Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan added his voice to the chorus of right-wing defenders of Russia's crackdown on gays and their supporters, writing that international criticism of Russia shows people can no longer distinguish between “good and evil.”
In his August 13 syndicated column, Buchanan took America's “moral and cultural elites” to task for their opposition to Russian laws banning the positive depiction of homosexuality and the adoption of Russian children by any foreign couples from countries with marriage equality. Buchanan pined for the days when society ostracized gays, while lauding Russian President Vladimir Putin for seeking to restore a “moral compass” to Russia by implementing its anti-gay policies:
Our moral and cultural elites have put Putin on notice: Get in step with us on homosexual rights -- or we may just boycott your Sochi games.
What this reveals is the distance America has traveled, morally and culturally, in a few short years, and our amnesia about who we Americans once were, and what it is we once believed.
[...]
Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.
“The adoption of Christianity,” declared Putin, “became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped turn it into one of the largest world powers.”
Anyone ever heard anything like that from the Post, the Times or Barack Hussein Obama?
Buchanan is fond of mourning “who we Americans once were.” He's made a career of predicting the imminent collapse of American civilization as a result of Latino immigration, cozied up to white supremacists, and traced the decline of a once-great America to the historical moment when Americans started to affirm "[t]hat women and men are equal ... and that all races, religions, and ethnic groups are equal." It's no surprise, then, that he finds a kindred spirit in the retrograde Putin.