Obama’s 4th July Speech Highlights the Moral Divide Between the US and Russia
Obama’s 4th July Speech Highlights the Moral Divide Between the US and Russia
The contrast between the leaders’ addresses to their nations highlights the irreconciliable views that the US and Russian governments hold on fundamental human values.
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For a direct comparison of Russia’s and the US’s guiding principles, one only has to compare Obama’s 4th July speech with that of President Putin’s address to the nation back in December last year.
Obama’s speech, in which he refrains from the phrase ‘God Bless America’ for the first time, was, as one might expect, about liberty – that eternal American value. Freedom to do exactly what one wants. He states that liberty is an ‘inalienable right’ as is the ‘pursuit of happiness’. It sounds great, doesn’t it – what else could anyone ask for? But there is a ‘but’.
What exactly does Obama mean by freedom? Freedom to marry whoever one chooses – yes, this is now the case. But I’m afraid that to believe that we can live in land of complete freedom is to live in cloud-cuckoo land. We can’t be free from paying taxes. We aren’t free to assault whoever we wish. And we also aren’t free to express views that could be deemed racist or homophobic. There are rules and rules we all have to abide by. To disregard rules and follow one’s heart’s desire would naturally lead to anarchy…
Taking this template for civilisation and applying it to geopolitics therefore, to my mind, explains the current global crisis. We have anarchy. US policy is a result of it doing exactly what it wants and not adhering to international rules – as President Putin rightfully noted at the Valdai conference last year – we need to define what the ‘rules’ are in the international arena.
Indeed in President Putin’s speech back in December he commented on this libertarian approach:
“Today, many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic traditions and differences between peoples and cultures.
Society is now required not only to recognise everyone’s right to the freedom of consciousness, political views and privacy, but also to accept without question the equality of good and evil, strange as it seems, concepts that are opposite in meaning.
This destruction of traditional values from above not only leads to negative consequences for society, but is also essentially anti-democratic, since it is carried out on the basis of abstract, speculative ideas, contrary to the will of the majority, which does not accept the changes occurring or the proposed revision of values.
We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity.
Of course, this is a conservative position. But speaking in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”
Putin’s observation that this western concept of ‘liberty’ is in fact imposed on people and that it is ‘anti-democratic’ will likely escape many in the secular west. But his view absolutely reflects the view of many in Russia. The Russian view on marriage being a heterosexual union, for example, is highly unlikely ever to change, and while the West seems to be erasing the rules and traditions that have been the social norm for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, Russia is clinging on to these traditions as a framework for a stable society.
This position is also reflected in Russia’s foreign policy. The inability to accept what was an illegal coup in Ukraine as a result of the Maidan movement shows that Russia is concerned with adhering to rules and has a strong sense of the ‘moral values’ Putin speaks of. When we look to Russia’s decision to involve itself in the South Ossetian/Georgian conflict in 2008 and in Crimea last year, we can see the moral argument played a huge role. Russian lives were at stake.
Everyone wants happiness. But happiness for all does not equal absolute freedom for all. And the path to happiness is not anarchy, on a domestic or geopolitical level.
President Putin lights a candle with Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church