Tuesday, September 16, 2014

A Word on Vladimir Putin

The EU-Moldova agreement and the soft tyranny of human rights


by Paul Wood

All over the blogosphere (dread word, as Wallace Arnold would have said) unpleasant people and perfectly nice ones are siding with Vladimir Putin as he invades a sovereign state and causes unnecessary deaths. Why? Because they see that he is opposing the EU.

Opposing the EU and political correctness, which right-wingers on the net often call 'cultural Marxism'. 

It's paradoxical that the people who blame Stalinists of the Frankfurt School for political correctness (please click on this very important link) hope that a fairly unreconstructed former KGB man will deliver them from it. But then history is full of paradoxes, ironies and black humour.

I disagree with those libertarians, who should know better, who think Mr. Putin 'is better than the scoundrels who rule us' (Dr. Sean Gabb). Mr. Putin is much, much worse - more authoritarian and less democratic than the Euro-establishment and immeasurably more corrupt. Read Ben Judah's and Masha Gassen's excellent books on him. 


From Moldova's point of view, so far the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a good thing. Moldova has now been offered a trade agreement by the EU which would have been impossible otherwise. I hope Moldova agrees to it but one of the things Moldova has to sign up to in order to do make a very preliminary step towards integrating with the EU, which does not hold out the promise of Moldova ever joining, is to make illegal many sorts of forms of discrimination, including discrimination against homosexuals. 


This is highly controversial in Moldova (as in Ukraine) and is used by the Russians as a good stick with which to beat the EU - 'a vote for agreement with the EU is a vote for homosexual marriage'.  

Making racial discrimination illegal in the 1960s in the UK, whether you approve or not, was undoubtedly a great restriction on freedom of contract and an extension of state power. It was very unpopular and the Conservatives fought to have it apply only to companies, not to individuals. Speaking in opposition to race relations law Enoch Powell made his famous 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Later sexual discrimination also became illegal.


Margaret Thatcher, who was never a social conservative, went along with the anti-discrimination laws and QUANGOs she inherited, but in my judgement conservatives should want individuals to be able to to discriminate or not to discriminate without fear of the police. This has nothing to do with whether discrimination is or is not objectionable but is about people to being free to make their own decisions.

I remember when after some years of study I returned to work in the late 1990s I found the workplace had been transformed by draconian political correctness and feminism - and this while a Conservative administration was in office. Now employment law and law in general is even more restrictive.

I clearly remember rejoicing back then, because I care very deeply about freedom, that only sexual and racial discrimination were illegal, not discrimination on religious grounds or discrimination against homosexuals. These things, too, have subsequently been made illegal - and throughout, it appears, the EU. What is truly shocking, I discover now, is  that there is no longer any point my campaigning to change these laws, because they are embedded in EU law and cannot be changed, not at least without a decision of the whole EU. And there is no EU-wide political community to persuade our masters to make such a change, which directly opposes the ideology they believe in. There is no demos and therefore no democracy.

I hope Moldova does sign up and I also hope - but certainly do not believe - that Eastern European countries like Poland and Romania fight within the EU to get rid of these restrictions on freedom. I am pretty certain that will never happen and so I do understand why many people in Moldova want nothing to do with the EU.



The wind is blowing in the opposite direction. Rights nowadays in EU law do not mean freedoms - they means entitlements. In Romania a constitutional amendment last year to entrench the legal definition of marriage as a "union between a man and a woman" - an innocent enough thing you might think - was defeated because the Social Democrat Prime Minister Victor Ponta said it would give Romania as bad a press in Western Europe as Hungary had received by enacting a similar provision. What the amendment simply meant, of course, was that homosexual marriage could not be introduced without a referendum, so the amendment was not an illiberal or authoritarian measure but a very democratic one. Yet the Romanian government knew they would be accused of being antidemocratic if they did not quash it. 

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

Why can't every country decide for herself on whether people can marry people of their own sex and a thousand other questions, from caning in schools to capital punishment (I am opposed to both, by the way) to smoking in restaurants (it should be up to the restaurant owner to decide) and so on and so on? 

This is not a minor sideshow but the essence of what living in a democracy means.

Still, Russia is much less free and much less democratic - this is not a point of view but a fact.

17 comments:

Dane said...

The Ukraine voted to join Russia. The current Ukrainian regime is illegitimate. So just who is invading whom?

Aged parent said...

An interesting article, heavy on emotion, light on facts. I find it fascinating that so many people have drunk the anti-Russian Koolaid, as dished out incessantly, 24/7, by the world's media, which I hasten to point out s owned by essentially 6 people.

There are those who simply cannot leave the Cold War years and face the realities on the ground, the main reality being that Russia is slowly, but surely, healing its wounds. Those who term the present leader an "unreconstructed KGB" man simply refuse to face facts and engage in Junior High school badinage which does not provide any solid evidence for the claim but merely relies on guilt-by-association.

There is ample, indeed overwhelming, verifiable evidence that Russia is on a different course from its terrible Communist past. So until the new anti-Russians can come up with equally verifiable facts and not merely repeats of US propaganda, or rely on the voices of lesbian weirdos like Masha Gessen (who under the "unreconstructed KGB " man Putin is allowed to roam Russia freely, unmolested, and say whatever nonsense comes into her head).

Let us use our heads, not our emotions.

Anonymous said...

The Jews Who Murdered Tsar Nicholas II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdrCtIL-nQs&list=PL9ABB1E5E26EDD00B

Anonymous said...

Great catch Tancred. Some trads are discussing the book called "The Fatima Code" which speaks of a fully possessed Russian leader who wages WW III. This has a ring of truth which matches what Sr. Lucia, Bl. Aiello, St. Kolbe of communism dominating over Europe and Rome. Pedro Regis's message moreover states that "Russia will be given Demonic power" by Satan or something along those lines.

J said...

Sorry...I don´t get the point. I don´t recognize this article as an Eponymous Flower proper one.

Tancred said...

In so far as there is a religious dimension to the Ukrainian conflict and that Putin may not be the hopes for political messiah of the West.

Anonymous said...

The author appears confused, or else to be trying to confuse others.

Tancred said...

He appreciates feedback, please let him know by commenting on his blog.

Anonymous said...

Bottom line, consecration STILL not done, no peace. end of story.

Anonymous said...

Didn't know you were such a neocon, Tancred...Sad..

Carrizo

Tancred said...

I don't know who you are.

Paul Dale said...

Just who invaded who? Which nation poured in $5bn into the Ukraine to destabilise her by zionist jews. Which nation has secured the ceasefire in the country which none of the western ones could be bothered to bring about. Ukraine is under a tyrannical putsch dictatorship which has no legitimacy. For those who worship at the temple of Democracy - and I don't - Putin is a democratically elected leader by all the people of his country. Poroschenko was elected by 2/3 of his while the east was attacked by its own forces plus foreign mercenaries. Both the president and prime minister are jews and the country is run by jewish oligarcs. The downing of the Maylasian airliner actually occured just as Israel was launching its own holocaust of the palestinian people. All the media cried Russia did it, but failed to provide the proof. Stop reading truth by the media. I am not whitewashing Putin, but one could say that he is standing up for Mother Russia while the west sell the nations down the river. Get your heads out of the MSM and find the true facts.

Anonymous said...

"Mr. Putin is much, much worse - more authoritarian and less democratic than the Euro-establishment and immeasurably more corrupt." This.
I fail to see what is so confusing about any of what this author has said.
I also fail to see why so many Western conservatives are so quick to praise Putin and his voice box Dugin when neither one could ever be a true voice for Conservatism in the West.

Tancred said...

If popular sovereignty is your cup of tea, but if Putin and the Romantic image which is raised on his behalf are the same thing, I have serious doubts.

Anonymous said...

Paul Woods suggests we accept the soft tyranny over a threat from a real dictator, but the west's obsessions with “rights” contrary to our faith and ordinary good sense is not lost on the rest of the world, which has been resisting the west wherever it promotes its “values neutral” policies.

The collapse of the CDO market was the first chapter in the global awakening when Iceland declared its fiscal independence and jailed wrongdoers.

After the third world rejected the UN population controls at Rio 20+, Melinda Gates and Hillary Clinton went on a world wide tour to promote reproduction rights offering major coercive donations, which the Philippines accepted, reported by this website. The same tactics were used in Africa, which “encouraged” marriage for all and GMO foods. Such soft tyranny has helped galvanize a counter world movement against the west and a call to nationalism within the west. Countries including the Brics nations, African nations and other South American countries along with southeast Asia and countries within the EU itself, are now struggling against the offerings of values neutral western policies and trending towards independence from the US and EU. Even Australia has recently distanced itself from values neutral laws and global schemes.

The aggressive values neutral policies and bogus theories that GMO food and global banks will help save humanity and the planet are tied to global ambitions and everyone now knows it. It is concerning and perhaps ironic that westerners are hoping in the new fiscal and trading alliances which include dictatorships and socialist and communist governments. In fact, it is the USA and an uncertain EU which are on the outside of the new trading alliances possessing most of the world's land, populations and resources.

Why at this juncture would concerned people side with the the US and expansion of the EU when their policies have clearly alienated most of the world? A more sensible position would have been to suggest the US and EU cease such policies altogether.

Steve Dalton said...

I agree with Mr. Wood. Putin is a creation of the old KGB. He has never renounced the crimes and tactics of that criminal organization. The FSB, the successor of the KGB, still celebrates the founding of the Cheka, the original name of the Communist secret police, every year. Yes, they commemorate an organization that killed millions of innocent people, including our fellow Catholics. With that in mind, why should we trust the Russian government now?

Jonathan D'Souza said...

Given the author clearly worships at that impeccable Temple housing the two headed Goddess 'Democracy' aren't we told over and over and over that we always need to vote for the lesser of two evils, hmmmm?


In that case, Putin is easily the lesser of two evils. Not that we should side with any 'evil' for our Faith allows no such thing. Our Faith is heirarchial. God is the supreme King. Power comes from the top down. Not the bottom up as that inverted superstition of democracy proclaims when in fact the world, even in so-called 'democratic' nations has always been a top-down structure. But because people imagine they get to cast a 'vote' for two pre-approved heirs to the 4-year throne of the American Monarchy, they actually are deluded into believing they control who runs the country and actually make decisions! It's the perfect prison! One where the people have no idea they are enslaved and instead celebrate and promote it uncritically!


The truth is that Russia, and other nations are tired of America's shady doings and control and want to run their own markets, operate their own banks and use money and currency that is more dependable and not tied to the endless printing of it by the Federal Reserve. They want their own union. Something America and its vassal states do not like because that's competition, and these faux-capitalists hate competition. America is also very friendly with the terrorist Arab States who are in agreement to keep oil trade with the dollar. So when countries like Iran and Syria want to do business with another currency or God-forbid... gold or bartering for other products, then they need to send in Team America to threaten them!


Democracy never existed. It only works at the local level where the people can actually control it. Which is why the Church teaches subsidiarity. The higher up you go the more the fascade is revealed as to the truth about which kings in the shadows actually run things and what people are actually allowed to decide about what their country does.


The EU and US which are falling apart from their money printing and shady economics are desperate for a 3rd World War to reset things and kill off a sizable number of people. For all Russia and Putin's problems that are rightful criticisms, the U.S. is a far worse monster who arms trains and provides cover for terrorism and who is the chief architect of world instability. For anyone's pretensions of calling out Russia's 'democratic' failings, need only to look at how American democracy runs to know that it is a coal calling the kettle black.


Putin never invaded the Ukraine. If Putin wanted to he'd do what America does, use air strikes and missiles to decimate the Ukrainian military and infrastructure before sending in ground troops. They could do it in 24 hours and tell Obama weep in the closet. Putin is using diplomacy to fix the situation in the Ukraine just as he did in Syria. The people of Crimea FREELY VOTED DEMOCRATICALLY to go back to Russia, but I guess America doesn't like democracy when it doesn't go their way, which is why Soros and his revolution ilk destabalized Ukraine and put in a neo-nazi government of thugs whose anti-Russian stance and nuclear threats only further brought division to those other regions that they still had and whom they kill on a daily basis. Putin has frankly shown remarkable restraint in the face of Ukranian stupidity and false accusations of shooting down an airplane which all evidence shows was shot down by the Ukraine themselves in a frame-up, no doubt with America's permission and thumbs-up. America should know all about covering up airplane related mishaps!


Anyway, if anyone really wants to feel comfortable with Russia, then why not do as God ordered us to do and Consecrate Russia to Mary's Immaculate Heart? Or is that proselytism? Can't have that anymore I guess... but of course we can spread the religion of democracy with bullets, sanctions and artillery, no problem!