Musings on Ukraine's Fight for Its Independence

Musings on Ukraine’s Fight for Its Independence 

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., August 23, 2025

The primary moral imperative in American democracy is providing for the common good, and Donald Trump’s election twice as America’s president is proof that in U.S. politics, power trumps altruistic morality.  Trump exemplifies political immorality with ample evidence that American Constitutional democracy now fails to provide the rights that it provides. 

The church has been the primary source of moral standards in America, but it has failed to be a moral steward of democracy.   Thomas Jefferson once observed that “the teachings of Jesus are the most sublime moral code ever designed by man,” and they are summarized in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors, including those of other races and religions as we love ourselves.  Its  moral imperative is to provide for the common good.

Trump is not alone in giving his personal power precedence over the providing for the common good.  Putin in Russia and Netanyahu in Israel have both nationalized their religions to promote their political power.  Putin has used the Russian Orthodox Church to promote his unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, and Netanyahu has used a Zionist Third Temple Movement to promote the expansion of Israel through its oppressive occupation of Gaza.

In a democracy power resides in the voters, and demagogues like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu have thrived within democratic regimes shaped by the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  All religious cultures have affirmed the precedence of political power over promoting the common good, in spite of their many prophets of altruistic politics.

History shows that democracies are as corrupted by materialism, hedonism and greed as autocracies, with little precedence for justice over political corruption and oppression.  In the continuing cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, democracies have been as corrupted by demagogues like Trump as those redeemed by more altruistic moral leaders.

The greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves, including those of other races and religions may provide the altruistic moral imperative to provide for the common good.  But in practice the church has ignored Trump's narcissistic emphasis on his personal power rather than providing for the common good.

What does American  exceptionalism mean today? In Trump’s America there is more emphasis on seeking power and glory than on providing for the common good.  With popularity now the measure of success in religion and politics, America’s values are more compatible with materialism, hedonism and greed than with altruistic moral standards.

Has America lost the universal and altruistic vision exemplified by Jesus?  Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian, but the church has made Jesus Christ into an exclusivist icon, limiting salvation to Christians who believe in church doctrines never taught by Jesus.  Can a diminishing church resurrect a universal Jesus committed to provide for the common good and save itself and America from themselves?

Notes:

Thomas Friedman has written on “how Ukraine diplomacy has revealed how-Un-American Trump is. The United States must provide the security guarantees that would deter Russia from ever trying this again and encourage our European allies to promise that Ukraine will one day be in the E.U. — forever anchored in the West. Trump is unlike any American president in the past 80 years. He feels no gut solidarity with the trans-Atlantic alliance and its shared commitment to democracy, free markets, human rights and the rule of law — an alliance that has produced the greatest period of prosperity and stability for the most people in the history of the world. I am convinced that Trump looks at NATO as if it’s a U.S.-owned shopping center whose tenants are never paying enough rent. And he looks at the European Union as a shopping center competing with the United States that he’d like to shut down by hammering it with tariffs. The notion that NATO is the spear that protects Western values and that the European Union is possibly the West’s best modern political creation — a vast center of free people and free markets, stabilizing a continent that was known for tribal and religious wars for millenniums — is alien to Trump.  “However much European leaders pile on their flattery of Trump, it’s clear the fundamental bond of trust that underlay the 80-year success of the trans-Atlantic economy, that served the U.S. so favorably for decades, is now ruptured.  There is only one conclusion: The only sustainable way to stop this war and prevent it from coming back is a massive, consistent Western commitment to give Ukraine the military resources that will persuade Putin that his army will be chewed apart. Putin’s punishment for this war should be that he and his people have to forever look to the West and see a Ukraine, even if it is a smaller Ukraine, that is a thriving Slavic, free-market democracy, compared with Putin’s declining Slavic, authoritarian kleptocracy. But how will Trump ever learn that truth when he basically gutted the National Security Council staff and shrank and neutered the State Department, when he fired the head of the National Security Agency and his deputy on the advice of a conspiracy buffoon, Laura Loomer, and when he appointed a Putin fan girl, Tulsi Gabbard, to be his director of national intelligence? Who will tell him the truth? No one. See Ukraine Diplomacy Reveals How Un-American Trump Is at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/opinion/trump-russia-ukraine-putin.html.