UPDATED (7/10): Solzhenitsyn On The West’s ‘Persisting Blindness Of Superiority’ (American Exceptionalism)

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Literature, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Russia, The West

“But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development bears little resemblance to all this.”

In other words, American Exceptionalism. The West Doesn’t understand ‘other worlds.’

“A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978.”

Disillusioned with the West, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia, “leaving behind [what he perceived as a] dying civilization fatefully wedded to a democratic ideology.” In time, neocons and liberals rejected the great man, going on to adopt, instead, regime-changing, neocon, Russian dissidents.

… The West’s freedom, Solzhenitsyn declared … had degenerated into license, its media filled minds and souls with gossip and nonsense, its popular culture served only to coarsen and degrade, its people exhibited an unthinking sympathy for socialism and an inability to recognize evil.
… Overnight, those who had lionized Solzhenitsyn cast him into the outer darkness and adopted in his place the nuclear physicist and Western-oriented dissident Andrei Sakharov. A good and courageous man, Sakharov was a secularist and self-proclaimed socialist who had mastered the language—“democracy” and “human rights”—of Western liberalism. …
…Solzhenitsyn was [accused of being] a Russian nationalist and imperialist. In fact the great writer was a patriot who loved his country and expected others to love theirs; he explicitly repudiated nationalism and imperialism. More important, Mahoney recognizes that ‘a burning love for one’s motherland [is] compatible with humility before God and deference to a universal moral order.’

MORE. “Solzhenitsyn Wasn’t Western.”

UPDATE (7/10): FACEBOOK DEBATE IS HERE.

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If Only Trump Had Russia Expert Stephen Cohen Speak For Him

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Media, Politics, Russia

Witnessed today, explains Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University, is “A new detente, anti-cold war partnership between Presidents Trump and Putin. Attempts to sabotage it [continue to] escalate. … [Still], this is the most fateful meeting between an American and Russian president since the wartime. The reason being that the relationship between the two countries is so dangerous right now. Trump could have been cowed by the Russia Gate attacks on him, yet he was not. Trump was politically courageous.”

Important things were decided upon. The president emerged as a statesman, contends Cohen, who had witnessed other summits with Russians under previous American presidents, including Bush I.

Professor S. Cohen is the man who ought to be speaker for the Trump Admin on Russian affairs, but he won’t be, because the president has surrounded himself with philosophical enemies, daughter included.

Did Hillary Hawk Lose Because She’s A Lot Like Chucky Krauthammer?

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, War

A new study makes the case that Hillary Clinton lost because the poor, largely white communities which pay for war forevermore, got sick of paying.

… professors argue that Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate.

By contrast, her pro-war positions did not hurt her in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, the study says; because those states were relatively unscathed by the Middle East wars.

The study is titled “Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?” Authors Francis Shen, associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Dougas Kriner, a political science professor at Boston University, strike a populist note:

I hope so. And let’s hope Trump remembers running on a plank of no more unwarranted, aggressive unconstitutional wars. (Good move today in initiating cooperation with Russia.) However, whenever I watch soldiers selected to appear on Fox News, they’re cheering loudest for war, and damning those who object.

POTUS In Poland And The Neoconservative Threat

Donald Trump, Europe, Islam, Neoconservatism, The West

The president began his address to the Polish with praise for his wife, long-overdue: “… no better ambassador for our country than our beautiful First Lady, Melania.”

Of concern is that President Trump’s powerful address to the People of Poland, on July 6, 2017, has become a repository for neoconservative fantasies of world domination.

What President Trump said is hardly a Rorschach blot: fuzzy, hazy verbal vapor, designed to absorb the listener’s projected emotions and reflect them back soothingly. The neoconservatives, however, are back. And the Never-Trumpsters have stepped into their former positions in media.

Chucky Krauthammer rides again.


The Poles Like Gen. Lee’s Battle Flag:

READ: Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland | July 6, 2017.

See it.