe the defining question of character is who, or what, you put your trust in. In other words; who is your god?
In much of the West, the state has become god. Prior to Obama, that was the state as apparatus, not as a single man. In Russia the state, in the form of the strong-man, has ruled supreme for generations. When Putin flexes and preens for the camera he creates a resonance in the Russian heart.
Besides their love of the strong-man, the love of Russians for the land itself should not be underestimated. The land itself has swallowed up her enemies in the past. The Russians desire to buffer her is palbably, just ask the Ukraines and Georgians.
Dr. Zhivago said it best: “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a peasant.”
I agree with your statement that “all actions have objective effects independent of their subjective motivations.” What surprises me is that you seem to be saying you don’t care about those subjective motivations.
If that’s the case, let me offer for your consideration the nation of North Korea. I don’t have hard stats, but from all reports this nation is a bastion of objective traditional values and natural law. The divorce rate is low, homosexuality rates run comparable to that of Iran, there is no epidemic of internet porn, no one is coveting his neighbors goods (or lack there of) and last I checked, over the last ten years North Korea hasn’t invaded anyone, which is more than you can say for Russia or America.
By this measure, I think North Korea deserves even more praise and encouragement than Russia.
Tony,
Why exactly am I supposed to care, presumably to the point of Russophobia, that “Russians love a strongman” and “Russians love the land”, and other such generalized characteristics? What relevance does any of this have?
“What surprises me is that you seem to be saying you don’t care about those subjective motivations.”
Why should I? This is the American sickness – the belief that other people’s internal affairs and moral dispositions are our intimate business. Given Russia’s objective ability to project its power militarily (which is negligible and limited to the former SSRs – and a country with a Manifest Destiny and Monroe Doctrine has no business complaining about that), its subjective motivations are almost meaningless. Meaningless, that is, to Americans who believe that the “grand chessboard” is too expensive in terms of lives, money and prestige to continue playing on.
Meanwhile its support for Christianity and traditional values are objectively good and have objectively good effects. Maybe we’re different. I put these things above all other considerations. I don’t care if Russia dominates Georgia, any more than the average Russian cares if we dominate Central America. I care about the ruthless advance of moral cancer worldwide, emanating from the West. We are collectively responsible for this.
As for North Korea, give me a break, please. North Korea tortures and murders Christians when they find them. And communism itself is a massive, ongoing violation of natural law – of private property rights, the rights to life and liberty, etc. If Russia were still communist, I would not take its declaration in favor of traditional values seriously. But it isn’t. It isn’t a bastion of free market idealism, but then, neither is America, which has plummeted to 18th place in terms of economic freedom. There is no comparison between Orthodox, non-communist Russia and the remnants of the Hermit Kingdom.
This is the American sickness – the belief that other people’s internal affairs and moral dispositions are our intimate business.
Concern for other people’s welfare is not a sickness.
When concern becomes meddling, it is a sickness. There is nothing more annoying than help that wasn’t asked for and that almost always makes the problem worse than it was.
There is nothing more annoying than help that wasn’t asked for and that almost always makes the problem worse than it was.
Where? And which segment of society gets to do the non-asking?
[…] Russia Defends Traditional Values – Bonchamps, The American Catholic […]
Despotism as a form of government is not without its merits. One has only to think of the Julian and Antonine Emperors. They established the Pax Romana and the rule of law, curbed the oppression of race by race and class by class and established the strict civic equality of all the free inhabitants of the Empire. Property was protected and contracts enforced by a code of laws that is still the basis of European jurisprudence. Free labour and its derivative, free trade, flourished. Paradoxically, the government of a single will demands impersonal and incorruptible administration.
To be popular, “government must not be arbitrary, but it must be powerful enough to repress arbitrary action in others. If the supreme power is needlessly limited, the secondary powers will run riot and oppress. Its supremacy will bear no check.” (Lord Acton, describing the theory of benevolent despotism) The French Revolution was far more a revolt against noble and clerical privileges than against royal absolutism and the Empire was its consummation, not its reversal.
One can seew how, given its history, despotism may suit this stage of Russia’s development.
Michael,
Fair enough, the British had their interests to protect. It accounts for their successful propaganda that continues to have purchase on many. But how did their perfidy work out in the end? They sold or taught the Japanese the latest in naval technology, so that in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, the IJN units outclassed the 40-year old ships under Adm Rozhestvensky. We know the Japanese returned the favour with interest by driving the British out of the Far East a mere 37 years later. Jawaharlal Nehru, cooling his heels during one of his sabbaticals in prison wrote to his daughter:
“I have told you in another letter of an occurrence which stirred Asia greatly. This was the victory of little Japan over giant Russia in 1904-5? India, in common with other Asiatic countries, was vastly impressed, that is, the educated middle classes were impressed, and their self-confidence grew. If Japan could make good against one of the most powerful European countries, why not India?…
All this is as remote as the conquest of Canaan to me, my interest is in seeing that truth subsists.
“They established the Pax Romana and the rule of law, curbed the oppression of race by race and class by class and established the strict civic equality of all the free inhabitants of the Empire.”
Contra Gibbon, not a word of that is true. After the year of four emperors in 69 AD the empire was a barely disguised military dictatorship, always subject to potential military revolt, living off the intellectual capital of the dead Roman Republic. Dictatorship brought its usual fruits: economic stagantion, growth of government bureaucracy and inflation. Despotism, enlightened or not, is always a door to nowhere for the people doomed to endure it.
Interesting comments. I have no love for Putin, but if the Lord could stir up the spirit of pagan King Cyrus of Persia to do something righteous (Ezra 1:1), so also can he stir up the spirit of Putin (or any other autocrat for that matter).
Paradoxically, the government of a single will demands impersonal and incorruptible administration.
?????
Despotism, enlightened or not, is always a door to nowhere for the people doomed to endure it.
I can think of examples in the post-war period where authoritarian administrations provided respite from pathologies of political culture (Chile, 1973-90; Uruguay, 1972-85; Peru, 1992-2000; Turkey, 1980-83; Jordan, 1957- ).