I respect the arguments made by Ukrainian Americans on behalf of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. By voicing our opinions, we have demonstrated that we are patriotic Americans who love Ukraine.
I also want to thank Andrew Fedynsky for expanding on my recent column reviewing voting patterns among Ukrainian Americans over the years. Andy and I are at opposite ends of the American political spectrum, but so what. I respect him.
I don’t know which candidate would be best for Ukraine. Joe Biden loves Ukraine, but so what. He helped his son Hunter garner big bucks in Ukraine and the Obama/Biden administration provided little while the Ukrainian military needed much.
The Trump/Pence administration provided lethal weapons to Ukraine, but so what. Mr. Trump dislikes Ukrainians and appears to be romancing Tsar Vladimir (Putin).
On Ukraine, it’s a toss-up between “love me and exploit me” Biden and “hate me and help me” Trump.
Regardless of who our next president is, the future of Ukraine will be decided not by us but by people in Ukraine. Dumping a seasoned leader like Petro Poroshenko for a fly-by-night like Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not encouraging behavior.
My major concern during the coming election is with America. It seems that we have reached another low in the days of our republic. To me, Antifa and BLM are just another insidious incarnation of the Communist playbook. “The true genius of radicalism,” wrote Peter Collier and David Horowitz, former radicals, “is constant self-recreation and re-appearance in new guises.”
I lived through the 1960s, when members of the Weather Underground (WU) were robbing Brinks currency trucks and bombing the U.S. Capitol. “Smash monogamy” and “don’t trust anyone over 30” were their rallying cries. They declared war on “Amerika” and organized “days of rage.” It started out as protests against the Vietnam War with Jane Fonda famously appearing in Hanoi nurturing America’s foe, and went south from there. Like Ms. Fonda, the leaders of WU were never held to account for their behavior. When it was all over, Bill Ayers, WU mastermind, completed his doctorate in less than a year at Columbia University Teachers College and went on to teach education courses at the University of Illinois. His wife, Bernadine Dohrn, spent time in prison and later became a law professor at Northwestern University.
The 1970s are often called the decade of radical feminism. It began in 1963 with the publication of “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan, continued through the establishment of the National Association of Women (NOW) by Ms. Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem – who believed “women need men like a fish needs a bicycle” – and culminated in the Red Stocking manifesto that called for the elimination of such patriarchal institutions as marriage and the family. “Marriage and the family must be abolished as institutions,” Ti-Grace Atkinson, author of “Amazon Odyssey,” wrote; “ ‘love’ as an ideology to justify them must also go.”
The resignation of President Richard Nixon, the inability of President Gerald Ford to completely heal the nation and the “national malaise” claim of President Jimmy Carter nibbled away at the presidency, another crucial aspect of American culture.
In 1987 Jesse Jackson led some 500 students around Stanford University shouting, “Ho, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go.” They were protesting the inclusion of a Western civilization curriculum requirement. One professor called the requirement “an affront to women and members of minority groups.” The “cancel culture” cult of today is a continuation of that theme.
I believe “defund police” is part of the radical goal to destroy our institutions, replace gender with trans, family with commune, racial harmony with “critical race theory,” and the institutionalization of “systemic racism” as an integral component of the “American Way.”
I have been an educator all of my adult life. A major concern of mine is the teaching of American history in our high schools and colleges. The commonly used text today is “A People’s History of the United States” by Prof. Howard Zinn. Published in 1980, his major theme is that Americans have little to be proud of. Not only did we commit genocide of the American Indians, but the major goal of our founding fathers was to preserve white privilege. World War II was not fought to preserve freedom. It was “a war waged by a government whose chief beneficiary… was a wealthy elite.”
And now we have the “1619 Project,” described as an ongoing initiative by The New York Times Magazine, that began in 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe our history by “placing the consequences of slavery and contributions of black Americans at the very center of the national narrative.” According to Princeton professor Matthew Desmond, a major contributor, “If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”
American institutions and culture have been under attack for decades. Which party do you believe will resist the latest proposals for a “cleansed America”?
The Democratic Party of 2020 is not the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. It has changed. So has Joe Biden. I like Mr. Biden. He has overcome a speech handicap and weathered many personal tragedies. For much of his political career he was pro-life. Today, Mr. Biden, a Roman Catholic, is pro-choice, a hostage, I believe, of the radical left. Even if he wanted to return to his former moderate self, the people around him won’t let him.
I am not especially fond of Donald Trump as a person, but so what. He gets things done and he is a Republican; the GOP has proven to be consistently in concert with my values and beliefs for my entire adult life.
In 2016 I voted for Mr. Trump reluctantly. Lesia voted enthusiastically. We will vote the same way in 2020. Consider joining us, dear reader.
Myron Kuropas’s e-mail address is [email protected].