What is the Value of Democracy?

by Julia Makayova

March 4, 2022

You ask, “Is your family safe?” You donate to a local refugee organization or send money to Ukraine. You know it’s not enough, but it does the job: you can go to sleep at night. You are deeply moved by Ukrainian heroes. You commit to educating yourself more about that part of the world.

But in their resistance, Ukrainians are desperately telling the world that they do not want to live for the sake of mere survival. They do not want to bend their will. They do not want to be refugees seeking your charity and begging you for jobs and hospitality. Ukrainians are telling the world that they are free, and they would rather die than give up their free will.

If you expect of your life anything more than mere survival, if you expect the society to understand issues like racial equity and social justice, how dare you stand by and watch Ukrainians shed their lives for you to enjoy “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” while they can’t?

Calling Ukrainians “heroes” turns them into fictional superheroes with aspirational values that you don’t need to live by. Their heroism distances you from them. You can be cowards because you have gotten away with it, year after year, war after war. You manage to come out as saviors and freedom-fighters. And yet… aren’t you sick and embarrassed by the fragility of your values and your cowardice? “Cowardice is the most terrible of vices,” I used to write in my journal as a child.

Remember, Ukrainians want freedom, they want self-determination. Isn’t that the essence of the American project? America, you let us survive the dark because we believe in your values— more than you do, as it turns out. But today we ask, with horror in our eyes and minds, what is the value of freedom if you can’t bother to do anything that would disrupt your comfort to defend this freedom? You are already getting irritated and tired of media coverage of Ukraine, aren't you? You want it over. You are lazy.

How do you have the conscience to teach your children about democracy and freedom? What will you tell the next generation about the world and what you chose to do in 2022? And if only you and “your people” deserve to be free, then how is it different from Putin’s version of the world? Tell me because I do not understand.

Julia Makayova is the Secretary of Integrity Initiatives International. Originally from Belarus, she now lives in Boston, Massachusetts.