had been conquered by the Poles beforern1772, During the previous three centuries,rnthese people had experienced atrnthe hands of the Poles—supposedlyrnmembers of a “higher” Western civilizationrn—a degree of oppression that exceededrnanything with which the pre-SovietrnRussian state can be charged. Thisrnoppression continued unabated underrnPilsudski and his successors in this century,rnfatally undermining Poland’s moralrnstanding and survivability in the run-uprnto the tragedy of September 1939.rnFor at least the last half-century of itsrnexistence, that Russian-ruled Kingdomrnof Poland—not sovereign, but autonomous,rnwith its own governmentalrnsystem and army—was short on freedomsrnbut long on liberty. Pre-1914 Warsawrnwas a true hotbed of intellectual andrnartistic creativity. Yes, it was under thosernczarist “murdering swine” and “enslavingrnsadists of the first magnitude” thatrnEurope witnessed the flowering of a vibrantrnPolish national culture epitomizedrnin Sienkiewicz, Prus, and Orzeszkowa,rnand their modernistic offspring of thernYoung Poland movement. (As for bloodshed,rnfewer people were executed forrncrimes in the Kingdom of Poland betweenrn1867 and 1914 than in those Polishrnlands ruled by the presumably benevolentrnHapsburgs and Hohenzollernsrnduring that same period.)rnLet us also hope that ProfessorrnThompson does not teach religion. Anyonernwho thinks “Russian Orthodoxy isrnone part Constantinople and two partsrnKarakorum” evidently has no notion ofrnwhat Orthodox Christianity—whetherrnRussian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, or,rnfor that matter, American—actually is. Ifrnthe professor is even remotely interestedrnin understanding Orthodoxy, perhaps hernshould visit us here at Rose Hill Collegernm Aiken, South Carolina.rnSix millennia of civilization have producedrnthree supremely great literatures:rnGreek, English, and Russian. Trying tornexclude the culture which produced thernlast one from the common legacy ofrnEuro-Christian civilization is as futile asrnit is ludicrous. The Russians know therndarker side of humanity, but they alsornunderstand the extraordinary capacity ofrnthe human soul for sacrifice and love,rnand they possess the ability to acceptrnboth sides of man with greater equanimityrnthan many Westerners. They still valuernhumility over pride, and approachrnGod in a spirit of meekness. They gaverndepth and feeling to formal movementsrninitially intended only for the aristocracyrnof Europe, and turned ballet into an upliftingrnand popular art. Their music stillrnstirs hearts all over the world. Thesernmanifestations of beauty, which Russiarnproduced so brilliandy, are perhaps whatrnwe need to rediscover now, to offset therncoldness and impersonality of a brazenlyrnmaterialistic, secular modern world.rnFinally, I am thankful to ProfessorrnThompson for the timely reminder thatrn”there is this curious thing we have in thernWest . . . called honor.” We OrthodoxrnChristians need to be reminded, indeed,rnbecause “this curious thing” has beenrntoo frequently absent from Western attitudesrnto us for centuries now. The Crusaders’rnsack of Orthodox Constantinoplernin 1204, in lieu of the liberation ofrnJerusalem, opened the floodgates to thernTurk. Before the first Cossack rode intornthe Mazowian plain, we saw two trulyrnmurderous and ruinous “Western” conquestsrnof Moscow (by the Poles in 1612rnand Napoleon exactly two centuries later)rn. When we are subjected to real genocidern—as the Serbs were at the hands ofrnCroatian Ustashi between 1941 andrn1945—insult is added to injury by retrospectivelyrnturning victims into culprits.rnAs for those “Russophilic appeasers” ofrnYalta, were they not the ones who signedrnthe death warrant for millions of RussianrnPOWs and anticommunists, by havingrnthem forcibly repatriated to Stalin’s firingrnsquads and the Gulag?rnAmid the unprecedented collapse ofrnChristian civilization all over the “Western”rnworld, to Professor Thompson andrnhis ilk, the enemy is still in the East. ThernSerb yesterday, the Russian today,… andrnthe Greek had better take notice, lest thernTurk be unleashed once again. This dishonorablernstrain of Western traditionrnbarkens back to the later Middle Ages,rnwhen “Byzantine” became equated withrnduplicity and perfidy. Gibbon extendedrnthe meaning to all of Slavic orthodoxy,rnwhile in this century Toynbee espousedrnthe infamous “fossil thesis” which heldrnthat the Byzantine Empire, and by extensionrnthose peoples who received theirrnformal culture from it—i.e., the rest of usrnhonorless Orthodox Christians—werernsimply inferior to the West. It lackedrnNordic blood, you see, so Byzantiumrncould not effect the transition from antiquityrnto the Middle Ages to modernity.rnBesides, Byzantinism leads to autocracy,rnwhich in turn leads to communism—sornit’s genetic, too!rnThe irony is that for all this bombastrnabout Homo byzantinus and his politics,rnthe United States has become the chiefrnpractitioner of “Byzantine” politics, atrnhome and abroad. But Thompson et al,rnare not content with the moral, spiritual,rnand demographic wasteland of whatrnused to be Christendom. To the infiniterndelight of a newly resurgent Islam at ourrngate, they are plotting new cordons sanitairesrnagainst an enfeebled Russia, whichrncan only lead to the final showdown, therncompletion of the suicide of our race,rnour culture, and our common Christianrncivilization, which was initiated in 1789rnand began in earnest in 1914.rnCULTURAL REVOLUTIONSrnB O U N T Y H U N T E R S with a licensernto kill are glorified on television everyrnweek. The reality is uglier and morernterrifying than most of us imagine.rnIn Phoenix, a group of heavily armedrnbounty hunters, wearing ski-masks andrnbody armor, sledgehammered their wayrnthrough the front door of a private residence,rntied up a mother, and held herrnand her three children at gunpoint. Asrnthe thugs broke into the room wherernChris Foote and Tina Wright were sleeping,rnthey were met with gunfire fromrnFoote’s 9 mm pistol. The invaders laidrndown a fusillade of rifle fire, killing therncouple.rnThe bounty hunters were looking, sornthey say, for a man who had skipped outrnon a $25,000 bond in California. Theyrngot the wrong house. It’s a simple mistake.rnIt could happen to anyone. Peoplernin Arizona are naturally outraged, and reformersrnare calling for laws licensing andrnregulating bounty hunters. It seems virtuallyrnanyone can become a bountyrnhunter, even convicted felons. One ofrnthe suspects in the case, MichaelrnSanders, has been implicated in severalrnrobberies. In 1993, he was arrested on arnweapons charge when an eadier bountyrncase resulted in a shooting death. He wasrnalso arrested after he invaded a homernand threatened a man with a chemicalrnspray. In that case, too, Sanders hadrnNOVEMBER 1997/5rnrnrn