[CORRECTED DRAFT] Ukraine and the Constitution: The defense of fundamental values

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What do Ukraine and the struggle to defend the Constitution have in common^?

Both Ukraine and defense of the Constitution relate to our desire to uphold our most fundamental values.

These are based on the belief that in each human being there is a piece of the Divine. Or, to put it differently, in each human being God resides. God is in each human being. To kill or rape or torture a human being is to commit an act of war against God.

Now, many may of you ,may object yo my use of the wod “God”. Despite Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration in the 19th cenyury that“God is dead,” the concept of God, broadly understood, remains useful, and indeed necessary. ,

The concept may mean different things to different people. To some, it may represent merely the spiritual forces in the universe, which we humans dot fully understand but which we acknowledge are real. To others, “God” may be the deity in a specific religion. And ton-still others, “God” may simply refer to the spiritual forces which through some miracle are found within our human hearts.

In reality, what matters is not so much the concept of God whichan individual holds so long as he or she recognizes there is a piece of the Divine in every human being.

In this broad sense, God represents all that we recognize as good or “holy” within human beings. “God”:represents the opposite of “Evil”. God is the enemy of Evil. And as Albert Camus points out, we recognize Evil when we see it.

The value of the inviolability of the physical integrity of a human being becomes manifest when we witness an act of torture, a rape, or an assassination..

We recognize Evil when we see it. And what counts is not our fine intellectual arguments, nut bwhat wevdo, individually and collectively, to stop it. We are called upon to act to stop acts of evil. Acts which I have called acts of war against God.

I find the words of Nikos Kazanzakis in The Saviors of God particularly relevant here. Kazanzakis, who was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church for his heretical opinions, virerfv God as not all-powerful but rather as engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the Devil, with Evil. And for God to triumph, God needs our help in joining him to fight Evil.

But humans are fallible and weak creatures. The requiropinions food and shelter. They need love, and a sense of belonging.. One can understand a German or even aNazi, without necessarily excusing or forgiving any acts of war against God they may have committed.

When you think of so-called “territorial concessions” in a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, think of Russian soldiers bursting into a house or apartment—a home to a family and children—and raping the mother of these children. Perhaps executing her and her husband after they have raped the mother. Maybe they have also raped and murdered the grandmother.

Think of the abduction of children in the Russian-occupied territories. Tink of the kidnapping of a four or seven-year-old child, or an 11-year-old, and their removal to Russia. Followed by a brainwashing program aimed at erasing the child’s memory of his or her family, of his or her culture, of his or her homeland.

Then think of their “adoption” by a Russian family, and their indoctrination in Russian ideology.

When you think of “territorial concessions” think of the Ukrainian political leaders who have been “disappeared” or simply assassinated.

Then think of the fundamental values we in the civilized countries of the world seek to defend. We oppose torture, the violation of the physical integrity of a human being, a human being in which a part of God—the Divine—resides.

Think of torture as an act of war against God.

We, the defenders of God, must defend each and every human being.

When people talk of “territorial concessions”, think of the thousands of innocent civilians, and also soldiers defending their country and homes against invading Russian forces, who were killed as part of the Russian military conquest of these territories.

Think also of the immense progress we as a civilization have made in the defense of our fundamental values.

We defeated Nazi Germany, the enemies of God. We created the United Nations, and built it on the cornerstone of the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

The ‘threat” as well as the use of force was prohibited, after Hitler seized Austria (1936) and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (I(38) with threats of invasion.

This prohibition was a key principle designed to protect individual human beings from attacks on their physical integrity by the state and from war, in order to protect civilization from attacks on God.

These are the values we seek to defend. The Constitution and the “due process” which it establishes have been our domestic bulwark against attacks by our own government on human beings, which as we hare seen are attacks on God.

Law is the instrument of constitutional protection, and international law is the instrument of protection of the United Nations Charter, International Humanitarian Law, and many other conventions and treaties which seek to protect human beings from the actions of the state.

These are the values we seek to defend.

What values do the invading Russian soldiers represent?

They embody the values of barbarism. Utter disrespect for the physical integrity and lives of human beings in territories they occupy. If you don’t believe there is a part of the Divine in each human being then you may view them like cockroaches, to be killed without compunction, as Hitler and the Nazis did to millions of Jews and others in World War II.

The values of those who would invade other countries, who would rape and pillage in the territories they conquer, as the Russians have been doing in the occupied territories of Ukraine, are the values of the enemies of God.

This is the real meaning of “territorial concessions” in current ceasefire proposals for Ukraine.

Stop and think.

Stop, think, and act.