Sunday, April 17, 2016

James Carden — Fear and Loathing in Ukraine

Despite favorable – even fawning – propaganda in Western media, the U.S./E.U.-backed regime in Ukraine tramples on traditional liberal values of tolerance and pluralism, notes James W Carden.…
On a return trip to war-torn eastern Ukraine in March, I took the opportunity the 13-hour journey afforded to re-read Judith Shklar’s seminal essay, The Liberalism of Fear.
Written in 1989, at the time of what in retrospect looks like an era of unhinged, to say nothing of embarrassing, American triumphalism, Shklar, unlike many of her contemporaries in the academy (particularly Francis Fukuyama who published The End of History? in the National Interest that year), took a sober accounting of her time. Shklar warned, quite presciently, as it turns out, that "anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again.”

The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.
The Liberalism of Fear essentially seeks to answer the question: What is the baseline requirement for a good society? What is the absolute precursor it must achieve without which it would be impossible to achieve democratic norms, pluralism, cultural freedom, and a market economy (be it democratic-capitalist or democratic-socialist) to develop?…
How do we apply Shklar’s criteria to the situation in Ukraine as it obtains today? In Shklar’s vision of liberalism, there are absolute minimums which societies need to meet. From what I saw, Kiev is not meeting them.…
The insignia of the Azov battalion, using the neo-Nazi symbol of the Wolfsangel.

Some in the conservative community are waking up and sounding an alarm. 

However, Carden makes no mention of the atrocities and war crimes committed during the coup and afterward, especially in eastern Ukraine, where they are still going on.

But what is to be expected from so-called liberal Western power who are sleeping with the devil in the Middle East especially. Why not elsewhere if it seems to be of benefit geopolitically and geostrategically. After all, the victors get to write history.

US-Russia.org
Fear and Loathing in Ukraine
James Carden, contributing editor to The American Conservative magazine, frequent contributor to The National Interest and Russia Direct, and formerly an Advisor to the US Department of State.

No comments: