Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
“As we begin 2017, the most urgent threat to liberal democracy is not autocracy,” writes William Galston of The Wall Street Journal, “it is illiberal democracy.”
Galston’s diagnosis is not wrong, and his alarm is not misplaced.
Yet why does America’s great export, liberal democracy, which appeared to be the future of the West if not of mankind at the Cold War’s end, now appear to be a church with a shrinking congregation?
Why is liberal democracy losing its appeal?
A front-page story about France’s presidential election, in the same day’s Journal, suggests an answer.
In the final round next May, the French election is likely to come down to a choice of Marine Le Pen or Francois Fillon.
Le Pen is the “let France be France” candidate of the National Front. Fillon is a traditionalist Catholic from northwest France, home to the martyred resistance of the Revolution — the legendary Vendee.
Fillon won practicing and nonpracticing Catholics alike by a landslide, and took 3 in 5 votes of those professing other faiths.
Le Pen wants France to secede from the EU and move closer to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The five million Arabs and Muslims currently in France, the prospective arrival of millions more, and recent Islamic terrorist atrocities have all propelled her candidacy.
Fillon succeeded in his primary by identifying himself as a man of Catholic beliefs and values and an opponent of same-sex marriage and abortion. He does not repudiate secularism, but believes that the France that was “the eldest daughter of the church” should also be heard.
Together, what do the Le Pen and Fillon candidacies tell us?
France and Europe may be moving inexorably away from a liberal democratic, de-Christianized and militantly secularist America. If we are the future, less and less do France and Europe appear to want that future.
While our elites welcome the Third World immigration that is changing the face of America, France and Europe are recoiling from and reacting against it. The French wish to remain who and what they are, a land predominantly of one language, one culture, one people.
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America preaches that all religions are equal and should be treated equally. France does not seem to share that liberal belief. And just as the Middle East seems to want no more churches or Christians, France and Europe appear to want no more mosques or Muslims.
Where America’s elites may celebrate same-sex marriage and “reproductive rights,” more and more Europeans are identifying with the social values of Putin’s Russia. Pro-Putin parties are surging in Europe. Pro-America parties have been facing losses and defections.
“Because human beings are equal, any form of ethnocentrism that denies their equality must be rejected,” writes Galston.
That may well be what liberal democracy commands.
But the 24 nations that emerged from the disintegration of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were all built on ethnonational foundations — Croatia and Serbia, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
And was it not their unique ethnic identities that caused South Ossetia and Abkhazia to break free of Georgia?
Indeed, if what America has on offer is a liberal democracy of 325 million, which is multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, which celebrates its “diversity,” then where in Europe can one find a great party preaching this as the future their country and continent should embrace?
European peoples are largely fleeing from the future America preaches and promises.
Europe’s nations are rising up against what liberal democracy has produced in the USA.
Galston contends correctly that, “few leaders and movements in the West dare to challenge the idea of democracy itself.”
True, so far. But worldwide, Caesarism appears on the march.
Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines exemplify the new popularity of the strongman state. Western liberals initially cheered the Arab Spring, but what it produced curbed their enthusiasm. Free elections in Palestine and Lebanon produced victories for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Though Galston chastises the Polish and Hungarian governments as illiberal democracies, they seem to remain popular at home.
What, then, does the future hold?
The present crisis of Europe has been produced by the migration of tens of millions of Third World peoples never before assimilated in any European nation, and by the pollution and poisoning of these nations’ traditional culture.
This has caused millions to recoil and declare: If this is what liberal democracy produces, then to hell with it.
And if Europe is moving away from what America has become and has on offer, what is there to cause Europeans to turn around and re-embrace liberal democracy? Why not try something else?
In Brexit, the English were voting against the diverse liberal democracy that their capital of Londonistan had become.
Donald Trump’s victory represented a rejection of Barack Obama’s America. And whether he succeeds, what is there to cause America to look back with nostalgia on the America Obama came to represent?
Our Founding Fathers believed that democracy represented the degeneration of a republic; they feared and loathed it, and felt that it was the precursor of dictatorship. They may have been right again.
Politically, Le Pen and Fillon are not that far apart. Imagine if they agreed before the election that the winner would appoint the loser Prime Minister and that they would work together to solve France’s myriad problems. THAT would be a political revolution in Europe.
Europe is lost to Islam, too few are doing too little too late to change that.
Maybe a few countries will escape it, but the overwhelming majority of them will fall to Islam.
In fact, it could be argued that they already have with most people simply unable to see major changes till after they’ve already taken place.
Humans are NOT equal – they may ‘look’ similar, but that is where it ends.
“America…..which celebrates its “diversity,” – uh, NO. There is no celebrating. As long as everyone speaks the same language along with all the signs, there is a good chance for the population to get-along with each other.
Send all illegals back.
Agree.
The French have assumed that the Muslims would become good Frenchmen, because of course, who wouldn’t want to be? It never occurred to them the Muslims expected the French to become like them. The scales have now fallen from their eyes, and the French finally realize that they are about to lose everything about their cherished way of life. Do they still have a Charles Martel in their midst? I expect so. But it will be a long battle, and they will need a Putin on their side, someone who realizes how high the stakes are. Perhaps if the US would just step aside, they will have a chance to succeed.
“Celebrate Diversity” – Never going to happen – primarily because when you look at all closely there’s nothing to celebrate. Libertarian Best to all for ’17
“Because human beings are equal, any form of ethnocentrism that denies their equality must be rejected,” writes Galston.
What compete and utter nonsense. There is no equality in this world, either between individuals within a racial group, between racial/ethnic groups, or between men and women. To be equal means that 2+2 = 4 or 9-6 = 3. I grew up in a family of seven and we are all different in many respects but we still share a common genome which separates us from other racial groups. And that DNA has exerted a fundamental control on our culture and the type of civilization we built. Asking Black Africans to sustain or build Western Civilization is absurd in the extreme and is not supported by empirical data or genetic research; these ideas of equality are very dangerous for our survival as a people. In the final analysis, after you strip away an artificial construct called left-liberalism which is sustained by a pack of lies, you come down to blood and soil. My sense is that Europe and European peoples will survive but not before a revolution that will shake Western Civilization to its very foundations. The pendulum has reached its end-point and it is starting slowly to swing back. As it picks up speed, modern liberalism established after WWII will be swept away and ultimately non-Europeans in Europe, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will be repatriated to their country of origin. It could get messy but hopefully this will be done as humanly as possible. The Blacks in the US represent a major challenge, many of whom have been there for over 200 years thanks to betrayal by plantation owners who behaved in a manner not unlike modern business leaders…but it is clear for anyone with eyes to see that they are, as are most non-Europeans, totally incompatible with Western Civilization. You can have Western Civilization or you can have racial diversity…but you cannot have both.
I should add that this is not racism but realism and what most if not all peoples of the world aspire to. I have toured Japan on several occasions and was impressed with the Japanese culture and the fact the Japanese people have not adopted the suicidal policies of the West, at least with regard to immigration. In private conversions, I encouraged them to maintain a homeland for the Japanese people and not to open their borders to people from other parts of the world. A Japan without the Japanese people and their unique and refined culture would be a loss for all humanity and a horror show of unimaginable proportions. Just as a France without the French people and the culture only they can create is also a great loss to humanity. Sadly for France, French culture is under attack due to the influx of people from the Islamic world. Tragically, most European countries are in the same boat as France and are being overrun by third-world invaders with the support of treasonous European governments.
Celebrate diversity? Celebrate being pushed around by Useless Idiot liberals? I’ll hold my celebrating until I see the whites of their eyes…