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The Guns Of Kiev

A Ukrainian friend sent this. If protesters who took over Times Square were armed and firing on police, what would you think? UPDATE: Daniel Larison, talking sense at Peggy Noonan, who thinks America ought to lead with its heart regarding Ukraine, because we are a “nation with meaning.” Excerpt: It is blindingly obvious that Americans […]

A Ukrainian friend sent this. If protesters who took over Times Square were armed and firing on police, what would you think?

UPDATE: Daniel Larison, talking sense at Peggy Noonan, who thinks America ought to lead with its heart regarding Ukraine, because we are a “nation with meaning.” Excerpt:

It is blindingly obvious that Americans generally support the rule of law, representative government, the rights to peaceably assemble, speak freely, and protest one’s government, and the principle that political legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed. That doesn’t mean that they are required to cheer on one side in an increasingly bitter and violent internal conflict in another country. Americans are not required to declare support for specific political movements in other countries to affirm principles that we have cherished for centuries, especially if a significant fraction of one of these movements values few or none of these things. We don’t need to endorse a protest movement in another country to “remember who we are,” and no one is likely to forget what we believe in if we choose not to wade into the middle of a foreign conflict that Americans don’t really understand in the first place. This has much more to do with an obsession to be “a nation with meaning” than it does with the pursuit of wisdom, prudence, or justice.

Yes. Do you know who the good guys and the bad guys are in Ukraine? I do not. In Egypt, I was not sorry to see the Morsi government overthrown, but one should not be under any illusions that the Egyptian military are the good guys. Why do we have to pick a side? Are we sure we know enough about what’s going on there to do so? Some of us might; one of this blog’s readers is in Kiev, and he has clear and firmly held opinions about the Yanukovych government. I respect that, but it is clearer to me that America does not need to be picking sides in this fight than it is which side we should pick.

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