Some 13 European thinkers issued an intellectual protest late last year against the assault on the Western heritage that has been raging on the Continent and in Britain for years. They called their 11-page document “The Paris Statement” and gave it a title: “A Europe We Can Believe In.” The Europe they believe in, write the 13 signatories (well-known in Europe, less so in America), is under threat of destruction from the forces of globalization, multiculturalism, and the EU managerial class, as well as growing anti-Christian prejudice.
…But we are witnessing the emergence of some powerful political currents within the general European population, manifest in increasingly populist voting patterns in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. Hence the Paris Statement could become a significant intellectual underpinning for Europeans who are increasingly concerned about the direction of things in their homeland.
…The threat to Europe, says the Statement, comes from “a false understanding” of what Europe is and represents. This “false Europe” is the product of people who are “orphans by choice,” glorifying their vision “as the forerunner of a universal community that is neither universal nor a community.”
…The true Europe, on the other hand, encompasses a number of fundamental elements—a body of law that applies to all yet is limited in its demands; a shared understanding of political and cultural traditions and a fealty to those traditions; an appreciation of the nation state as “the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty”; a shared regard for the role of the Classical tradition in shaping the Western mind; and an understanding of Christianity as the religious bulwark of the civilization.
— “The West Cannibalizes Itself,” by Robert W. Merry, The American Conservative, March 30, 2018
While this is a good start, they have not identified the problem. Since The Renaissance,™ the West has adored egalitarianism, or the idea that everyone can be an individualist together and things will turn out just fine. Instead, this brings about a mob mentality, which in turn weakens us morally and then, makes us hate ourselves for being whores.
Until people are willing to confront that, they are wasting their time as far as trying to save a civilization. They call for a renewed nationalism of “the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty” and a cultural revival, and these are great things, but without removing equality — including democracy, consumerism, diversity, feminism, and the other individualist “me first” ideas — it will go nowhere.