Norwegian Nazi Collaborator  Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling courtesy of Wikimedia

Bret Stephens, in the New York Times, exposes the abhorrent opposition by some reactionaries masquerading as “conservatives” to the morally imperative defense of Ukraine from heinous Russian brutality.  Excerpt:

One of the stranger features of the politics of the war in Ukraine is that the most vocal opposition to it tends to come from the hard right. In some ways, that right sounds like the hard left it used to oppose so fiercely.

 

On April 20, 19 Republican lawmakers, including Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee and J.D. Vance, sent a letter to President Biden decrying “unlimited arms supplies in support of an endless war.” Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have each expressed their opposition to Western support for Ukraine (though the Florida governor seemed to walk his opposition back); both are keenly attuned to what they think will play well in G.O.P. primaries.

 

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Is there a coherent philosophical grounding for these antiwar conservatives? On the surface, no.

 

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Much of this incoherence is partly explained via the George Costanza school of modern conservatism: If a Democrat is for it, they’re against it.

 

But something darker is also at work. In Putin’s cult of machismo, his suppression of political opposition, his “almost sublime contempt for truth” (Joseph Conrad’s memorable line about Russian officialdom), his opportunistic embrace of religious orthodoxy, his loathing of “decadent” Western culture, his sneering indifference to international law and, above all, his contempt for democratic and liberal principles, he represents a form of politics the Tuckerites glimpsed but never quite got in the presidency of Donald Trump.

 

 

Glory to Ukraine!