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For those who believe that there is no such thing as evil, they need to seriously re-think their escapist view.
And for Americans who see the issues that divide us at home as the greatest threat that we face as a people, I suggest that they quickly re-focus.
An existential crisis, unlike anything the world has seen since the 1930's and 1940's, is now upon us.
The human tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine is there on the international stage for all to see.
Words, pictures and plaintive pleas -- reaching us from innumerable sources -- tell a story of death and destruction.
After the fall of the Soviet empire, aspiring democracies in Eastern Europe looked to the United States for aid and for guidance. Millions and millions hoped to become like us. And they reached out to the federal judiciary for assistance in drafting new constitutions and instruction in how to lay the foundations for a rule of law.
I was fortunate enough to have been one of the American judges who was asked to help.
Those were heady and hopeful times. Eastern Europeans -- Russians too -- wanted to follow the American example.
They sought our help in establishing new courts and in training judges. This work took me on three occasions to Bulgaria, twice to Moldova, and numerous times to the former Yugoslavia: to Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia.
And shortly before their so-called "Orange Revolution" in late 2004, to Ukraine.
Each of these experiences was, for me, a lesson in how deeply the hope for freedom reaches into the human spirit.
Today, I can only watch from afar and wonder about the fate of the lawyers, judges and legal academics with whom I worked years ago.
Will they even survive the loss of the democracy -- imperfect as it was -- they worked so hard to achieve.
On two trips to Russia, I experienced in my encounters with judges a yearning for reform and freedom much like I had observed while visiting other former Soviet satellites.
At the beginning of his long rule, Putin was seen by some as a reformer -- even a reformer of the justice system. That, as we've seen, was a temporary triumph of hope over eventual experience.
For several generations, we as Americans have not truly been tested. That era may now be coming to an end.
But our challenges, whatever they turn out to be, will not even remotely resemble the horrors now being visited upon the people of Ukraine.
We are learning each day of death and suffering which is almost unimaginable.
For the Ukrainians with whom I worked years ago -- people who looked forward to freedom and an orderly rule of law -- I worry not only about their physical well-being.
I worry about the death of hope.
Blair County native and local resident Judge D. Brooks Smith is retired as Chief Judge of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.