Quo Vadis for Western Civilization: The Rebirth of the West’s Civilizational Confidence

Original article here

Decades in the making, Western civilization faces a profound crisis in its political leadership. The problem the West confronts is clear: for too long, Western leaders in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. willfully abandoned the core principles of Western Civilization. They adopted policies that were both foreign and antithetical to the historical civilization of their countries and the societies that their fathers and mothers knew, which had, in fact, nurtured the very leaders who then labored to destroy it.

These policies, including multiculturalism and progressivism, were anchored in Marxist-Leninist thought. Their impact has been catastrophic. Their consequence is that the future of Western Civilization is now in the balance. This was done deliberately.

The policies had the effect of weakening the Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment core principles of the West. These included intentional and sustained efforts to evict these principles from the public space while opening their borders to mass immigration from non-Western peoples. This has been done so massively and so quickly that most Western European states, including Ireland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are at great risk of destabilization. Importantly, those states that rejected mass immigration, Hungary and Poland, are not.

The populations of these great nations demand an end to mass immigration, while their leadership refuses to accept their demand as legitimate. This cruel fact is the source of the legitimacy crisis faced by so many Western European governments. It fuels the public’s deep cynicism and suspicion that these elites have betrayed them. Indeed, they have.

In reality, the elites will not change their policy and end mass immigration. The public, having learned the lessons from previous betrayals, expects that their elites will merely announce policy gossamer to deceive them while not actually meeting the demands of their populations.

The West is thus in the curious position of permitting its statues to be toppled and its civilization destroyed by those who have the freedom to hold the West in contempt, a freedom that was made possible by that civilization. Of course, the West’s enemies do not care about that irony. The point is to destroy the West, and Western freedoms will be weaponized against Western peoples. In the end, it was Western Europe’s leaders who have intentionally and consistently made this situation possible.

Now is the time to ask quo vadis of the West—where is it going? Two paths are available.

The first is the continuation of the destructive path that Western European and Canadian leaders, as well as most of the American elite, have chosen, but that their people reject clearly and consistently. This path will dissolve the West and do so very quickly. It will also deepen tensions with the Trump administration, because the Trump administration is on the side of the populations, as President Trump has warned Europe many times.

The second path is to save Western Civilization. Like the story of Peter encountering Christ on the Appian Way, now is the time to gain courage, to reverse course, and to confront the problems our civilization faces. Now is the time for Western leaders to have the confidence in Western civilization that their predecessors possessed. Now is the time for current Western leaders to value what they did and what their populations do now: governments must have the consent of the governed. Consent of the governed is a foundation of the political life of the West. But the elite simply will not tolerate it on the issue of mass immigration.

This issue illustrates, like no other matter, the fork in the civilizational road. On this issue, most egregiously, the elite do not have the consent of the governed. From Ireland to Sweden to Germany, they reject their elite, who have chosen the path of profound social disruption due to mass immigration that now threatens the stability of their countries and the existence of their civilization.

The crisis of legitimacy for the Western elite will be resolved either by crushing their publics by weaponizing the state against them or by heeding their people. The former is happening now. It must end immediately to save the political contract between people and their government, to save their societies and Western civilization. Western governments need to heed their people and to stop abusing them by violating their human rights.

To accomplish this, the West needs leaders it does not possess outside of President Donald Trump and Viktor Orban. They possess a strong civilizational confidence based upon an understanding of the greatness of Western Civilization. New leaders and new political parties are needed in the UK, Ireland, and on the Continent. A new generation of Western leaders of their own parties needs to rebuild what has been destroyed in the West.

What must unite these leaders with their populations is civilizational confidence. The civilizational confidence of the elite and the people of the West is warranted precisely because of what the West is. Western civilization differs from others not in the way it has developed but in the distinctive character of its principles, values, and institutions, and the way they are able to adapt to new environments yet sustain these core attributes. Christianity, the value and worth of the individual and of his natural rights, the rule of law, the West’s august history, its arts, and its sciences made it possible for the West to invent modernity, expand through the world, and become the envy of other civilizations. Civilizational confidence entails the strength to say no to the architects of the destruction of the West, to say no to the policy of mass migration, to say no to the decline of the West, and to say yes to its renaissance.

Within living memory, this was understood and embraced by the elites of the West. The sources of the ideas of dignity and worth of the individual, of freedom, liberty, political democracy, and the rule of law are Western ideas. They are not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption. These ideas and principles make Western civilization unique, and Western civilization is valuable to its members and the world not because it is universal but because it is unique, and its leaders and public must understand it to be so. Unique and urgently deserving of protection by its leaders.

The West must be saved, and indeed it can be. President Trump and his administration are helping mightily by calling attention to the issue, as Vice President J.D. Vance has done consistently with the declaration of some antifa-linked groups in Europe as terrorist organizations. Leaders must join with their people in embracing their unique civilization without apology and with confidence fully justified. Demonstrating this will end the legitimacy crisis that plagues the elite. Western civilization keeps representative democracy viable and credible for its citizens. It connects the past with the present. It unifies them and provides them with the identification of what Western civilization has accomplished—the creation of the best societies known to mankind. The West does indeed face a decision point. Many of its elites are toying with its destruction. In truth, the answer for its future is anchored in its 2,500-year past. The embrace by the elites of their past will ensure that the West remains what it should be: prosperous and stable, a home to pious religious belief and scientific rationality, to sacred and profane art and literature, and to individual rights and freedoms. The West has been failed by its political parties and their leaders. It is time for the people of the West to restore confidence in the greatness of Western civilization.

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Bradley A. Thayer is an American Freedom Alliance Fellow.