The European Union as Seen from Washington – The American Conservative

The next is customized from remarks delivered on the College of Public Service in Budapest, Hungary, on November 30, 2022.

It’s an honor and a privilege to be right here on the College of Public Service, on this nice metropolis and this nice nation. There are few individuals in The West standing up for The West with as a lot braveness and resolve because the individuals of Budapest and their fellow residents throughout Hungary.

It may appear presumptuous for an American to come back to Hungary to lecture anybody concerning the civilizational Chilly Battle now being waged between globalist elites and the sovereign peoples of democratic nations. Then once more, it is likely to be requested what Individuals are for if not our presumption? And as a Texan, I can take that query not as a jibe, however a praise.

However, in both case, there is a solution to that query. The factor Individuals are for — now and at all times — is the liberty to control ourselves. And historical past may be very clear that the best bulwark of any individuals’s freedom — throughout continents and centuries — is the nation-state. Nationwide sovereignty, ensured by an unbiased nationwide politics and sustained by a novel nationwide tradition, is each individuals’s strongest protection in opposition to all its enemies, overseas and home.

Right now, as at all times, the nation-state is in a battle for survival. As you recognize, Hungary isn’t merely on the entrance traces of that battle. It’s the salient — the tip of the spear, thrusting ahead into unfriendly territory, surrounded on three sides, hoping that allies will emerge to bolster their flanks.

The American individuals are — and should be — amongst these allies. Nonetheless goes the nation-state in Europe, so it would go world wide. Our independence — our freedom — again residence may be very a lot tied to yours right here. The identical forces threatening Hungary’s sovereignty immediately have their sights set on America’s tomorrow. The one query is whether or not the marketing campaign in opposition to nationhood in Budapest is a gown rehearsal for a future siege of Washington, or whether or not The West stands collectively, right here, in protection of the values that made us the The West within the first place.

Superficially, the nation-state within the twenty first century is beset by two principal adversaries. On one hand, there may be the enemy above. These are the supranational organizations that indict nation-states as parochial particular pursuits obstructing capital-H Historical past’s march towards world “unity.”

On the opposite, there may be the enemy beneath. These are the woke propagandists who condemn the nation-state as a man-made usurper of individuals’s rightful loyalty to their racial, gender, class, or tribal id group.

In reality, although, these are usually not two distinct assaults in opposition to political democracy and cultural range. They’re a coordinated pincer motion of one assault, led by the identical enemy — an entitled cabal of globalist elites whose messianic ambition is matched solely by their pharisaic self-regard. There is no such thing as a larger cabal of globalist elites than the woke totalitarians in Brussels, who use the trope of “European unity” as a cudgel in opposition to frequent sense, conventional values, and Reality.

The aim of woke activists and supranational organizations is one and the identical: eroding the political authority of unbiased nation-states and transferring that authority to overseas, unelected bureaucracies unburdened both by patriotic sympathy or the pains of democratic accountability.

There was a time when Leftist elites had been clear about these goals. Wilson’s League of Nations, Mussolini and Hitler’s fascism, and Soviet Communism overtly boasted their world imperial tasks. And progressive elites hailed every in flip as “the wave of the longer term.” No trendy mental on this planet doubted that some type of centralized administration of society by enlightened cosmopolitans merely had to be the tip level of Historical past.

However in fast succession, these desires died — or fairly, had been uncovered as nightmares.

The butcher’s invoice of twentieth century totalitarian imperialism ought to have discredited their progressive-elite cheerleaders for generations. However one of many perks of controlling the information media, the leisure trade, cultural establishments, and the training system is that you simply by no means must say you’re sorry.

Right now, progressive totalitarians who failed to overcome the authority of nation-states by pressure or persuasion depend on a subtler and extra harmful tactic: gradual insinuation. What the worldwide Left couldn’t obtain with armies and invasions they now try with bureaucrats and treaties.

This, kind of, is “The European Union as seen from Washington, D.C.”

The EU is essentially the most aggressive and harmful enemy of the nation-state anyplace on this planet. Born within the rubble of World Battle II, on the daybreak of the Chilly Battle, the EU was initially a scheme designed to stop one more continental battle.

And in any case, the North Atlantic Treaty Group had already sure western Europe collectively in a mutual protection pact to test Soviet growth. The argument for a “frequent market” — free commerce, passport-free journey, and a everlasting venue for multilateral communication — made all of the sense on this planet.

The issue is that progressive ideologues by no means stopped wanting to wield energy that transcended nation-state sovereignty. The EU introduced them a chance to lastly play the lengthy sport. First, although, it wanted to reframe its latest, catastrophic, miscalculations. And so, the continent’s taste-making cultural establishments concocted a story that World Battle II was brought on by nationalism. That is the story advised in parliaments, newsrooms, and colleges throughout Europe.

It simply so occurs to be a fairy story.

Adolf Hitler was not a nationalist. He was as nakedly imperialist as any tyrant who ever drew breath. He ignored nationwide borders, resented nationwide sovereignty, and tore up treaties signed by nation-states — together with his personal! On the opposite facet of the world, the Empire of Japan took an identical view. The historic document is laughably clear that Benito Mussolini cared solely about himself, not Italy.

The nationalists of World Battle II — Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman — had been the victors. The story of the Second World Battle was that coercive, centralized empires misplaced to a voluntary alliance of unbiased nation-states. Even in Moscow, residence of Lenin’s “Communist Worldwide,” Russian morale demanded Josef Stalin’s imperialistic regime rebrand the battle in opposition to Germany as “The Nice Patriotic Battle.”

The villains of World Battle II weren’t the nationalists, however the imperialists, sworn enemies of unbiased nation-states: Germany and Japan earlier than and through the conflict, the Soviet Union at its finish.

The nationalists had been the heroes. And the victors. And thank God for them.

After the conflict, left-wing, centralizing imperialists didn’t change sides, simply tacks. Nationalism, they begrudgingly found, was not an obstacle to peace and prosperity. Simply to them.

And so progressives on either side of the Atlantic started their “lengthy march by way of the establishments:” the academy, the media, companies, authorities companies, and worldwide organizations.

At this level, Individuals noticed the EU as a political and financial complement to NATO’s safety alliance. A Europe “United in Variety,” because the official motto claims, was an asset within the Chilly Battle. Most Individuals didn’t give the EU any extra thought than how a lot simpler it will make touring.

As you recognize, the EU’s skilled forms — and their allies in elite enclaves in the private and non-private sectors throughout the West — had different plans. Brussels sees itself because the capital of a future United States of Europe — one unchecked by constitutional limitations on the central authorities’s powers.

The problems could change: commerce, immigration, carbon emissions, the hifalutin’ nonsense of id politics. And the speaking factors are at all times shifting. On Monday, “Europe should stand as one.” On Tuesday, it’s one thing about “human rights.” On Thursday, local weather change is just too huge for one nation to fight. On Friday, it’s neighborly reciprocity.

However regardless of the soundbite, the impact is at all times the identical: to syphon away the authority of nation-states and provides it to unelected, unaccountable overseas elites. It’s the definition of imperialism.

And, even for all that, the empire they think about is one totally alien to the peoples they plan to rule.

Europe has been a geographic entity for about 200,000 millennia. However it has been a civilization… it has been The West… for less than about two or three. In that point, tribes and nations and empires rose and fell. However all alongside, although Europe had many monarchs, it has just one King. And the supply of its energy, its magnificence, its unity, and its spirit isn’t in Brussels, however in Rome.

EU elites act as if they’re embarrassed by the Roman Catholic Church and the legacy of European Christendom they inherited from it. It’s a sensitive topic. They rejoice Renaissance artwork, however not its topics. They promote spiritual websites, however just for tourism. EU officers tacitly disavow the spiritual tradition that created the opportunity of an EU within the first place.

They take this act to comical extremes, like placing generic, allusive architectural photographs on euro payments fairly than the cathedrals, artwork, and saints that everybody is aware of belong there. They fake as if, if they all agree to not look down, the Christian heroes on whose shoulders all of them stand will disappear.

However the operative phrase right here is fake.

Make no mistake. The woke, indoctrinating imperialists now preying on European nation-states’ sovereignty — like these corrupting America’s personal tradition — are usually not bored by Christianity. They hate it. For a similar cause they hate marriage and the nuclear household, the U.S. Structure, democracy, free speech, and the nation-state. As a result of to totalitarians, all rival sources of energy and which means are enemies.

Tyrants are by no means religiously, culturally, politically, or intellectually tolerant. To the progressive, totalitarian Left, range isn’t a energy however a heresy. The variety they ostentatiously champion is pretend and superficial — individuals who look completely different however suppose the identical.

Europe, for millennia, has been nearly the alternative — peoples whose superficial similarities masks a dizzying range of tradition, customized, and behavior.

To have a look at the airless bureaucracies of Brussels after which on the nation-states they presume to supplant, one can’t assist however keep in mind C.S. Lewis’s quip: “How monotonously alike all the good tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously completely different are the saints.”

The pure sovereignty of the nation-state protects that range, and every nation’s distinctive perspective and tradition. That’s exactly what the EU desires to destroy.

The USA faces an identical problem. Leftist elites resent, within the excessive, the American individuals’s appreciation of actual range. Regular Individuals don’t thoughts that New York and Texas have completely different cultures, completely different meals, completely different politics. As in Europe, it’s the elites who mock this.

The American Left has fought for a century to centralize decision-making in Washington, after which to switch any energy efficiently nationalized to the unelected govt forms or the unelected Supreme Court docket.

It might appear incongruent, in a speech defending nationalism, to abjure nationalizing politics in my very own nation. However it’s not. In the USA, range is written into our Structure. Not as a gauzy aspiration or ideological Computer virus. Federalism is established, within the legislation, as a basis of our union. Put one other method: one of many core ideas of what we name “the American lifestyle” is our dedication to regional and cultural range. Our nationwide solidarity is in some ways a operate of our constitutional subsidiarity. We love our nation as a result of, regardless of our variations, America lets us be ourselves. E pluribus unum.

American conservatives are as suspicious of the EU as we’re the United Nations, and different worldwide our bodies and agreements the Left so enthusiastically endorses. Most Individuals know that these establishments promote the elites’ pursuits, however not ours. That’s the reason American elites throughout the political spectrum are so unpopular. The good political cleavage throughout the West immediately is now not horizontal — left-versus-right — however vertical — the elites-versus-everyone-else.

Therefore our Euro-skepticism. Individuals have little interest in sharing our nationwide sovereignty with Canada or Mexico. So we don’t see why Czechs or Danes or Portuguese ought to defer to Brussels. If globalist progressives have such nice concepts, allow them to persuade us, and we’ll vote for them. In any other case, they will thoughts their very own enterprise.

The issue is, they gained’t. Whereas we are minding our enterprise — elevating households, constructing careers, teaching our children’ baseball groups, going to church — the imperialists by no means relaxation. Hardly per week goes by with out some new scheme, some new settlement or constitution or treaty or memo of understanding that, little by little, is taking one other milligram of energy away from us and including it to their very own pile.

The Worldwide Prison Court docket has one objective: to switch nationwide legal justice techniques.

The Conference on the Rights of the Little one has one objective: to sever the bonds of parental authority.

The identical is true for each such treaty.

Globalist elites completely intend to supersede nationwide policymaking authority on carbon emissions, immigration, taxation, commerce, gender, spiritual expression, the web, and finance. The World Commerce Group is already chipping away at U.S. mental property protections. The World Well being Group bought a glimpse through the Covid pandemic of how a lot energy they will wield after they actually need to. And wield it, they may, with ever extra spurious grounds.

In the USA, woke activists are overtly against free speech, spiritual liberty, and even entry to banking for spiritual traditionalists. Is there any doubt they’d centralize and globalize cancel tradition if given the possibility?

Recognizing how misguided the EU has turn into ought not forestall conservative reformers from creating and increasing alliances that honor nationwide sovereignty. The Three Seas Initiative and Visegrad Group, for instance, are promising alternatives for nations to work multilaterally whereas nonetheless respecting the actual pursuits of the respective nation-states.

And there may be nothing mistaken with treaties, or with worldwide alliances that present nation-states collective advantages whereas guaranteeing nationwide sovereignty. NATO represents a mannequin of each.

However, in the event you’ll discover, these are usually not the sorts of treaties that the EU and UN and Davos-set promote. For his or her actual motto isn’t, “United in range,” however, “divide and conquer.”

Their strategies could also be completely different, however their aim is identical as all of the goose-stepping thugs who’ve sought to place The West beneath their heels. Xerxes. Caesar. The Ottomans. The sociopaths of 1789 and 1917. Bonaparte. Hitler. Putin. Wave after wave of imperialist ambition has crested and crashed into the Rock of The West and receded again whence it got here. And Europe stays.

Not as a zone of treaties, and definitely not as a chessboard for Brussels bureaucrats, however as a civilization of countries and nation-states: unbiased, free, sovereign.

Individuals are proud to face for those self same ideas. And, as we now have for 246 years, we’re simply as proud to face with pals who accomplish that. That is the battle of the twenty first century, because it has been the battle of the earlier 30.

The long run isn’t Brussels, Berlin, or Paris, however Warsaw, Budapest, and Central and Japanese Europe. And if we stand collectively, the nation-state, Hungary, Europe, and the West will prevail. Within the phrases of Francis II Rakoczi, “With God for Homeland and Freedom.”