Right and Left, and Up and Down

Putin has a spring in his step, put there by the stoppage of aid to the Ukrainians from the United States. Russian forces are attacking cities all over Ukraine, including the capital, killing innocents as they go. This ought to make Americans gulp, at a minimum.

Not all Americans are on the same side, of course: the same side of the Ukraine war. That was true during the Cold War as well. And other wars.

In a previous post, I noted that President Biden had worn a couple of symbols — what he called his “Ukraine tie” and his “Ukraine pin.” I think symbols are fine, even important. But Ukraine needs material support more than symbolic support (as Biden well knows).

“The clock is ticking,” said the president. “Every week that passes without new aid for Ukraine means fewer artillery shells, fewer air-defense systems, fewer tools for Ukraine to defend itself against this Russian onslaught.”

A nice thing about symbols is that they don’t need congressional approval. Material support does.

• I listen to the America Firsters — many of whom are in Congress, on the Republican side. And they are just like the America Firsters of yore: not only unsympathetic to free peoples under siege but also blind to the U.S. interest.

• There is what I call a “Heritage diaspora” — ex-employees of the Heritage Foundation. They are scattered hither and yon, still doing valuable work — which includes correcting the new Heritage Foundation.

As Luke Coffey does here:

• What Edward Hunter Christie says, below, I believe is true:

Of course, that would be fine with some — with many, in fact: a United States with a diminished international standing. That is a debate we’ve had in our country for generations (and there ought to be such a debate, in a democratic society).

• Young people will have no idea how dizzying it is for Senator Mike Lee — known as a “conservative Republican” — to cite Seymour Hersh. Against the Ukrainians. Young people will have no idea. I think I first heard of Hersh in the early 1980s, in National Review. For years, NR poured scorn on this fellow, and his fantastical and malevolent writing.

On whom will Republicans such as Lee rely next? Walter Duranty? Izzy Stone? Herbert Matthews? When did the Right, so much of it, become the Left?

Here is something else for young people to know: In the old days, leftists routinely said that the CIA was behind everything — everything that was bad (or that they thought was bad). The CIA was an all-purpose bogeyman.

Well, listen to the young woman below, who is a big “conservative influencer,” with 4.6 million — 4.6 million — Twitter followers:

Mike Lee is citing Seymour Hersh against the Ukrainians. Candace Owens is calling Hollywood a CIA creation. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others are saying, “Defund the FBI!” Fox News hosts are calling the pop star Taylor Swift a “Pentagon psy-op.” What’s next for the Right? Che Guevara T-shirts? “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” “¡Venceremos!”

I heard that music before . . .

• What Mark Salter has said, I sympathize with:

To abandon free-market economics is one thing. To abandon free trade. Entitlement reform. The general idea of fiscal discipline. Personal responsibility. Whatever. But Ukraine is different. Ukraine is the most urgent freedom cause in the world right now. The Ukrainians need the support of all freedom-loving people. They are fighting and dying on the front lines of a broader conflict, which involves us all, whether we like it or not (and who does?). And the American Right . . .

Many Republicans sound more like Ron Dellums and Abbie Hoffman than they do Ronald Reagan or Bill Buckley.

In Cold War days, there was a lot of smoke from the American Left — excuses, falderal, sophistry. But when it came right down to it, a lot of them were simply pro-Kremlin. Yes, I remember that music.