In a syndicated column last week, Pat Buchanan hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a hero of “social conservatism” and a foe of “the New World Order” that seeks to replace Christianity with “secularism and hedonism.”

Buchanan, who has lavished praise on Putin in the past, called Putin “a God-and-country Russian patriot” who stands for Christianity and “against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be.”

The right-wing pundit doesn’t seem to mind Putin’s crackdown on religious freedoms, particularly those of evangelical Christians, and tolerance of Sharia law.

Putin’s approval rating, after 17 years in power, exceeds that of any rival Western leader. But while his impressive strides toward making Russia great again explain why he is revered at home and in the Russian diaspora, what explains Putin’s appeal in the West, despite a press that is every bit as savage as President Trump’s?

Answer: Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.

What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.

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Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a Communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.

The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.