THE DUBIOUS UKRAINIAN DISTRACTION

         The United States is staggering under the tyranny of a lawless President, who is shredding constitutional restraints to impose his quasi-socialist, amoral, and racially preferential policies on a divided and confused nation.  This same President has repeatedly usurped the legislative role assigned to Congress by the Constitution, most recently in an effort to salvage his disastrous health care control legislation by arbitrarily repealing and revising its provisions in whatever manner best suits his political purposes.  Even more menacingly, his Administration is abusing federal law enforcement to punish political opponents (like Dinesh D-Souza) and has wielded the enormous power of the IRS to harass and suppress conservative political groups and organizations (like the Tea Party) that dare oppose his oppressive policies. 

            Meanwhile, this same Obama Administration not only tolerates the wholesale violation of the Nation's borders by massive illegal immigration, but actually seeks to facilitate and award such de facto invasion by millions of Mexicans by categorically refusing to enforce the deportation laws -- and then demanding the enactment of amnesty legislation to reward those who participate in the lawless invasion of our country.

                But never mind such ominous domestic misgovernance and oppression.  Put it all aside and under the rug.  There are more convenient scapegoats for opportunistic face-time demagogues to pillory on CNN, Fox News, and the lapdog networks.  Like the President of Russia and the parliament of the Crimea – neither of which is responsible for any of the horrendous problems pressing upon us here at home.

Washington's warning against foreign entanglements may fit the Ukraine Fiasco like a glove.

           The most prominent leaders of the Republican opposition – in lockstep with the liberal media and the Democrats -- have suddenly discovered what they apparently consider a far graver national crisis:  a remote and esoteric Eurasian dispute between a dubious provisional government imposed by rowdy Ukrainian street rebels and pro-Russian forces occupying the longstanding Russian stronghold and naval base on the Crimean peninsula.  

            While the constitutional rights of American Christians and conservatives are crushed and abused at home, bloviating senators and Secretaries of State rush to the microphones to shed crocodile tears over the fate of Ukrainian street factions of uncertain integrity and affiliation – just as these same maudlin poseurs backed the  "democratic" street mobs of Cairo and Tripoli to the great ultimate cost of innocent Christians in Egypt and Libya.

            It is not surprising that duplicitous Democrats are seizing upon the distant distraction of the Ukrainian imbroglio to divert attention from the looming domestic disasters of Obamacare, economic stagnation, an emasculated U.S. military, and the government-led destruction of the institution of marriage.  That is the kind of duplicity that one expects of the Obama sycophants and deranged leftists who control the Federal Government, the major media, and the Democrat Party. 

            But it is exasperating when those who should be leading the resistance to our domestic oppression step forward to serve as "useful idiots" to divert the nation's frustration towards a convenient foreign scapegoat and bogeyman – namely, Russian President Vladimir Putin.  To borrow from Matthew 23:24, Republican leaders who meekly "swallow the camel" of unconstitutional oppression at home race before the cameras to rail furiously against the relative gnat of a remote dispute arising thousands of miles from our borders -- and still further from our genuine national interests.

            The preoccupation of GOP senators like Marco Rubio and John McCain with the vastly exaggerated U.S. interests in the Ukrainian crisis provides them a convenient opportunity for avoiding the far more immediate and pressing crises right here in the United States.  Here at home, Obama, with the assistance of the courts and his leftist minions in the agencies and legislatures, is relentlessly suppressing religious freedom by forcing Catholics and other Christians to subsidize abortions and to celebrate homosexuality and so-called same-sex "marriage."  Yet the likes of McCain, Rubio, and the unctuous Lindsey Graham are far more outraged -- and far more eager to take a stand -- in response to Russia's unsurprising assertion of its national, naval, and security interests in the distant Crimean peninsula.

            But the chorus of condemnation against Putin's surgical intervention in Crimea studiously ignores the fact that there are other contestants in the Ukrainian arena, and none of them are to be confused with the angels.  To put it mildly.  The Ukrainian street rebels of the Maidan include ultra-nationalist fascists and anti-Semites, not to mention a virulently anti-Russian element.  The violent rebels in Kiev that overthrew the corrupt and incompetent – but duly elected – Ukrainian Government are decidely a mixed and motley crew.  But they are surely not to be confused with Jeffersonian democrats, however much American media and politicians promote that impression. 

            Meanwhile, the European Union's intrusive efforts to draw the Ukraine into its economic hegemony, or even into NATO, exacerbated the division that already exists between that nation's pro-European western sector versus its pro-Russian eastern sector.  It is hardly surprising that large segments of the Ukrainian people – mainly those in the East who are members of the conservative Russian Orthodox Church -- are reluctant to be drawn into the embrace of a degenerate Western Europe.  While Putin's Russia at least respects their conservative religious values – such as the preservation of traditional Christian marriage --  those same values would be sharply condemned, if not outlawed outright, in the rigidly secular EU.

            It is evident, therefore, that U.S. politicians and media have grossly oversimplified the complex interests at play in the Ukraine in order to fit a narrative that portrays Putin as a marauding Sauron waging war on the free peoples of the West.  In reality, it is more a matter of merely reconciling the interests of the western-oriented and Russian-oriented elements of the Ukraine, while Russia unsurprisingly insists on protecting its longstanding national interests in the Crimea from falling victim to the turmoil.

            In the latest twist to this fiasco, the Crimean Parliament has voted to join the Russian Federation and scheduled a popular referendum for Crimean citizens to approve or reject such a move.  In what can only be described as an exercise in astonishing audacity, Obama has responded by stating "The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law."  This coming from the would-be Paramount Leader who delights in flouting the restraints of the U.S. Constitution on a regular basis.  But it ill behooves Obama to lecture Russia on the application of Ukrainian constitutional law, when he has blatantly and consistently violated the constitutional rights of his own people, particularly in the areas of religious freedom and the separation of powers.

            The self-righteous Russo-phobic demagoguery from U.S. politicians of all stripes on the Ukrainian situation is a dysfunctional distraction from the more immediate domestic threats to our own constitutional republic.  Especially because actual U.S. interests in the Ukraine are presently negligible, this is yet another case where George Washington's wise admonition to "avoid foreign entanglements" fits like a glove.  If and when Russia moves beyond protecting its historic interests in the Crimea and the stability of the Eastern Ukraine it will be soon enough to sound the alarms.