Let’s hear it for traditional values

I love traditional values, you love traditional values. All God’s children, especially if they are conservatives, simply adore traditional values.

That’s why we must be thankful for Vlad Putin, the only world leader who upholds them. Here in a crime-ridden West, we are so obsessed with transgender homosexual racial minorities being fried by global warming that we’ve allowed tradition to fall by the wayside.

Since traditional values are indisputably good, logic suggests that the further back a tradition goes, the better it is. But that doesn’t mean paying blind obeisance to the past. Before upholding a tradition or reverting to it, it must pass the practical test of efficacy.

Take crime, that blight of all Western societies. Our jurisprudence prides itself on being evidence-based. Well, whoopee-do. Just look at our cities: crime is rife, and criminals routinely go free “for lack of evidence”, the formula that all policemen hate with a passion.

Well, in tradition – especially Russian tradition – confession is the ultimate and self-sufficient evidence required to secure a conviction. So trust Vlad Putin to revive this ancient concept and put it into the context of the 21^st century.

Thus, one of the suspects in the Crocus City Hall murders confessed to his heinous crime after the interrogators cut off his ear and made him eat it. Another came clean after electric current shot through the wires connected to his testicles.

The famous – and traditional! – Wagner Group filled in the missing details: “An ordinary interrogation takes place using a military field telephone TA-57… By turning the coil…discharges are released through the wires… up to 80 volts, which in turn are connected to the prisoner by the fingers, ears or genitals… For best effect, the captured militant should be doused with water.”

I especially love the word ‘ordinary’, meaning normal, commonplace. One wonders what the extraordinary techniques might be like, a question to which Russian tradition provides numerous answers I’ll touch on later.

The beauty of this approach to legality is that it combines aspects of investigation, just punishment and deterrence in one package. Justice, after all, must not only be done but also be seen to be done.

That’s why, rather than keeping the more baroque details to themselves, the Russians have proudly posted the photographs and videos of one suspect’s blood-dripping ear being stuffed into his mouth and another culprit’s testicles being energised through a wire running from a battery.

When all is said and done, efficacy is the best test of any legal practice. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the Russians have shown us a way towards a crime-free society. Their publicity stunt secured the requisite confession, meted out initial punishment to the evil-doers and also sent out a message pour encourager les autres.

Let’s equip all our police forces with cleavers, field telephones and coils of wire, which they should be encouraged to use at will. A few months of such techniques being diligently applied, and the streets of London, Paris and New York will again be safe for traditional, law-abiding folk to walk.

I’ve already argued that any tradition worth its salt should show plenty of patina of age. Vlad prides himself on combining deep religiosity with no-nonsense masculinity. All such traditional Russian virtues go back centuries, at least to the first Russian tsar, Ivan IV.

Ivan was nicknamed ‘the Terrible’, although ‘the Traditional’ would be more apposite. That contemporary of our own Elizabeth I was an extremely pious man who knew the Scripture by heart. However, he happily alternated religious rituals with orgies (the tsar boasted of having raped a thousand girls, most of whom he then killed in a fit of post-coital aggression), as well as massacres and tortures of prisoners.

In addition to piety, Ivan had a heightened sense of beauty, however it was expressed. Thus he liked to witness the spectacle of people being skinned alive, quartered or sautéed in oil, to which end giant frying pans were erected in Red Square, next to St Basil’s Cathedral.

As people were being evenly browned on all sides, the tsar would look on, applauding whenever the executioners displayed more than average creativity. According to eyewitnesses, these were the only occasions when the tsar ever laughed.

Peter the Great, another signpost of tradition, also acts as a role model for Vlad – and, I hope, will one day act in that capacity for our own leaders as well.

Peter’s appetite for torture and mass murder was at least equal to that of Ivan IV, but he channelled it into an institutional conduit by creating Preobrazhensky prikaz (Transfiguration Order, literally) his secret police, the proto-KGB.

Its function was explained to the populace in simple, easy to understand terms: “Whoever sins against His Majesty by uttering words expressing contempt for His deeds and intentions, and by indecently discussing such, he is to be deprived of his life and executed by beheading.” But not without being didactically tortured first, one can’t help adding.

In that spirit, the tsar didn’t mind leaving his signature on written orders, such as “torture until he confesses”, “may be tortured to death”, “to be executed on the wheel” and even, a taste of things to come, “not to be punished by execution – to be passed on to doctors for experiments.”

One can see the roots of the tradition Vlad follows so faithfully and lovingly. In his Russia, insulting the president or spreading rumours besmirching the army are imprisonable offences. They are still not capital crimes punishable by death, but anyone familiar with Russian prisons will know that the difference is slight.

And of course, torture and medical experimentation in prisoners are fine Soviet extensions of Petrine jurisprudence, and Vlad proudly lists Stalin among his heroes.

Contrast Russian law enforcement with the travesty that passes for such in the West. Why, you can say what you will about any president or prime minister, and the state will still be too feeble to execute you on the wheel. Where are traditional values in that?

So I have two words for all you moaners who bewail the abuse of traditional values in the West and yearn for a strong leader: Vlad Putin.

He fights for traditional values every day, combining the qualities not only of his Russian predecessors, such as Ivan IV, Peter I and Stalin, but also of Pope Urban II who inspired the First Crusade and of Godfrey of Bouillon who led it. Where would we be without Vlad?

P.S. According to unverified reports, the arrested ISIS suspects have also confessed to the murder of President Kennedy.