John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"Russian Conservatism Today Stands for Family Values and Resistance to Globalism"
I certainly have nothing against families, but I seriously dislike the term, "family values."
Russians may not be aware of the fact, but for some years in the 1980s the term was used, quite hypocritically, by the Republican Party in the United States.
It served as a kind of advertising slogan for a party that was bereft of ideas and had no worthy policies or goals to pursue.
It was especially loudly-mouthed by creepy politicians like Newt Gingrich - a guy who, among other disgusting behaviors, told his wife who was dying of cancer that he was divorcing her for someone new.
The phrase is not a happy one for many forward-looking North Americans, the very people who try to understand Russia and sympathize with its abuse by the American power establishment.
The use of “globalism" also is very loaded. The extreme American Right loves using the term as an epithet, almost an obscenity, against any kind of international organization. This attitude really represents the last dregs of traditional American isolationism and Fortress America and America “can go it alone.”
But global relationships, global trade, global cooperation, and sound global institutions are not to be despised by anyone with good intentions.
These are good things. Russia needs to sell many of its products abroad. Russia wants all the trade it can secure. Russia wants a framework protecting trade and diplomacy from the kind of idiocy we see recently from the United States. Russia wants peace and good order.
You know, the "vision" of American Neocons is the opposite to that in reality. Their view is that America can unilaterally decide things, that America is the "indispensable nation," that America should not answer to organizations like the UN, the WTO, the OPCW, or the ICC.
In a very real sense, they are the genuine anti-globalists. They actually favor a form of chaos and the principle of might makes right. I don't understand why anyone, especially in Russia, would want to support their contempt for international fairness and order, and that is precisely what is communicated by numerous contemptuous references to "globalism."
Perhaps those using the term with contempt mean something else, but they do not explain what they mean, they are not specific, and pour dislike on a perfectly good term.
