Keeping the West’s Flame Burning

Repost from American Mind: https://americanmind.org/salvo/keeping-the-wests-flame-burning/  

At the outset of Marco Rubio’s tenure as Secretary of State, his department introduced a new paradigm for U.S.-European relations: civilizational alliance. Rubio and his aides have persistently sought to remind Europe that our relationship is based not merely on trade deals and defense agreements, but ultimately on a shared Western anthropology and history.

Rubio’s July 4 message declared,

[America’s] seeds were planted by the philosophers of Athens, the imperial majesty of Rome, the monks and kings of medieval Christendom—centuries of European exploration, science, faith, and restless ambition finally unleashed from every constraint on the boundless American frontier. America was the destiny of an entire civilization.
These overtures, though sometimes welcomed by European citizens bearing the brunt of civilizational decline, have been met in conventional diplomatic circles with reactions ranging from ambivalence to indignation. European elites are loath to admit they have a civilization to maintain, and if they do, they speak of it with contempt. Rather than face the matter head-on, the most typical response has been to accuse the U.S. of brashness and insincerity. Critics scoff that we are hypocrites for touting civilizational alliances while unabashedly pursuing America First policies. This apparent contradiction rests on three errors.

First is ignorance of the very Western tradition Americans wish to revitalize, in which duty to one’s country is second only to God. This wisdom was passed down from Cicero to Augustine to Aquinas, who taught that “just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship (cultum) to one’s parents and one’s country.” The duty of patriotism stems from the gift of life we received from particular people in a particular nation. Naturally, those who see no significance in national origin can see no duty stemming from it.

But in truth, even nations that share a common civilization are perfectly free—and indeed obliged—to be patriotic and to pursue their own interests for the sake of their citizenry. Working to preserve a shared civilization is exactly what helps them clarify the just pursuit of interest or “interest well understood,” as Tocqueville calls it. For example, a businessman who is outmaneuvered in the market never objects to competitors seeking their own prosperity. He objects only if they cheat to get it. So too with nations. This is doubly true for the civilization that produced Aquinas and Tocqueville, Parliament and Congress.

Second, these dynamics of Western civilization are lost on contemporary Europeans because they have abdicated both individual and national sovereignty. They fear individual action apart from collective consensus. Of course, this is to misunderstand both consensus and individuals, since authentic consensus arises only from the free assent of individuals. But contribution to a consensus is far from the only sovereign power individuals hold.

There are a host of matters that individuals may decide for themselves without needing permission from anyone else. The sum of these choices makes up moral character, and indeed, sovereignty itself. To circumscribe them is to destroy the possibility of the moral greatness and virtue that the West champions. As is true for individuals, so also for nations.

The nations of Europe have to a large extent surrendered their sovereignty to the E.U., which acts like a nation but does not take responsibility for its actions. Those in Brussels claim merely to be following the consensus of European nations, whose leaders themselves take no responsibility and dutifully follow the decisions of the E.U. To those within a system built on a shared abdication of responsibility, the sight of Americans letting their yes be yes and their no be no is an unconscionable disturbance of global order—and, if European member states catch on, to their job security.

Third, abdication of sovereignty is not applied equally. The real objection is not so much to any national interest but to the assertion of American national interest. If Ghana or Paraguay stood up at the U.N. and cited their national interest, everyone would murmur appreciatively. Only strong nations are not supposed to seek their interests, and since the U.S. is the strongest, we are expected to support the interests of others over our own. This moral hierarchy is one of the glaring symptoms of how much globalist institutions have been captured and perverted by radical “Third Worldist” policies.

But this critique rests on another false premise: that American national interest is inherently at odds with the welfare of others. In practice, the opposite is often true.

America might be prosperous, but we also have millions of poor people living here, so many that we spend around 25% of our considerable budget for their ostensible welfare. The U.S. is also deeply concerned with global welfare. We dismantled boondoggle institutions like USAID precisely to redirect funds from woke nonsense to real needs. Just recently, Secretary Rubio spearheaded $100 million in direct aid to the Cuban people. Finally, another 15% of U.S. spending goes toward preserving the longest large-scale peace since the fall of Rome, enabling billions of otherwise vulnerable people to live in relative security.

So separating U.S. interest from the interests of the poor and marginalized is dodgy at best.

But on a deeper level, the contention that strong nations have no legitimate self-interest is a dangerous absurdity. Yet it is embedded deep in the minds of Western elites who distrust not the self-governing individual in principle, but only those who govern themselves well. The weaker, the meaner, and the baser, the more license they grant, particularly over those who are naturally stronger.

This is the logic that has afforded migrant rape gangs the protection of law in Britain and outlawed objection to them. It is the logic that grants or withholds jobs and benefits based on race and victim status. It is the logic that demands the United States submit to tyrannical institutions like the International Criminal Court that could not even exist without the Pax Americana.

It is difficult to pinpoint the source of these inversions. Many have suggested they spring from a perversion of Christian charity. That may be, although I hesitate to blame even the perversion of a theological virtue. Rather, one of the seven deadly sins seems a more likely culprit: despair.

Many on the Left believe that the West never offered humanity anything besides oppression and that it now offers a vast storehouse of ill-gotten gains, good only for distribution and dissolution. On a fundamental level, Western nations have no right to pursue their own interests because they have no right to exist.

America disagrees. Humanity’s best hope does not live in the grave of the West. It lives here, where the flame of Western civilization has been burning for 250 years. We intend to keep it burning, both for our own sake and for the world’s.