Yesterday was an historic day in Washington. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a stirring presentation to a joint session of Congress. His remarks were as rousing as his personal courage, and his virtual address received the ovations and bipartisan praise it deserved.

History has its accidents, and it happens that Zelenskyy’s name Volodymyr and Putin’s Vladimir have the same meaning, “ruler of the world” or “of great power.” In the southeastern corner of Eastern Europe a struggle of that magnitude seems underway.

Zelenskyy’s message was simple: the sovereignty of Ukraine is in danger and its borders have been breached by 150,000 foreign troops. His plea was simple too — that sovereignty and those borders must be protected against invasion and subversion of the rule of law.

In response to this message, which they have spent decades ignoring at home, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and their liberal majorities led the deafening applause.

I was moved by it too. But I have to say I felt a bit of jealousy. When was the last time one of our own leaders spoke with such clarity of purpose and appealed to the principles of liberty and the integrity of laws made by our own representative bodies?

How stirring would it be if our President called a joint session of Congress to say that our nation’s borders are being breached and our sovereignty compromised, and he intends to deal with it for the sake of the rule of law and our national well-being? Can you imagine the Speaker and Senator Schumer leading the boisterous applause for that?

While we deliberate the best course of action to help Ukraine without stoking a nuclear confrontation, none of our leaders is doing or saying anything serious about securing our own borders and defending our own people, especially our youth.

In February of this year alone, as many foreign nationals illegally crossed our southern border as Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine. These poor Central Americans, Haitians, and others are not an armed military contingent, true enough. But the violence at the core of our open border is massive and unmistakable.

Some of the border crossers have criminal records. And virtually all of them are being trucked to the United States by heavily armed cartels and gangs that are in actual control of our border. The blazing trucks whose glare lit the night sky in Nuevo Laredo this week are the result of raging firefights between the cartels and Mexican police. Our border patrol has no hope of containing them.

Then there is the insidious assault from lethal drugs like fentanyl, manufactured in the People’s Republic of China, shipped to Mexico to be processed, then smuggled into our republic.

Let me ask you this. What drug dealer sells a product he knows is as likely to kill its users rather than addict them? We’ve all seen the tragedy in Florida when six cadets from West Point were rushed to the hospital, some in critical condition, after an “overdose” of fentanyl. My friends, a lethal dose of fentanyl is minuscule. Two of the six severely injured cadets “OD’d” not by taking the drug itself but just by administering CPR to the other cadets!

We’re due for another annual update soon, but in the year ending April 2021 more than 100,000 Americans — mainly young people between the ages of 20 and 40 — were killed by drug overdoses, mostly fentanyl. When have you heard anything serious from our President and Vice President about dealing with these casualties?

When have you seen them transfer a smidgeon of their concern for Ukraine to giving comfort to families who have lost a son or daughter to fentanyl, to rampant crime on our streets, to the ambushes of cops, to the men and women whose businesses were ruined by COVID lockdowns or razed by riots?

If 80 percent of prime-time news were devoted to these domestic realities, the American people would be aware of the toll. Instead, we have scenes of our leaders looking at their watches or laughing hideously in the face of grave questions.

Let me say it again to be perfectly clear. The people of Ukraine, and their remarkable leader, merit our support. Short of risking a nuclear conflagration, we must drive for a swift end to the conflict and an end to the carnage. But our leaders don’t get to choose the times in which they live — they’re not free to short-list the challenges they and our nation face. They must do more than cheer and stamp their feet to save our country.

A Last Word

Speaking of not getting to choose the moment in which one lives, consider the irony of the formidable Zelenskyy, an actor and comedian thrust onto what everyone calls “the world stage” — where little is humorous and nothing is make-believe. Meanwhile, here at home we are beset by leaders who are professional politicians but now seem comical.

If that seems like a cheap shot, consider who the White House chose to message the world about everything from war and peace to the price of oil. “Tik-Tok influencers.” If you don’t know exactly what that phrase means, it refers to a group of American teenagers who film themselves talking about things above their pay grade or should it be “play grade.” They are now being used to parrot the talking points of the White House Communications Office.

Except this isn’t entertainment. The Tik-Tok platform, apart from the usual crowd-seeking, ego-feeding and sapping effects on the young, runs on a platform owned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Every visit an “influencer” makes to this platform, every act or speech, likely gives the profiling, controlling CCP a “treasure trove” of new information about your children and their online habits. We don’t have serious people in charge of our country.

Purim

Last night Jews all over the world celebrated Purim. It is the story of Queen Esther, who broke protocol and saved the Jewish people in Persia from a plot to annihilate them.

Just as it did so many centuries ago, Israel is once again facing an existential threat from modern day Persia. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, routinely promises a second Holocaust and the annihilation of Israel.

His regime is working feverishly to develop ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, while his terrorist proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, encircle the Jewish state from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

So long as God gives me breath, I promise to fight the ancient evil of anti-Semitism and to always stand with Israel and its people, the apple of God’s eye.

To all of our Jewish friends and supporters, Chag Purim Sameach!