According to numerous recent interviews given by presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Vladimir Putin wanted to negotiate a treaty over the disputes in Ukraine — the details of which, having to do with something called the Minsk Agreements, are far too complex to discuss here — but the U.S. was unwilling. If this is true, one can’t help but ask why the leaders of our country are so bent on having war with Russia.
A troubling answer was given recently by Colonel Douglas Macgregor. According to him, it boils down to two things: nationhood and Christianity.
The West would “like to replace Putin because” he “presides over the last major power in Europe … that has a national identity … that rests on the foundation of orthodox Christianity,” Macgregor said in an online interview.
This theory is not without evidence, for it has been widely reported that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has banned Orthodox Churches with connections to Russia. In fact, Tucker Carlson and presidential candidate Mike Pence went round and round about this issue in a recent interview, with Pence saying there was no religious repression happening, while Carlson clearly thought the opposite was true.
Further evidence is found in a Heritage Foundation article from December entitled “‘Woke’ Public Diplomacy Undermines the State Department’s Core Mission and Weakens U.S. Foreign Policy,” claiming that our State Department has parted from its old role of promoting America’s core traditional values abroad for the “ephemeral political fads” of gender ideology and critical race theory. Setting aside exactly how we got to this point, the new direction seems foolhardy for several reasons.
For one, it isn’t at all clear that Americans support this kind of thing, with 60% of those polled in a May 2022 Pew Research Poll saying that they believe gender is determined at birth.
Further, at least some aspects of these pursuits are so new that we still don’t know what to expect in the long run. Consider John William Money, believed by many to be the pioneer of modern-day gender theory. Money’s primary gender experiment — sex changes performed on David Reimer — turned out to be a disaster, as he grew up and changed back from female to male, eventually committing suicide, while his twin brother — also the object of Money’s experimentation — died of a drug overdose.
Finally, it was reported only recently that several countries in Africa have chosen to align themselves politically with Russia instead of the United States, suggesting that these new changes are already having a negative effect.
How did we, a nation where Christianity has been the majority religion since its inception, come to find ourselves on the opposite side of our own faith majority? And since when did most Americans decide that we are against nationhood and that our monetary resources ought to be used to fight such things?
These are not easy questions to answer, but they seem to have something to do with just the kinds of policies the Heritage Foundation is warning us against.
The U.S. should rethink its stated goals abroad. The State Department should return to its original mission of promoting the U.S.’s interests overseas – and leave behind the woke colonialism. And if we are at war against Russia because of nationhood and Christianity, as Macgregor said, then we should stop supporting the war in Ukraine. We cannot expect God to bless our country if we do otherwise.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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