Don’t be Stupid about Putin

My Papaw Earl  taught me a great lesson: don’t love brown shirts or red shirts.

Love the Bible, Jesus, and justice.

Papaw had a vision as a young man: He saw a man looking like Charlie Chaplin riding a horse. All was military and grand until the horse passed by him, the viewer, and Papaw saw that the horse was only half alive. The innards spilled out to the ground. All was ugly. All was evil.

There was no beauty.

What was the fable’s lesson?

No brown shirts to stop red shirts.

Got it. Thanks, Papaw.

Evil cannot create good. 

When in graduate school, hatred of brown shirts often led to excuses for the red shirts, the KGB thugs that murdered millions in a “good cause.” Papaw had taught me to despise such compromise.

If you start shooting nuns, then you are evil.

If you take this as a guide, then you will not think anything good about Putin, he is a KGB thug.  The error is that we made the mistake not to ask for repentance: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Putin’s betters, back in the day when atheists ran Russia, had put sycophants in Church offices. They are not physically dead yet, even if their souls live in Hell. We should pray that the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on them, as on us, sinners.

Putin invades Ukraine using Western decadence as an excuse. Damn that evil.

Putin’s invasion is worse to the extent he uses any virtue to justify the death, destruction, and doom.

Putin has not purged the Stalinist evils from Church or State. Why trust him?

The simple truth is this: good is good. Do not kill innocent people. Be kind. Do as little harm as possible.

Naturally, in a Vegas West this is hard because we stutter whenever we tell people what they should not do.

We hesitate to tell people that some pleasure is wrong.

Putin, that old sinner, reminds us.

Individual morality matters.

Everything we wish to do is not something we should do. Yet getting one truth right does not justify anything. We should not justify one harm by another. Shocking thought: we can get greater evils wrong, worrying about other evils: sacking a city is worse than cheating on taxes.

We can condemn Putin for sacking Ukraine, a free nation, and ask the Church to stand with peace. We can do so because we do not think the ends justify the means, that beauty is subjective, or that we should vote for brown shirts to stop red shirts.

I hate modern decadence, but will not support ancient evils to stop it.

God save the the Russian and Ukrainian people.