Has Russia become the world’s new moral leader?

The Russian bear has become the big bad wolf to the American left, blamed for everything from winning the election for Donald Trump to “penetrating” the U.S. electric grid to birthing “fake news.” But is their real problem that Russia has become the new national equivalent of the Moral Majority?

{mosads}An ideological component was integral to the Cold War, with a then more traditionalist West opposing the Marxist Red Menace of the Soviet Union. As Eastern Europe’s communism collapsed, however, relations thawed. But the post-bipolar world has seen an ideological pole shift, with a secularizing, increasingly statist, sexual-agenda-spawning West opposed by an explicitly traditionalist Russia.

While some U.S. state governments punish Christian businessmen for not servicing same-sex “weddings,” Russia outlawed pro-homosexual propaganda in 2013. Our left was apoplectic, and the Obama administration condemned the law.  

Obama famously declared, “We are no longer just a Christian nation.” Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with Obama’s assessment in a 2013 keynote speech, criticizing Western countries for having “moved away from their roots, including Christian values.” Where Obama is trying to force churches to provide employees prenatal-infanticide drugs, Putin prohibited prenatal infanticide after 12 weeks and has stood side-by-side with the Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill I, a staunch Kremlin ally. 

In the same speech, Putin targeted the West’s woolly-headed relativism, saying, “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.” 

The Kremlin also skewered two other Western sacred cows, writing in a 2014 document titled “Foundations of the State Cultural Policy” that it rejects “such principles as multiculturalism and tolerance” and those “imposing alien values on society.” 

Putin is making the bold claim “that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism,” Pat Buchanan opined in 2014. “Putin is plugging into some of the modern world’s most powerful currents.” 

Liberals are shocked enough to be put off their caffè lattes and veggie burgers. Their reaction is visceral. When hearing sentiments such as Putin’s, liberals would normally shout, “Racist!” “Bigot!” “Homophobe!” “Hater!”

That’s when hearing opinions expressed by their own traditionalist countrymen.

Can you imagine how they feel about a powerful foreign leader going the full Falwell? Russia is now the sum of all their fears: the Christian Coalition with nukes.

Where Democratic icon Sen. Ted Kennedy secretly and shamefully appealed to the USSR for help defeating Ronald Reagan in 1984, liberals now really do view Russia as the Evil Empire. Putin is Emperor Palpatine, considered what any traditionalist would be: a fundamentally wicked person. 

This helps explain liberal hysteria over Russia that’s so intense it has resulted in mainstream-media fake news. An example is the story about electric grid penetration peddled by The Washington Post, after which the paper was forced to admit the report was basically fiction. It also explains liberal insistence that Russia hacked the DNC, even though other culprits seem more likely (i.e., a leaker). It also, explains why, as Glenn Greenwald put it, “[a]ny story that bolsters the prevailing D.C. orthodoxy on the Russia Threat, no matter how dubious, is spread far and wide.” 

More than liberals consciously framing Russia, however, this is often just old-fashioned human prejudice (something liberals, an emotionalistic lot, are prone to). Like a divorcée so soured on her ex-husband that she views him through tinted lenses and reads negative motivations into even innocent missteps, liberals see Putin, see red, and then think, “Why, that’s just the kind of thing he would do!”

Of course, Putin is no choir boy. He may even be an imperialist. But he won’t be perceived clearly by the
“racist-homophobe-bigot” crew because hatred is like darkness: the more there is, the less you can see. Blinded eyes beget bad judgments that can lead to bad outcomes — such as war.

Let’s hope those shaping foreign policy in the next administration have more light in the cranium.

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) is a conservative media personality whose work has been published on The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, and American Thinker. He has also contributed to college textbooks published by Gale – Cengage Learning, and is a frequent guest on radio and television.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.