U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so.

In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad.

The NDI has been tied to color-coded or Orange revolutions such as those that dethroned regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Lebanon. The project miscarried in Belarus.

The NDI is one of several agencies, dating to the 1980s, that were set up to subvert communist regimes. With the end of the Cold War, however, these agencies were not decommissioned, but recommissioned to serve as something of an American Comintern.

Where the old Comintern of Lenin sought to instigate communist revolutions across the West and its empires, post-Cold War America decided to promote democratic revolutions to remake the world in the image of late 20th century America.

In 2002, McFaul wrote a book: Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.

Vladimir Putin’s men are not unreasonably asking if he was sent to Moscow to finish that revolution. Putin has already accused Hillary Clinton of flashing the signal for street demonstrations to begin — to protest Russia’s December’s elections.

Nor is it surprising the Putin’s people are suspicious of McFaul, who added to his problems by meeting with anti-Putin dissidents the day after he presented his credentials.

McFaul says this is part of his “dual-track engagement” with Russian society. Before leaving for Moscow, he told NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.”

But what, exactly, are these “universal values”?

And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

After all, we do not even agree ourselves on what is moral and immoral, good and evil. Indeed, our own deep disagreements on what is moral and what is not are at the root of the culture wars tearing this country apart.

In America, women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Scores of millions have availed themselves of that right since Roe v. Wade. Yet traditionalists of many faiths — Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Orthodox and Jewish — reject any such woman’s right and regard it as a moral abomination. Read more…

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In the United States, we rightly pride ourselves on many things. Yet it turns out that the United States is behind countries such as Namibia, Mali, Estonia, and Papua New Guinea in one very important area.

Reporters Without Borders have recently released their Press Freedom Index for 2011-2012, and the U.S. is 47^th, just below Taiwan and tied with Argentina. For a country that gave birth to the Bill of Rights this ought to be at the very least embarrassing, and at the worst, shameful.

The report cites the response to protests in 2011 as justification for the United States’ poor ranking. In the space of two months more than 25 journalists were  arrested, escorted off premises, or beaten for ‘inappropriate behavior’, ‘public nuisance’, and lacking accreditation.  Instances like this are now easy to document thanks to modern technology, and some of the videos of such instances are depressing and bemusing in equal measure. These infringements would be worrying enough for First Amendment advocates, but the recent fiasco with SOPA and PIPA are also cause for concern.

The last decade has seen an unacceptable number of abuses of U.S. citizen’s rights. The right to privacy and the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures as codified in the Fourth Amendment is being slowly chipped away through invasive legislation such as the Patriot Act (renewed by President Obama) and NDAA. The right to keep and bear arms is being turned into an almost prohibitive bureaucratic nightmare in some parts of the country, as Emily Miller of the Washington Times has been chronicling. The Fifth Amendment has seen its own fair share of wear and tear, being ignored or treated as an obstacle by overbearing politicians in the name of security.

The Constitution of the United States is a piece of political genius, and it is a shame to see the rights it establishes being so brazenly reduced. Countries that until recently were ruled by dictators that often killed journalists are considered a more open environment in which to practice journalism than the U.S. Perhaps we should be doing a better job at reclaiming our intellectual and political heritage, and reminding the politicians of the document they swore to uphold and protect.

Image from Shutterstock/Scott Rothstein

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Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is talking sense. On the eve of her speech to Davos delegates Merkel has hinted that she will resist the IMF’s calls for a further 500 billion euro injection for bailout funds to struggling eurozone nations.

In an interview with six European newspapers Merkel said, “It makes no sense if we keep promising money but don’t combat the causes of the crisis.” She is right. The root cause of the eurozone crisis was not a lack of funds but an almost unimaginably irresponsible amount of government spending.

It is particularly reassuring to see Merkel speaking this way. Germany is the largest contributor to the already existing bailout fund, and it is understandable that Merkel would be hesitant to ask Germans to pay higher taxes or work longer so that irresponsible governments can exculpate themselves. There is only so long that German voters will put up with this.

Many of the countries at the root of the eurozone crisis should never have been let into the euro. Economically there was not a strong case for Greece to share a currency with Germany and France. However from a European federalist position, an expansive Europe made sense. The idea that Europe could ever be federalized in the same way as countries such as the United States is one of the central flaws of the European Union. No one in Europe feels like a European first and a Belgian or Spaniard second in the same way that someone might feel like an American first and a Floridian second. If Europe is going to recover from its current sovereign debt crisis then Europeans must face the fact that some countries should leave the euro. This is of course not to exclude these countries from the European community. Europe needs strong domestic trade amongst nations, but constituent nations need some of their sovereignty and responsibility back in order to achieve economic stability and growth.

Image: shutterstock/Karuka

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Jordan raised an interesting comparison. Goldwater was the principled guy who couldn’t win but built a movement. Newt is the unprincipled guy who can’t win and might just smash that same movement.

Mitt Romney drew some blood from Newt last night, but I would say Newt came out ahead. Mitt was long on reasons not to trust the former Speaker, short on reasons to support the millionaire from Massachusetts instead. If you were a Florida Republican, you might have more reservations now about Newt’s lobbying and the dismal end of his days in the House. But between the top two he still seems like the one with all the brains and personality. Romney seemed to shrink back to the stature he possessed in 2008. This looked a lot like the Mitt who was on pace to fall behind Huckabee in the delegate count when he dropped out early that February.

Newt’s surge has Michael Steele and other Republican insiders raising the possibility of a brokered convention. (Steele puts the odds, rather implausibly, at 50 percent.) Could the Republican convention be thrown open and nominate… Mitch Daniels? Jeb Bush? Chris Christie? Nate Silver doesn’t rule it out:

Late-entry candidates and brokered conventions have not occurred in the recent past. But there has also not been a case in the recent past in which a candidate like Mr. Gingrich, so vehemently opposed by party elites, was surging ahead in key national and state polls at this stage of the nomination process.

I have my doubts: I wonder whether the GOP establishment wouldn’t rather see Newt go down in flames than waste political capital on a last-minute bid to nominate someone new. What would voters think of being stuck with a candidate for whom none of them had cast their ballots? Mitch Daniels doesn’t have the name recognition or grassroots appeal to match his media hype, and if he declined to run on his own terms, why would he consent to be drafted in a salvage situation?  Another Bush would bring back memories of he-who-must-not-be-mentioned-in-GOP-debates. Christie is more colorful and better known than Daniels — almost certainly too colorful for the party elites and general election voters.

But if Romney loses Florida, the GOP will be rushing headlong into uncharted territory. Note, by the way, the enormous role that SuperPACs have played in undercutting Romney’s fundraising advantage. I could see the GOP letting Newt go down in his blaze in infamy this November, then setting to work rejiggering the campaign-finance laws to make sure it never happens again.

(Here, by the way, is 1980s Newt owning up to having been a Nelson Rockefeller supporter. Last night he talked about attending a Goldwater organizing meeting in ’64 — not an explicit contradiction, but not exactly honest, either.)

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According to Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, 500 billion more euros in rescue funds are needed in order to avoid a “1930s moment” characterized by high inflation and unemployment. The comments come soon after talks between Greece and its creditors were adjourned on Friday. Considering last week’s downgrade of the Eurozone’s own bailout fund, it is remarkable that this sort of rhetoric is still being voiced by those who have a significant amount of power and influence.

The problem with suggestions such as those made by Ms. Lagarde is that they are politically useful and influential. If you are in charge of an organization such as the IMF, it is impossible to advocate a market-oriented solution to the current crisis that allows for the default of certain countries and a radically different monetary policy. The problem with the proposed resolutions to the eurozone crisis is that those in authority approach the issue with too much political baggage. If the euro had not been a political endeavor it would be a lot clearer what steps need to be taken, particularly in regards to the PIGS nations (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain). Unfortunately, too many politicians in Europe are unwilling to admit their mistake, and millions of Europeans will suffer more than necessary because of their stubbornness.

Economic stimuli can sometimes provide temporary economic stability. However, long-term economic stability and growth cannot be achieved through the sort of measures being advocated by the IMF and governments across Europe. Indeed such measures can be harmful in the long term. Economists such as Robert Barro have been arguing this point for some time.

Ms. Lagarde has not explicitly said where the new 500 billion euros she wants will come from. Whatever its source, be it increased taxation, contributions from a more fiscally responsible country, another round of quantitative easing, or a combination of these, the outlook for the long term looks bleak. It is a shame that we are in this incredibly volatile situation, but we have the politicians of Europe to thank for making the situation worse than it could have been.

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