Mark Kelly is a U.S. senator from Arizona. On X, he said,

Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.

Elon Musk responded, “You are a traitor.”

This is par for the course in today’s political environment. Still, Musk’s response should have the capacity to shock.

Musk is not some random citizen. He is arguably the No. 2 Republican in the country, after Donald Trump. A star of CPAC, a star of Fox News, a star of Trump rallies. Trump’s biggest funder. An almost daily presence in the White House, the king of DOGE.

Then too, he is the richest man in the world, who owns the “global public square,” namely X (formerly Twitter).

Is it now treason to support Ukraine in its struggle to repel a monstrous invader and maintain its very nationhood? If so, three cheers for treason.

Mark Kelly makes a funny traitor. He was a combat pilot, a Space Shuttle commander, and so on.

Kelly ended a “thread” of his as follows:

It’s not “America First” to pull the rug out from under an ally and leave their people to die. This kind of foreign policy will end with no one in the world trusting America. Our alliances give us strength and the damage being done makes our country weaker and us all less safe.

This is sound thinking, in my judgment. And not treason at all.

• Kelly is a Democrat. So is Michael Bennet, a U.S. senator from Colorado. Last week, he put out this:

Is it my imagination or does Reagan have more support from Democrats these days than from Republicans? We are in a topsy-turvy era. (Last October, I published an essay titled “Our Political World, Topsy-Turvy.”)

• In a post on Sunday, I cited Charles Moore, the estimable British conservative. The American president, he said, “is traducing a free country which has been invaded by a tyrant, and the peace of Europe, and indeed of the world, depends on tyrants’ not being able to invade free countries.”

Another estimable British conservative has spoken in the House of Lords. He is Andrew Roberts, the historian (author of biographies of Napoleon and Churchill, among many other books). You can see him, and hear him, here, starting at about 15:04. Or, you can read a text of his remarks here.

He begins,

We must not underestimate the gravity of what has happened, which is that during a war against totalitarian dictatorship, the United States has effectively changed sides. It is very unusual for a country to change sides during a major war.

Roberts then cites a few historical examples. (“. . . the Saxons and Württembergers changed sides on the third day of the four-day Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, which doomed Napoleon in that campaign.”)

He says,

We might be shocked by the Trump administration’s volte-face, but we should not be surprised by it. He never hid his antipathy to Ukraine and her existential struggle.

As a rule, Trump and MAGA are not sneaky. That is one of their virtues, frankly. They are usually open about their views, desires, and intentions. Anyone surprised by the Trump administration’s position on Ukraine and Russia has not been paying attention.

Roberts says,

. . . the tragic by-products of the administration’s Ukraine policy are already evident, not least in a 15 percent drop in pro-Americanism in this country almost overnight. I fear that, if the United States was to suffer another 9/11 — God forbid — we would not see the wholehearted and full-throated support for her that we saw in 2001. A wholly transactional foreign policy has unseen costs that do not show up on balance sheets and profit-and-loss accounts.

That is an important point — true in all eras.

Winding up, Mr. Roberts says this:

When Winston Churchill spoke in the Munich debate, he used words that Europe should heed today, as we fundamentally rebalance our world in the light of this startling American defection to the side of a dictator who, throughout his career, has only ever wished America ill. Churchill said that we needed “a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour,” so that we could “arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

“This startling American defection to the side of a dictator” — painful words, for some of us.

• Ever since 1945, people have talked of Munich. I remember Walter Mondale complaining about it — complaining about Munich talk — in the 1984 presidential campaign. Munich can be overdone. It can also be done just right.

Consider the words of Robert Kagan:

Hitler regretted the deal he made with Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938. What he actually wanted was war — his goal was to conquer all of Czechoslovakia by force as a first step toward the conquest of all of Europe.

He didn’t imagine that the British and French governments would be so craven as to give him everything he publicly asked for, including the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of the Sudetenland by the German army. When they did, Hitler found himself trapped into accepting, but he was unhappy. Within five months he ordered the military occupation of all Czechoslovakia, in violation of the Munich Agreement, and six months after that, he invaded Poland.

Kagan continues,

Today the Trump administration is offering Vladimir Putin a Munich-like settlement for Ukraine.

That article is found here.

• “We will not be providing military aid to the Russians.” So said Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Amazing he had to say it — but our era, again, is topsy-turvy.

• In another era, Rubio ran for president. Here are a couple of paragraphs from a speech he gave in May 2015:

In recent years, the ideals that have long formed the backbone of American foreign policy — a passionate defense of human rights, the strong support of democratic principles, and the protection of the sovereignty of our allies — these values have been replaced by, at best, caution, and at worst, an outright willingness to betray those values for the expediency of negotiations with repressive regimes.

This is not just morally wrong; it is contrary to our interests. Because wherever freedom and human rights spread, partners for our nation are born. But whenever foreign policy comes unhinged from its moral purpose, it weakens global stability and forms cracks in our national resolve.

• A personal note: When I was in my 20s, I saw the Captive Nations freed. It was thrilling. All these years later, one of those nations is about to be captive again, or partly captive. This is sickening beyond words. Adding to the horror is the posture of the United States.

If we think Putin will be content with part of Ukraine, or even the whole of Ukraine, we are dreaming. The rest of the former Captive Nations know that they must be prepared to the utmost. They also know that they cannot count on the support of the United States. Even moral? It looks that way.

Bret Stephens ended a column of his,

Putin is not the aggrieved defender of historic Russian interests. He is a malign aggressor in pursuit of a deeply personal ambition. A victory in Ukraine won’t satisfy that ambition; it will whet it.