{"id":1717503,"date":"2022-10-31T03:18:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T07:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1717503"},"modified":"2022-10-31T03:18:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T07:18:51","slug":"how-did-the-ukrainian-flag-enter-the-pantheon-of-leftist-virtue-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-did-the-ukrainian-flag-enter-the-pantheon-of-leftist-virtue-symbols\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did The Ukrainian Flag Enter The Pantheon Of Leftist Virtue Symbols?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-did-the-ukrainian-flag-enter-the-pantheon-of-leftist-virtue-symbols%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1717503&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Enjoying a walk with my wife on a comfortable fall day in the Pittsburgh suburbs, I noticed the village activist\u2019s house in the wealthy neighborhood where we happened to find ourselves. Sitting among a sea of homes with Democratic yard signs, this house aimed a level or two higher. A rainbow was painted on the red-brick exterior. Every important Democratic candidate, from U.S. Senate to state senate, featured prominently. Black Lives Matter had its space, as did the blue-yellow equal sign. Other signs cited pollination-related reasons for the unkempt lawn. The home\u2019s inhabitants believe in science and other things. And \u2014 drumroll \u2014 there was a Ukrainian flag. One of these isn\u2019t like the others.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t an anomaly. A casual glance at social media sites will reveal an endless number of Ukrainian flags positioned next to rainbow flags and pronoun badges. As someone who has devoted much of his life to the study of Central and Eastern Europe, I find this all a bit odd. Why does the Ukrainian flag suddenly occupy a place among the fashionable leftist symbols of the moment?<\/p>\n<p>The simple answer is the self-righteousness of our societal elites. For a variety of reasons, sporting a Ukrainian flag offers a reliable mode of virtue-signaling for even those who until recently knew little about the country.<\/p>\n<p>On paper, a war in Ukraine seems an unlikely <em>cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em> for the left. Its identity-obsession complex gains little from a people who are Slavic Orthodox Christians, and relatively devout at that. The laws and sociopolitical climate in Ukraine would never be confused for those prevailing in California, Massachusetts, or the Nordic countries. The country\u2019s only numerically significant \u201cdiverse community\u201d is\u2026 Russian.<\/p>\n<p> Against Russia or War? <\/p>\n<p>Distaste for Russia, then, might be a better way to look at it. Those who refuse to accept that Donald Trump fairly won the 2016 presidential election might hold a lingering hatred of Russia. This explanation might have some validity, but it can\u2019t possibly be the only one, or even the most important. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/12\/18\/us\/politics\/trump-impeached.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ukraine<\/a>, after all, was also linked to the former president in a political show trial. Furthermore, if this flag-waving were more about Russia than Ukraine, we likely would have observed the advent of some directly anti-Kremlin symbol rather than the Ukrainian symbols we do see.<\/p>\n<p>Positions on U.S. involvement in the war also do not fall neatly along a partisan divide. Only 57 Republican congressmen and 11 Republican senators <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/congress\/2022\/09\/27\/congress-to-vote-on-123-billion-ukraine-aid-package\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">voted<\/a> against the $40 billion military and economic aid package in May. Former Vice President Mike Pence <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/congress\/gop-ukraine-skeptics-poised-gain-congress-lawmakers-look-lock-billions-rcna53167\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">called<\/a> opponents of Ukraine military aid \u201capologists\u201d for Putin. In a Twitter dispute with Elon Musk, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/elon-musk-lindsey-graham-feud-over-us-handling-ukraine-russia-war-referendum-elections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">offered<\/a> this particularly simplistic advice: \u201cIf you want peace in Ukraine \u2014 which we ALL do \u2014 simply demand Russian [sic] honor the boundaries they agreed to in 1994 and withdraw their forces.\u201d If coastal elites are reacting to a perceived a sense of \u201cRussia love\u201d among Republicans, this isn\u2019t grounded in facts.<\/p>\n<p>Abhorrence to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Societal elites and their online foot soldiers seek a way to express their own self-importance and maintain a certain position in society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":1717506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1717506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}