There are folks out there who think that the best solution to the Ukraine crisis – for the folks – is for Zelensky to just throw in the towel and save his people the nightmare of further war with Russia, and part of that group include American pols and blue checks who want to simply put this behind us to get on with what they think is more important business, like sucking up to Iran, and sacrificing to the angry weather goddess. Ukrainians not giving up means the fighting is on TV every night, along with economic pain, and that is hurting their poll numbers, and that’s what counts. The only thing that would make Joe Biden happier than the Ukrainians accepting an armistice leaving Putin in charge of the land he has stolen is a Murder, She Wrote marathon with his pal Corn Pop.
But they won’t say that. They’ll pressure the Ukes for surrender by invoking caring and concern, which they prioritize over freedom. Their argument is that it is somehow immoral to continue to resist and thereby bring the hell down upon the civilian population. I don’t buy it, and hopefully you don’t either. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees is a popular cliché, but right now Ukraine has to actually make that choice in real time. It’s their choice, but the idea that it is somehow immoral to fight, that they are compelled by some secular scripture to submit to foreign tyranny – well, hard pass. If they wish to do it, fine. But the idea that capitulation instead of glorious death on a pile of 7.62x39mm brass is somehow the duty of civilized people is exactly the kind of mindset that empowers barbarians.
And that attitude would also empower aspiring tyrants here at home.
Let’s be clear – I am an American, and I want what is best for America. That might not be what is best for Ukraine. And I fully understand that there is much more to the Russia/Ukraine dispute than those of us outside the Vodka Belt comprehend. The point is not who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, though the guy invading is probably the latter and I have personally witnessed Ukrainian corruption. The point is the softness in our ruling caste’s core that says that the highest best objective is “saving lives,” though that’s not really what they believe. It’s what they say to compel you to act as they wish – to give up your carbon-spewing Chevy Tahoe, to eat bugs instead of rib-eyes, to wear masks and take infinite number of vaccines, and to not fight to the death when your stubborn refusal to just give up is preventing them from ending the shooting and getting back to business as usual.
Yeah, it would be easier for our globalist elite if this war ended with Zelensky walking out of Kiev with his hands up. But that doesn’t make it right to expect him to. Nor is it right to expect us to just give up our rights, property, and self-respect just because that’s convenient for the people in power.
There is something more important than merely living. That’s being free. And while the Ukrainian idea of being free is a bit different than ours in the details, it is identical in the most important way – Ukrainians want to determine for themselves how they will live. And they are willing to die, and to see their own people die, to do that.
Good for them.
Learn from them.
Are we perpetuating the war by giving the Ukrainians arms and ammunition? I sure hope so. If they want to keep fighting, I am happy to share the means to the extent that it overlaps with America’s own interests. Bullets? Sure. Javelins? Fine. MiGs? I think that’s silly for logistical and operational reasons, and because the idea is to refurbish these 40-year-old clunkers at a US base and thereby risks, even a little more than we are risking it now, drawing the US directly into this war. But the principle is fine – as long as it serves American interests. And if Ukraine surrendering becomes something that is in America’s interest, not just the interest of politicians concerned about losing the next election, I will support that – but I will not tell myself that it is based on some abstract moral principle instead upon hard-nosed realism.
If we are talking about principles – not the sodden, mushy guidelines that the cruise ship conservatives always assert to try to keep us from asserting our rights but the real kind – then the principle that you should fight for your freedom regardless of the cost is paramount. Yes, sometimes you are within your moral rights to surrender to avoid more harm to civilians. You can choose that. But the idea that you must do so because more of your people will die simply empowers the brutal. Embrace the power of the deterrent effect that comes from everyone knowing that you’ll never submit, and if they want you too they best get their affairs in order before they come try to make you.
Winston Churchill famously said it best in words that still stir every free man’s heart:
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Churchill was a man of the 19th Century who saved the 20th. This is the 21st, but those words still resonate within those of us who still dare and demand to be free. “Whatever the cost” – that’s a hard standard, but one worthy of a free people. And in America, beneficiary of the Founder’s vision that an armed citizenry is a free one, we zealously guard our right to keep and bear the means to do it.
But freedom is not free. Many of us have forgotten that. In Ukraine, the toll is grievous among fighters and civilians. But that toll must be paid if they wish to remain free. And that is their call. Morally, if Ukrainians want to fight until every man, woman, and cow is dead rather than give in, that’s their decision. The same with making the agonizing call to submit instead of enduring the losses. They are in this war, not us.
Surrender might sometimes be the best of a set of bad choices, but it is never a moral imperative – especially when it is for the convenience of others who will not have to live as slaves.
Keep in mind the lesson of Ukraine – that human nature has not changed and that all this peace and prosperity can collapse into fire and blood in a heartbeat. And when that happens, everyone faces a decision, as a nation and as individuals, about what to do. Do you give in, or do you fight? Make sure you always have the ability to choose for yourself. Buy guns and ammunition.
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