Friends are sending me copies of Putin’s speech. It is extremely clear to me that Putin is trying to create a Russian resistance to Western decadence, melding a revived Russian Christianity with Islamic moral values to create an alternative to the emerging non-pluralism of the West.
The West’s new pluralism was in evidence recently at a public university in Ireland when it kicked out the venerable Legion of Mary for distributing “anti-gay” pamphlets suggesting that Catholics should dedicate themselves to a life of interior chastity and which included the line “I’m a child of God, don’t call me gay.”
The university explained: “NUIG has a pluralist ethos and will not condone the production and dissemination of any material by students which discriminates against other students. Discrimination or implied or direct harassment, on the basis of sexual orientation and/or religion, is contrary to Irish and European law.”
But you don’t have to look any further than the Center for American Progress for the American version, in which panelists agree that religious-liberty exemptions constitute “slavery.”
I will tell you one thing, though: I am not going to be following a Russian ex-KGB agent’s leadership. America has a proud history of combining moral order with liberty. Our Founding Fathers were neither statists nor libertines.
A lesser daughter of great sires am I but . . .