As she did in relation to Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq, and as she always has to do on her own soil in relation to Chechnya, Russia is doing her age-old duty as the leader among the Slavic gatekeepers of Christendom, not least against Islam. China also faces neocon-backed Islamist terrorism and secessionism, in Xinjiang.
See those flags of the USSR and of Russian ultranationalism in all its anti-modern, anti-urban, anti-scientific and anti-Semitic awfulness. See those Islamist flags in Syria. In neither case can the wavers be accused of anything less than total openness. But no one in the West is paying any attention. Why not?
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Dmitri Aleksandrovich, a Russian Orthodox commenter, rightly notes how analogous the Russian Orthodox tradition is with the Irish Catholic tradition (indeed there are many many similarities between the two - though Russia has not had the same horrible experience of the oppression and occupation of foreign heretics):
ReplyDelete"I love Ireland and the Irish people. I have never been to Ireland, but in the pubs around San Francisco I have befriended many Irish ex-pats and have come to have a deep respect for them as a people. When my grandfather was on his death bed it was an Irish Catholic priest (from Ireland) named Father Timoney who read him his last rights. I also have a deep respect for Irish nationalism and the centuries old struggle to be free from the tyranny of the British Crown...
Probably if I were to guess I would say Ireland needs to reclaim their economic independence and national sovereignty from Brussels and again devote herself to the spirit of the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the ideals and values that made the Irish Republic.
As for the Roman Catholic Church. I would say that many good Catholics have had their spirits wounded by these scandals and the Irish people should seek justice in these matters, but at the same time the Irish people need to safeguard their deep Catholic beliefs that make up the Irish identity, because without these beliefs there is no Ireland just as without the Russian Orthodox Church there is no Russia. Orthodoxy is the soul of the Russian people just as Catholicism is the soul of Ireland. The rivers and lakes of both nations run red with the blood of martyrs and patriots.
The world as we know it is always changing and at an ever more rapid pace, but I would just hope that Irish people would remember the words of Jesus of Nazareth “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”. In politics we must always seek to conserve that which was good in our father’s times and our grandfather’s times and our great grandfather’s times. I know many of my Irish Republican friends cringe at the mere mention of de Valera, but he was right on if he made that statement above that Ireland should only “value material wealth as a basis for right living”. After the fall of the Soviet Union many in Russia have forgotten this and they have substituted what Solzhenitsyn called “godless Capitalism” in place of atheist communism."
I don't think the EU poses a threat to Irish tradition or nationality. I myself strongly support an independent Ireland, within an integrated European Union (a nice counterbalance to British imperial ambitions).