This is kind of a cheap post, in that I have very little insight to offer, other than I read these to articles back to back and was struck by the idea that, as Legolas put it in the film version of the Lord of the Rings: “Something stirs in the East…a sleepless malice.”

• From the New York Times: 3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin
• From The Imaginative Conservative: Stand, Men of the West!

I especially liked the Eliot quote and the paragraph that follows it. Hope you enjoy it, too.