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Repost from American Mind: <a href="https://americanmind.org/salvo/keeping-the-wests-flame-burning/" data-mce-href="https://americanmind.org/salvo/keeping-the-wests-flame-burning/">https://americanmind.org/salvo/keeping-the-wests-flame-burning/</a> &nbsp;By: John-Henry KeenanAt 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.

Keeping the West’s Flame Burning

Reposted from: <a href="https://americanreformer.org/2026/07/swedish-awakening/" data-mce-href="https://americanreformer.org/2026/07/swedish-awakening/">https://americanreformer.org/2026/07/swedish-awakening/&nbsp;</a> By: Henrik Schildt&nbsp;The Failure of Secularism Leaves a Fertile Field&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; There are good reasons to believe today that Sweden is witnessing a rediscovery of the faith. The exhaustion of the Christian moral order that attempted to preserve Christian ethics after discarding Christian truth has in many ways opened the minds and hearts of young, predominantly male, Swedes to the reality of God. Yet this alone does not explain the return. The collapse of secular modernity explains the exhaustion of the old order and not the return of faith. At most, it prepares the ground. The seed itself comes from Christ.&nbsp;At a small café in downtown Stockholm last fall, Pentecostal pastor Josef Barkenbom preached from 1 Kings 14 on how we should not be fooled by the temptations of life without God. After the sermon, I encountered teenage boys attending a church for the very first time.&nbsp;In my native Sweden, long known for its exceptionally secular population and plummeting attendance at the Lutheran-Evangelical Church of Sweden – our effective state church – over the last half century, places like pastor Barkenbom’s newly planted Stockholm Church have begun to sprout. Baptist pastor Johnny Lithell, after a pastoral fellowship at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., planted a church in Gothenburg in 2018, and has seen a steady rise in members at his congregation. Across the country, the free churches, which are any Protestant denomination outside the Church of Sweden, have seen a considerable uptick in attendees and new members over the last year, especially among young men.&nbsp;An Empty Kingdom This seed of a Swedish Awakening of faith comes after nearly a century of Christian slumber. Up until the year 2000, when the Church of Sweden officially departed from state care, all Swedes received automatic church membership at birth. In 1975, 95 percent of Swedes were members; today’s figure is 51 percent. The liberalization of Protestantism in Sweden and much of the West after the Second World War, Sweden’s expansive welfare system, and the hyper-rationalization of public discourse all rendered church life superfluous. The state became a substitute for the church. The idea that all men were created with an immortal soul was thus deemed a peculiar anachronism.&nbsp;The Social Democratic party, which has governed Sweden for most of the last hundred years, incorporated the Christian concept of koinonia into its party program, but without any of its transcendent power. Solidarity became coercive through law. Moral language detached from salvation became accusatory, not redemptive. Christian moral obligations became bureaucratic entitlements.&nbsp;The American Mirror For a long time, Sweden has been susceptible to all things American. In the 1950s, author Vilhelm Moberg published the tetralogy, The Emigrants, which told the tale of Swedes leaving their famine-stricken homeland in the mid-1800s for greener pastures in America. Others fled religious persecution from the Church of Sweden, which banned Baptist, Pentecostal, and Presbyterian expressions of faith. Moberg’s story of Kristina and Karl-Oskar, who embarked for America on the ship Charlotta, is still required reading in Swedish schools. The conclusion was not the idea that America was the new Jerusalem, but rather that everyone has the right to seek better fortunes in a foreign land (which also partly explains Sweden’s generous immigration laws). America has since then become a kind of mythological place in the Swedish psyche, where great things are possible.&nbsp;As a result, when identity politics came crashing down in America in the 2010s, Sweden was quick to adopt its moral assumptions. The Swedish political, cultural, and media elite enthusiastically embraced its dogmas. Legislation imposed female quotas on company boards. Governmental agencies, including the police and Armed Forces, prioritized women and immigrants. In the name of anti-racism, the spread of Islam in Sweden was seen as progress, whereas Christianity was viewed as reactionary.&nbsp;Nowhere was this more visible than in the Swedish education system that heavily promoted female empowerment from a young age. Boys, who not only develop later than girls but are seen as transgressors within US-imported identity politics, were not only left behind, but also ignored. As a result of Sweden’s progressive politics, women today dominate 80 percent of all governmental authorities (which in Sweden are a staggering 450).&nbsp;Male motivation to seek work was weak in a world that viewed him as unwelcome. Young women fared better in education and at work and tended to discard men of lower social status. Young Swedish women today will get married. The question is whether it will be to the shrinking number of men of high status, their careers, or the state itself. Yet, for men, in the cradle-to-grave welfare state, there is little risk that he will fall too far. He will be left well fed and warm, but empty.The Limits of Secular Grace &nbsp;The experience of emptiness often leads to resentment and despair, as we have witnessed in the rise of the nihilistic alt-right. Sin-burdened man appears capable of rejecting God’s truth as much as seeking it. But when secular modernity has lost its appeal, its promises lose their hold on the human heart and fail to offer real satisfaction. The Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:17 teaches us that when we are exposed to deep hunger, the Holy Spirit often begins His work. The longing that emerges is not evidence that God is absent, but that He has made the human heart for Himself, and by His grace is drawing it back toward its true end.Preparing the Ground Though Swedish conservatives focus on tradition, family and culture, the question of Sweden’s Christian origin, most visible on the golden cross of Christ against a blue Nordic sky on our flag, has until recently remained neglected. The center-right government that today steers the kingdom is rationalistic. The Christian Democrats and the Swedish Democrats – our most conservative parties in the Parliament – speak often of Christian values, but rarely of Christian faith. They speak of what works, but not what is worth living for.&nbsp;The collapse of secular modernity explains the exhaustion of the old order. It does not explain the return to faith. At most, it has prepared the ground for faith. The seed itself comes from elsewhere. Through God’s grace, this void is now being filled with the younger generation seeking Christ. What they seek is not entertainment or emotional uplift, but the recovery of a soulful order in a society that has become profoundly disordered. For a generation raised in schools and media that treated masculinity as a problem to be managed rather than a virtue to be formed, the free churches offer clear teaching, male leadership, and a call to responsibility. They are drawn not by spectacle or sentiment, but by the reintroduction of authority, first the authority of Scripture, and ultimately the authority of God Himself.The Return of Authority This is why the free churches are succeeding where the Church of Sweden falters. The latter, shaped by decades of liberalization and institutional caution, instinctively recoils from Bible-centered preaching when young men ask for it. The former, less burdened by cultural accommodation, dares to teach the Gospel, including its demands. Here the young men find a place where their hunger for structure, purpose, and moral seriousness is not pathologized but directed toward submission to Christ.&nbsp;However, the Church of Sweden remains the default church for many coming to faith. Last year it recorded, for the first time in decades, an uptick in young people seeking first communion. Yet not everyone is equally welcome. In April last year, two female vicars wrote in Dagens Nyheter (Today’s News), Sweden’s largest newspaper, that young men had begun attending Sunday services asking for Bible-centered guidance. Their hunger for spiritual direction was met with suspicion. The vicars feared that Bible-centered Christianity was homophobic and misogynistic, and blamed their beliefs on American pastors from the internet.&nbsp;The Gospel without Apology Yet it is precisely these young men’s attraction to robust, Bible-centered preaching, often influenced by the witness of confessional Reformed churches in the United States, that reveals the true character of this awakening. Far from a mere cultural import or online fad, the clear proclamation of God’s sovereignty, the total authority of Scripture, and the demand of the Gospel is being used by the Holy Spirit to awaken a generation. What the liberal vicars dismiss as “American pastors” is actually the sound theological inheritance of the Reformation, now returning to Swedish soil through free church pulpits and digital voices, calling young men not to cultural conservatism but to living submission to Christ.The Church of Sweden’s instinctive turn toward therapeutic and feminine non-confrontational spirituality risks alienating these men once again. But if the free churches continue to call them to submission to God and Scripture, they will shape a generation capable of faithfulness in a society that has long abandoned the language of command. This would in many ways mitigate the negative impact that Sweden suffers from the erosion of the mediating institutions. Tocqueville worried about the dangers of societies where there is no middle layer of institutions between state and man.&nbsp;The Seed of the Harvest This seed of awakening, still modest, bears watching not only for Sweden but for the broader West. It suggests that even the most thorough experiment in secularized Christian ethics eventually reaches its limit. The young men returning to these churches are not fleeing modernity so much as discovering, by the drawing of the Holy Spirit, that a world without transcendence cannot finally satisfy the deepest longings the emptiness of secularism has awakened. Whether this seed grows into a genuine Swedish spiritual awakening will depend on whether the churches offer belonging with burden, and whether they have the courage to speak with authority – the authority of the living God – in an age that has grown suspicious of all authority except its own.&nbsp;

Swedish Awakening

Dear Friends and Partners, &nbsp; In Geneva, on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council, the governments of Italy, Chile, Cameroon, and the Holy See presented a landmark joint declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy — the first formal step toward a binding treaty to abolish a practice that commodifies women and children. Our report, Italy and Chile Build an International Coalition for a Ban on Surrogacy, examines this open and growing coalition and what it signals for the future of international human rights law. &nbsp; For the first time in years, an Organization of American States assembly closed without any reference to “sexual and reproductive health and rights” or “gender-based violence.” In Panama Declaration Without References to Abortion for the First Time in Years, we explain how states removed this language during negotiations rather than after adoption — a precedent worth replaying at the UN and the EU. &nbsp; The UN Human Rights Council’s 62nd session largely kept its ideological course, yet a historic report on violence against mothers directly cited Ordo Iuris’s position. Our commentary, Observations from the UN Human Rights Council’s 62nd Session, reviews the debates on abortion, gender, migration, and free speech, and shows that patient, substantive argumentation can break through even entrenched patterns. &nbsp; Ordo Iuris has joined, as amicus curiae, a precedent-setting case before the European Court of Human Rights, defending states’ right to expel dangerous foreign nationals. In The Ordo Iuris Institute Intervenes in a Precedent-Setting Case on the Deportation of a Jihadist to Tunisia, we set out why the Court’s rigorous case law leaves states struggling to protect their citizens from terrorism. &nbsp; Please feel free to share and/or republish on your platforms.&nbsp;Olivier BaultFoundation Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture Address: ul. Zielna 39, 00-108 Warszawahttps://ordoiuris.pl/en/press-newsdesk/italy-and-chile-build-an-international-coalition-for-a-ban-on-surrogacy/ &nbsp;

ORDO IURIS: International Momentum Builds Against Surrogacy

Saving America by Saving the Family James Moseley, Ph.D. Director of International Partnerships, Liberty University Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years. Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 323, January 8, 2026. A civilization cannot remain healthier than the families from which it is formed. When marriage weakens, children lose stability, communities lose cohesion, economies lose future workers, and governments inherit responsibilities they cannot competently discharge. Saving America by Saving the Family addresses this not as one policy problem among many, but as the crisis beneath many of the others. Its title is intentionally dramatic, and the evidence assembled by its six authors substantially justifies the drama. The report begins where Aristotle began: not with the palace or marketplace, but with the household—the oikos. It is from oikos that we derive oikonomia, the management of the household, and ultimately our word economy. The authors state their premise plainly: “The family is the foundation of civilization” (p. 2). Marriage is the household's cornerstone because it unites the man and woman who create a child in a durable covenant of obligation to one another and to the life they bring into the world. The home is therefore the first school of cooperation, stewardship, sacrifice, responsibility, and self-government. When it performs these functions well, it limits the need for government. When it fails, no government program can fully take its place. The authors’ diagnosis is sobering. Marriage rates have fallen, first marriage has been delayed, cohabitation has increased, and approximately 40 percent of American births now occur outside marriage. One-quarter of American children live with a single parent. Fertility has fallen far below the level required for population replacement, raising the prospect that deaths will soon exceed births. The consequences reach far beyond household sentiment: childhood poverty and instability, weaker educational outcomes, loneliness, declining civic participation, labor shortages, and mounting pressure upon Social Security and Medicare. Unlike many policy manifestos, the report grounds its philosophical claims in an unusually broad body of demographic, economic, sociological, and historical research. The report attributes this dissolution to mutually reinforcing cultural and governmental forces. The sexual revolution separated sex from marriage and marriage from procreation. No-fault divorce separated marital choice from enduring responsibility. Pornography, dating apps, drugs, and increasingly artificial forms of reproduction have further commodified sex, intimacy, and even children. At the same time, welfare programs penalized marriage; credential inflation postponed adulthood; housing and childcare became less affordable; and economic and regulatory policies made it harder to sustain a household on one income. The report is especially persuasive when it refuses to reduce the crisis either to economics or morality alone. Families require both cultural conviction and practical means. Its recommendations follow three broad purposes: stop punishing family formation, restore the American dream, and actively support marriage and working families. The authors propose removing marriage penalties from welfare and taxation, strengthening work incentives, reforming housing and higher education, protecting children from technological harms, supporting home-based childcare, and requiring federal agencies to examine how regulations, grants, and enforcement actions affect marriage and family life. “No single program or agency,” they contend, can address family decline; the task requires coordinated attention across government (p. 98). The report culminates in three substantial fiscal proposals. A Family and Marriage tax credit would direct support toward married working parents during the demanding first four years of a child's life. A Home Childcare Equalization credit would correct the present preference for commercial childcare by recognizing the economic value of care provided at home. Newlywed Early Starters Trust (NEST) accounts would place at least $2,500 into an investment account for every qualifying newborn, with tax-advantaged withdrawals available to beneficiaries who marry between eighteen and thirty and remain married while the funds are released over three years. NEST is among the report's most imaginative ideas. It recognizes that young Americans should enter adulthood not merely as workers but as owners of productive capital. It may even contain a possibility larger than the authors develop. If some principal were preserved and each funded generation automatically helped endow the next, a temporary public investment might grow into permanent, inheritable family capital. NEST seeks to make marriage more affordable; preserved birthright capital might help make family flourishing economically durable. That possibility deserves consideration, but it extends rather than diminishes the authors' proposal. The report's reliance upon government is also its unavoidable tension. Federal policy can stop penalizing marriage, protect children, and remove obstacles to family formation. Executive orders can require family-impact statements. Tax credits can relieve pressure. But government cannot administer husbands and wives into fidelity, wisdom, forgiveness, or sacrificial love. The authors themselves ultimately acknowledge that “policy alone will not solve the family crisis” (p. 133). Religion, culture, art, education, and innumerable acts of personal responsibility must accomplish what administration cannot. Here, the biblical vision gives the report its deepest foundation. Children are not economic inputs needed to preserve entitlement programs. They are “a heritage from the Lord” (Ps. 127:3), the wealth of families and, in the deepest sense, the wealth of nations. Ephesians 5 presents marriage as reciprocal responsibility: wives submit to their husbands, while husbands must love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. Proverbs 31 portrays the excellent wife not as a passive dependent but as an investor, producer, merchant, philanthropist, teacher, and creative source of her household's flourishing. Husband and wife create eudaimonia together through love expressed as responsibility. This is not merely an American concern. Across much of the developed world, declining marriage, collapsing fertility, weakened religion, and demographic inversion threaten the institutions that assume a continuing succession of workers, parents, children, and citizens. The particular remedies will differ among nations, but the underlying question is universal: Can a society continue to flourish after it ceases to form the families through which both life and civilization are transmitted? At 137 pages before its extensive endnotes, the report is rather long, and its abundance of recommendations sometimes obscures its strongest arguments. Yet its breadth is also evidence of the seriousness with which the authors have approached the subject. Its diagnosis is substantially correct, its moral purpose is commendable, and many of its proposals deserve serious consideration. Most importantly, the report restores the proper order of the question—and returns modern politics to Aristotle’s oldest political insight: the household precedes the polis. The family does not exist to serve the economy or the state. The economy and the state exist to protect the human relationships within which people learn to love, accept responsibility, and flourish. America will not secure its next 250 years merely by preserving its institutions. It must preserve the institution that produces free and flourishing Americans.

A Review of Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years

Universal Statement on Education Freedom and Responsibility 7/16/2025 In 2025, a group of respected American educators and experts articulated the Phoenix Declaration, intended to delineate “the responsibility of America’s parents, educators, and policymakers to recommit ourselves to the central purposes of education.”&nbsp; We believe within the document are aspects that are universal to all free communities and sovereign nations. We have, therefore, adapted this declaration for a global audience. We recognize the diversity of educational systems around the world. Rightly, the structure of education ought to be a prerogative of national sovereignty and should rightfully reflect the values, priorities, traditions, and culture of the people of and their land. Nevertheless, educating is a fundamental human activity. The “central purpose of education is to transmit humanity’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom, as well as our nation’s particular culture and heritage, to the next generation.”&nbsp; Therefore, there must be elements of an authentic and constructive educational experience that are fundamental to all free peoples, the foundation of healthy communities, nations, and societies that promote human flourishing. We believe: Education is the cornerstone of individual opportunity, family flourishing, and national prosperity. Every child should have access to a high-quality, content-rich education that fosters the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, so that they may achieve their full, God-given potential. Schools must work alongside parents to prepare children for the responsibilities of adulthood, including their familial and civic responsibilities, by cultivating excellence in mind and heart. Schools should equip students with the knowledge, character, and skills necessary to succeed in life as individuals and to fulfill their obligations as members of their families, local communities, and country. In order to empower families, advance educational excellence, transmit culture, tradition, and foundational values, we believe the following principles should guide families, schools, policymakers, and responsible officials: Parental Roles and Responsibilities. Parents are the primary educators of their children. Policies should respect the right and high duty of parents to raise their children and make decisions about their children's education. Transparency and Accountability. Schools, as secondary educators, should work with parents, not attempt to serve as replacements for them. Schools have a responsibility to be transparent with parents about what their children are being taught and how their children are performing. Schools must never have misguided policies that hide information from parents about their children’s mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. The highest form of accountability is when schools are answerable directly to well-informed parents. Truth and Goodness. Education must be grounded in truth. Students should learn that there is objective truth and that it is knowable. Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads. Students should learn that good and evil exist, and that human beings have the capacity and duty to choose good. Cultural Transmission. A central purpose of education is to transmit humanity’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom, as well as particular culture and heritage, to the next generation. A civilization survives only if it intentionally transmits its history, traditions, and values—including its yet unrealized aspirations—to the next generation. True progress comes only by building on what has been learned and achieved in the past. Students should therefore learn about founding principles and roots in the broader civilizational traditions. Students should study the best that has been thought and said, engaging in the great conversation among the competing viewpoints that comprise our intellectual heritage, so that they freely make the best views their own. Character Formation. Education must prepare children for the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood. That endeavor entails much more than merely preparing students for a career. A proper education is focused on the full formation of a child, particularly the child’s character. Education should cultivate the virtues and discipline necessary for self-governance. Students must be held accountable for their behavior, both to learn that their choices have consequences and to maintain the order necessary for learning to proceed. Academic Excellence. Schools should foster academic excellence. Schools should prioritize a rigorous and content-rich curriculum rooted in foundational subjects such as math, literature, science, history, civics, and the arts. Emphasis should be placed on core knowledge and tried-and-true pedagogy rather than fads or experimental teaching methods. Students should be challenged and rewarded for hard work and accomplishment. Schools should help students achieve their full potential, going as far and as fast as their talents will take them. Citizenship. Flourishing societies are predicated on an informed and virtuous citizenry. Information without moral formation is insufficient. Parents, schools, and religious and civic institutions must cultivate in children the personal and civic virtues necessary for righteous communities and nations. Schools should teach students the civic virtues and civic knowledge necessary for self-government including the value of civil disagreement. Schools should also foster a healthy sense of patriotism and cultivate gratitude for and attachment to their country and all who serve its central institutions and the ideas they contain about liberty, justice, the rule of law, government, rights, and the equal dignity of all human beings. Students should learn the whole truth—merits and failings—without obscuring the good.

Universal Statement on Education Freedom and Responsibility

Today, July 15, &nbsp;Belgian police blocked MEP, Sebastian Tynkkynen, a sitting Member of the European Parliament from entering the European Parliament and was physically detained in his office. His offense: he was attempting the delivery of over half a million European citizens’ signatures for the @SaveEuropeAct initiative.&nbsp; &nbsp;<a href="https://www.save-europe-act.com/" data-mce-href="https://www.save-europe-act.com/">https://www.save-europe-act.com/</a>&nbsp; We, the Peoples of Europe, Motivated by a deep love and sense of responsibility for our nations, descendants and shared civilization, turn to the European Commission. Recognizing that the native peoples of Europe, comprising the ethnic, cultural and linguistic communities of the Member States, possess an inalienable right to preserve their collective identity, heritage and way of life, as rooted in the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination;II.Recitals 1. Acknowledging that Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union affirms respect for the national identities of the Member States, inherent in their fundamental political and constitutional structures, including regional and local self-government;2. Acknowledging further that Article 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union requires the Union to respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, which must include the protection of the historic cultures and traditions of Europe's nations against erosion through demographic replacement;3. Attesting how replacement migration, both legal and illegal, over recent decades has violated that right by causing significant damage to the social cohesion, public services, security, and ethnic and cultural continuity of the European nations, leading to parallel societies, increased crime and the marginalization of native populations in their ancestral homelands.4. Underlining the urgency of the matter by acknowledging the imminent reality that the native peoples of Europe risk becoming minority populations in their own homelands if radical changes to the asylum and migration system are not made;5. Determining that migration does not solve the ageing population crisis, but instead places further strain on European welfare systems and worsens the fundamental problem of low birthrates amongst the native population;6. Declaring that a sovereign Europe must prioritize the well-being, security and demographic continuity of its own peoples above policies that effectively replace and harm the native populations; III.Our Demands We therefore demand that the European Commission exercise its right of initiative under the Treaties to propose and advance the following legislative and policy measures without delay:Article 1 Declare a formal moratorium on new non-Western/non-European immigration channels, including the suspension of asylum processing for economic migrants and applicants from safe countries of origin, the halting of new study and family reunification visas for non-Europeans, and the strict limitation of legal migration channels until social cohesion and cultural continuity in the Member States are restored. Article 2 Establish a fundamental reform of the existing EU migration and asylum systems during the time of this moratorium, including a total reform of the current migration framework focusing on external border protection, physical and technological barriers at the frontiers, rapid screening, and immediate return mechanisms. Article 3 Ensure the systematic and accelerated return (remigration) of illegally staying migrants, rejected asylum seekers, and persons who have committed criminal offences or pose a threat to public order, with full mutual recognition of return decisions across the Union and enhanced cooperation with third countries for readmission. Article 4 Establish a harmonized EU-wide framework for broader remigration, including voluntary and incentivized remigration measures for non-European migrants who are unintegrated or constitute a serious cultural or financial burden to Member States, in order to reduce enforcement costs and support the restoration of demographic balance. Article 5 Remove social welfare incentives and benefits that function as pull factors for migration, including restrictions, in accordance with Union law, on access by non-citizens and recent migrants to selected welfare benefits and support systems, so as to reduce incentives for further migration, lessen the burden on European taxpayers, and encourage remigration. IV.Declaration We further declare that these measures are essential to uphold the rule of law, democratic legitimacy, and the long-term survival of European civilization as a community of distinct peoples with shared yet sovereign identities.Important Note This European Citizens' Initiative cannot contain every measure that would be necessary to secure the future of Europe and its peoples.The ECI procedure is formally limited in scope. For that reason, the legal text of this initiative must be confined to a narrower set of demands, even though further measures would clearly be needed. These include, among others:family policy and demographic renewal cultural continuity and identity the constitutional self-preservation of the Member States broader civilizational and historical questions concerning Europe's future Their absence from the legal text of the initiative does not mean that they are secondary. It means only that the instrument of a European Citizens' Initiative does not allow every necessary question to be included within one formal submission. Rome MMXXVI

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Keeping the West’s Flame Burning

Swedish Awakening

ORDO IURIS: International Momentum Builds Against Surrogacy

A Review of Saving America by Saving the Family: A Founda...

Universal Statement on Education Freedom and Responsibility

Save Europe Act