Nearly three months into the war Ukraine, events up-ended quite a few assumptions by quite a few people. I count myself in that crowd.

I didn’t expect Vladimir Putin to order the invasion.

When he did, I expected it to go the way of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War — a quick rout of Ukrainian forces, a stern “don’t ever do that again” warning from Putin (as with Ukraine, the Georgia dust-up had to do with attempts to re-conquer seceded, pro-Russian areas), and a quick return to International Relations Business as Usual.

When it didn’t go that way, I at least expected Russian forces to wrap up the obvious objectives — securing the seceded Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republicans and a land corridor along the Azov coast connecting them to Crimea — in time for Putin to give a “mission accomplished” speech on World War Two Victory Day (May 9), wag a “don’t do that again” finger at Kyiv, and stand down.

Instead, Putin seems to have made a poor decision and bought himself a quagmire. Some blame his inability to get the job done on a US/NATO “proxy war,” and they’re not wrong, but it’s not like there’s anything new or novel in the idea. The US and Russia have been playing the “proxy war” game since the beginning of the Cold War, each assisting the other’s opponents in an attempt to expand their own empire and limit the expansion of the other.

In the 1990s, John Walker’s “bumper sticker” graphic popped up on the Internet: A Soviet flag with an “X” through it, next to an American flag without the “X.” The slogan:

“Evil Empires — One Down, One to Go …”

Both empires are, indeed, going, and the US “proxy” war in Ukraine, even if it brings about a Russian defeat, will likely hasten the US empire’s decline as onlooking regimes realign — not necessarily “with Russia,” but toward a studied neutrality.

Some take Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine as evidence that he aspires to reconstitute the Soviet empire. But while he’s described that empire’s disintegration as a “geopolitical catastrophe,” his record suggests he’s less interested in reconstituting it than in preserving some semblance of its remnant state’s “sphere of influence.”

If either “proxy war” party is guilty of “reconstitution” (even “expansion”) hubris, it’s the United States. Instead of taking “yes” for an answer, reaping a peace dividend, and moving to a peace economy when the Soviet empire collapsed, the US reveled in its role as self-perceived “only remaining superpower” and went right back to fighting — and losing — wars of aggression and conquest. Only when it brought prospective NATO expansion to Russia’s border with Ukraine did Putin rouse himself to real belligerence.

While the timelines are very different, both the Soviet and US imperial bankruptcies resemble the process of Mike’s in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “Gradually and then suddenly.”

For the US, “suddenly” now knocks at the door. The alternative being nuclear holocaust, might I suggest that we consider beating our swords into plowshares?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On May 9, The Hill reports, the US Senate passed — with unanimous consent! — a bill to “formally allow the Supreme Court of the United States Police to provide around-the-clock protection to [the justices’] family members, in line with the security some executive and congressional officials get.”

While sponsor John Cornyn (R-TX) justified the action on alleged “threats to the physical safety of Supreme Court Justices and their families,” the real reason for the bill is no secret. In the wake of a leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, ordinary Americans started showing up to protest outside the justices’ homes, cuing immediate howls about the sanctity of their “privacy.”

Wait, what?

Even if one considers the interests of unborn children more important than privacy, there’s no question that privacy would be a casualty of the ruling. It would allow state legislatures to ignore privacy in at least two areas — women’s uteri and doctor-patient relationships.

If those areas of privacy are less important than the sanctity of life in the eyes of abortion opponents, how is the privacy of Supreme Court justices and their families more important than, as the First Amendment puts it, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances?”

The Constitution itself doesn’t answer that question. To find what we need, we must instead turn to George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm and the modified version of its utopian scheme’s Seventh Commandment:

“All animals are equal — but some animals are more equal than others.”

Your right to protest the actions of Very Special Important People like Supreme Court justices is subordinate to their right to not be annoyed, embarrassed, or in even the slightest manner inconvenienced by such protests.

If you thought you were reading a column about abortion, you thought wrong.

For that matter, if you thought you were reading a column about privacy, you thought wrong.

You’re reading a column about equality under the law. This little teacup tempest is just the latest in a long list of demonstrations that no such thing exists.

Since the 1980s, America’s Very Special Important People (aka the political class) have availed themselves of a fiction referred to as “free speech zones.” They go where they please and say what they wish — but mere mortals like you are restricted to saying what you wish in locations far removed from them.

Some states have even passed laws forbidding disclosure of the addresses of Very Special Important People — politicians, judges, police officers — to the mere serfs who fork over those Very Special Important People’s salaries, for the privilege of doing as those Very Special Important People demand.

They get to run your life down to the smallest detail, barge into that life at will, and cage or kill you if you resist.

You get to complain about it — for now, anyway, so long as you do so only in places where they won’t notice and pronounce themselves offended by your gall and temerity.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In the wake of a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion which, if it represents a final vote, would overturn Roe v. Wade, pro-choice advocates are marshaling their best — and worst — arguments against removing that ruling’s protections for abortion.

As always, I’ll refrain from sharing my own opinions on abortion as such. I’m not interested in convincing anyone of anything there, if for no other reason than that I’m not firmly convinced myself.

I won’t refrain from sharing my opinions on poor arguments, though. Both in general and on abortion specifically, they’re quite possibly my top pet peeve.  And the worst argument I’m hearing right now is … the envelope, please …

Overturning Roe would be “undemocratic.”

“Overturning Roe v. Wade Shows the Right Has Nothing but Contempt for Democracy,” Ben Beckett writes at Jacobin. “If the decision stands, it will be a high-water mark for the Right’s project of undemocratic rule …. As the draft decision shows, the Supreme Court is arguably the most powerful weapon the Right has for ruling without and against the people.”

Really? The problem isn’t a matter of fundamental individual rights versus state power, but rather of “democracy?”

Let’s take a look at the three underlying cases:

In Roe v. Wade (1973) the Supreme Court overturned Articles 1191-1194 and 1196 of Texas’s Penal Code. Those articles and that code were passed by a democratically elected state legislature. The Court overturned “democracy” in favor of what it held was a constitutionally protected individual right.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Court further expanded its interpretation of those constitutional protections versus Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act of 1982, once again ruling against a democratically elected state legislature and in favor of a right to abortion.

In the current case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association, the Court will rule either for or against Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act —  which, you guessed it, was duly passed by a democratically elected state legislature.

If the draft opinion becomes an actual ruling,  democratically elected state legislatures will once again make decisions on abortion law.

That’s the exact opposite of “undemocratic.” It’s full-blown democracy, tip-toeing through the abortion tulips with bells on and playing a ukulele.

Those who claim a constitutional right to abortion might want to reconsider their fetishistic (and in this case, simply incorrect) appeals to “democracy.” There’s something to be said for protection of individual rights against the whims of majorities — and not only on this issue.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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