I write from a quiet, mountainous area of Central Europe. The landscape is idyllic and the autumn air is crisp. But as on my other recent trips to the European continent, the sights I see and the conversations I hear are underlined by a similarly haunting concern: Will there even be be A Europe, in any recognizable sense of the term, a century from now?
Across the continent, fertility rates have plummeted and the Christianity that defined civilization for two millennia is seen as a quaint relic of a bygone era. The combination of modern political and economic integration of the European Union, on the one hand, with imposed mass immigration, on the other, has led to a place where the sense of home and home is diminished, and with it, community, meaning and purpose.
In Britain, two Jews were murdered after a synagogue attack by a Syrian immigrant on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. In Germany – yes, Germany – the Jews have already been advised for years against the use of a kippah to cover the head in public. More generally, Europeans' levels of personal happiness have apparently moved away from church and children, the traditional sources of meaning, and toward a disconcerting situation. positive correlation with the size of a nation's welfare state.
The impressive Louvre museum robbery that recently occurred in Paris offers a strange summary of the broader phenomenon that affects the entire society. On Sunday, thieves disguised as construction workers stole, in broad daylight, eight pieces of French crown jewels estimated to be worth approximately 100 million dollars. And perhaps the most surprising aspect of this real-life prank is this: as of this writing, the thieves have not been caught.
The absolutely humiliating inability of the French authorities to prevent the theft of the literal crown jewels or to quickly arrest the perpetrators after the fact is the most poetic possible way of making a point that has come up in many of my conversations this week: at best, European political and cultural elites have no interest in protecting and preserving their culture; and at worst, they have an interest in seeing culture replace root and branch.
In the United States, the situation, in some respects, is not so different. It was concern about decades of reckless American immigration policy and elite-driven cultural decline, above all, that first propelled Donald Trump to the White House in 2016. The main difference in this regard between the United States and Europe, apart from America's stronger (though still declining) church, is therefore primarily political. Trump is now a two-term president, while the only major European country that today has a center-right leader is Italy. Hungary's Viktor Orbán can't do it all alone.
Amid the prevailing transatlantic cultural currents of nihilism, childlessness, and general dissatisfaction, it has never been more important for political leaders to offer a strong defense of their respective countries of origin and a compelling vision for those countries' future. The sincerity of religious conviction and the utilitarian value of religious community are time-tested ways of offering meaning and stability to a person's life, but there is a role to play anodyne nationalism also.
Following religious convictions, pride in one's country and confidence in its future is the feeling that could very well induce most people to marry and have children. If you hate your country and think it is bad, or even if you just think that your country's future looks absolutely dire, you might well be less inclined to make the tremendous investment of bringing new life into the world. What is the point, one might well conclude, of raising children in a hellish, dystopian future?
Trump's political success is due in part to his deep understanding of this very phenomenon. One can always quibble about the merits or demerits of a given policy approach, but Trump's signature slogan, “Make America Great Again,” captures an inescapable truth: The United States, for various reasons, had been in decline, but the man in charge now understands this and plans to turn things around. Throughout Europe there is much that can be learned from Trump example.
But that begins with demonstrating a simple desire to defend the existence and perpetuity of one's own culture. It begins with a significant determination to prolong the lifespan of a particular nation, in Edmund Burke's famous sense of the term, as a social compact between the dead, the living, and the unborn. In Paris, perhaps it begins by literally defending the nation's crown jewels.
Surely that's not too much to ask, right?
Josh Hammer's latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Fate of the West.”.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. UNKNOWN: @josh_hammer
