Sometimes I despair of my own countrymen. Tonight on my LBC show I have endured listening to calls from a succession of people who seem quite happy to think the worst of their own country and yet think the best of an illiberal, intolerant, state which thinks nothing of invading another sovereign state with the stated intention of annexing part of it. These are people who are quite happy to give Vladimir Putin a free pass while imagining that their own country, and of course the United States, must be to blame for the fact that Russia is trying to bully Ukraine into submission. Sometimes I think I live on a parallel universe.

These are the very same people who would think nothing of marching on the streets to protest against their own government engaging in any warlike activity, yet when Putin does it, they actively urge him on, on the basis that America is clearly to blame.

Quislings. The lot of them.

On what left wing, peacenik planet is Vladimir Putin a guardian of any sort of freedom? He imposes policies on his people which these leftist zombies should recoil against. He persecutes homosexuals. He tolerates the killing of journalists. I could go on. But you see, he is not American. And that’s the main thing which drives the perverted minds of those who egg him on in the Crimea – their hatred of America and all it stands for. They conveniently forget that without American sacrifice in two world wars they wouldn’t even be free to promulgate their vile loathings. They would be living under the Nazi jackboot, that is unless they had the misfortune to be Jewish, homosexual or a gypsy. In which case they’d be dead or wouldn’t have ever been born.

I don’t pretend America is perfect, and I don’t pretend Russia is evil. But in the end you’re either on the side of freedom or you’re not. And in this crisis Russia is on the wrong side of freedom. It can come up with all the excuses it likes about protecting Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine. They know it’s bollocks. We know it’s bollocks. It’s all about subjugating a free people to the Kremlin’s whim and power. But there seem to be plenty of people in this country who think that’s just fine and dandy.

Tonight I am ashamed to call them my fellow countrymen.