http://interaffairs.ru
Author : Armen Oganesyan
Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs
The American Conservative favorably quotes Putin
as saying at the Valdai forum: "We can see how many
of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting
their roots, including the Christian values that con-
stitute the basis of Western civilization. They are
denying moral principles and all traditional identities:
national, cultural, religious, and even sexual. They are
implementing policies that equate large families with
same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief
in Satan. I am convinced that this opens a direct path
to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis." No West-
ern leader in the recent past could have adopted such a stance, comments the journal with a
tinge of envy.
It is an open secret that many Europeans feel that their perceptions are being challenged as Eu-
rope upholds sexual minority rights, legitimizes gay marriage, euthanasia for adults and even chil-
dren, etc. For Merkel, advocacy of traditional values somehow sounds unnatural.
Speaking of the rights of sexual minorities, at least the Orthodox Christian tradition teaches
that sins and temptations - not people, whose only judge is God - are subject to condemnation.
The impression is that those espousing the rewritten European morality chronically fail to grasp
this key point. An individual's freedom to sin or to avoid sin is God-given and may not be re-
voked, but the message addressed to people affirming and deliberately spreading sin and temp-
tations is lucid.
For ages, the mission of European statehood used to be to shield citizens from temptations, in
unison with the church's working to eradicate sins. These days, a child coming back from school
might tell his parents that his current homework is to decide about his sex orientation, and, no
matter how they feel, the parents can't indicate that the whole thing sounds crazy to them.
Charges of intolerance, if not legal problems, will follow if the kid echoes the parents' invectives
at school.
There is plenty of realism in the view that we are witnessing a new ideological conflict rather
than a mere outbreak of informational warfare. It shocks liberal democrats, says The National
Interest, that the Russian system attempts to survive by denouncing their principles and norms
as hypocrisy and deception.
Actually, the opposite is true: Russia has no intention to spearhead any anti-Western ideology,
nor does a coherent one exists.
Putin has never proclaimed a value system of his own making - contrary to the portrayals com-
piled by his foes; he is no Mao Zedong to do that. He simply reminds us - and all Europeans in
particular - that our civilization can be traced back to Christianity.
Whoever has ears, let them hear (Matthew 11:15).
The Bible Is Not Putin's Invention