As Vladimir Putin wrested Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, I wrote that although peace-loving liberal democrats must arm themselves and fight sometimes, the Crimea seizure was not such a time and that more serious threats to liberal democracy were coming from much closer to home. The 2008 financial meltdown and the accelerating pace of public massacres in American public and private spaces were only two instances of the implosion of a civic-republican culture without which a liberal democracy lies open to demagoguery, thuggery and grand theft.
Some Americans live only to fight threats from abroad, distant from our internal crises; they beat drums for war against external enemies: armchair warriors such as Leon Wieseltier and Robert Kagan line up with Kagan's brother Frederick, a professor at West Point, and with other would-be combatants — "Second Amendment people" or uniformed militarists craving what they envision as a clear, decisive defeat of democracy's enemies.
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