Europe and America: By the Seas Divided

The relationship between Europe and America seems frayed at the moment—not least since Vice President Vance’s comments at the Munich Security Conference last month, and his, President Trump’s, and President Zelenskyy’s Punch and Judy show at the Oval Office. The Vice President’s comments at Munich sent Europe’s chattering classes screeching—though no one tried to refute the truth of what he said. The antics at the White House were quite amusing, and the German Chancellor thundered that Europe must declare its own independence from America. But that last comment begs the question—which Europe and which United States?

There seems an easy generalization: that the United States is divided between—for want of a better word—Trumpsters and Bidenites. The latter were willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian and support Europe’s elites on the same quest. Trump’s America, according to this narrative, is willing to support Putin and consign Ukraine and possibly all Europe to Russian hegemony. Those elites, in the meantime, are facing Russia outside and a rising tide of populism (epitomized by Hungary’s Prime Minister Orbán) inside—which they darkly suggest is somehow allied to Russia. Meanwhile, they ignore the Islamist minorities, whose governmentally unchecked antics only egg on the populists and give them more street cred among the beleaguered locals. So it is that we are faced with what appear to be two allied dichotomies on either side of the water.

As usual, however, the truth is far more complex. The “elites” in Europe are themselves composed of elements that in my far-off youth were deeply opposed ideologically: the Christian Democrats, Conservatives, and (in France) the Gaullists, versus the Socialists and Communists—to whom the Greens were added later. There were also tiny remnants of believers in altar and throne on the one hand, or Fascism, National Socialism, or whatever on the other. But the “mainstream” parties have abandoned whatever ideology they had in favor of being pure government employment agencies, dedicated only to keeping their members in charge and on the gravy train. More and more people have looked elsewhere, and so has been reborn what the standard parties are pleased to call the “Far Right” or “anti-democratic.” To keep them out of power, the status quo folk have resorted to the tactics Vance so eloquently denounced.

Now, for the Traditional Catholic, the temptation when looking at this rising force is to see in it simply “the good guys.” This would be as wrong as seeing in them the “bad guys.” The truth is, they are very mixed. They know what they do not want: Islamization and the end of Europe. But how to get there? How to rebuild the Mother Continent, and in what shape? 

Many will speak of accepting Christian values as the foundation of Europe, but they cannot or will not actually believe. A great many accept abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, and the secular state. For some, “European values” include the Enlightenment equally or even more so than Christianity. The Faith is fine as a museum piece and lending atmosphere but not as a living thing according to which policies should be directed. For such as these, the election of Donald Trump was seen as a great victory—even as their elite opponents see it as a defeat. Surely, with a like-minded ally in the White House, victory cannot be far away—can it? Many will speak of accepting Christian values as the foundation of Europe, but they cannot or will not actually believe. A great many accept abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, and the secular state.Tweet This

But in truth, both sets of Europeans are looking at America and Europe the wrong way around. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn put it very well: “Europe’s rise is written in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe’s decay in the terms of Republicanism, Progressivism and Godlessness.” It is not the Enlightenment, it is not the French Revolution, it is not the Revolutions of 1848, it is not the peace imposed by the victors in 1918 or 1945, it is not National Socialism or Fascism or Communism, it is not what the European Union has become that can save the Mother Continent. Rather, it is a deep and visceral rejection of all of these—not simply because they were ruinous, although they were, but because they were denials of the Truths upon which Europe was founded.  

Hilaire Belloc is often ridiculed for his famous dictum “The Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith”—particularly by American Catholics. But it is only the tag end of a longer quote whose truth cannot be denied: 

This our European structure, built upon the noble foundations of classical antiquity, was formed through, exists by, is consonant to, and will stand only in the mold of, the Catholic Church. Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith. 

This was the same message repeated over and over by Otto von Habsburg, son of Bl. Emperor Karl: “…the European idea cannot be separated from Christianity. Europe must understand that it is a Christian continent, that its vocation is to bear witness to the divine truths on earth.” These ideas, while certainly true, are anathema not only to most of Europe’s current rulership but also to much of their “Far Right” opposition. Therein lies the real European problem.

But there is more. Although many of the European “Far Right” see Mr. Trump’s America as an ally, it is not, and cannot be—and oddly enough, this is not primarily because of any of Mr. Trump’s own qualities, good or bad. The answer lies in American political culture as a whole, which few Americans or Europeans really understand. 

I often tell European friends that if they want to love my country, they should go to the United States and take a long road trip by car—anywhere they wish. Despite some unpleasantries, they shall doubtless come away enchanted with the land and its inhabitants, absolutely sure that we are God’s own country. But if they wish to hate us, they need only study the history of our foreign policy, whereby they shall come away convinced that we are the devil’s own daughters. This dichotomy between the reality of America as it is lived and as its power has been employed by its rulers has characterized our relationship with the outside world since 1783.

Our unsuccessful snatch and grab for Canada in 1812 did have one lasting benefit; when the British burned Washington in reprisal for our torching of Toronto in 1813, the accompanying attack on Baltimore led to Francis Scott Key writing our stirring national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. 

Our ambassador to newly independent Mexico, Joel Poinsett (served 1825–1829), introduced Freemasonry to the country. So many were his attempts at interference in Mexican internal affairs that such attempts by the U.S. government have been called Poinsettismo south of the border ever since. In return, however, he did bring back the lovely Poinsettia plant, to liven our Christmases.  

Two decades later, we would annex two thirds of the country and, after the end of our civil war, arm its anticlericals to the teeth and threaten Napoleon III with combat if he did not leave; the result was the death of Emperor Maximilian at the hands of our client, Benito Juarez. Later, we would give the Mexican government planes and pilots during the Cristero War of the 1920s so as to slaughter the Catholic side. To be fair, we did this anywhere else we could get a foothold among our Hispanic cousins to the south. The murder of Ecuador’s gallant president Gabriel Garcia Moreno in 1875 was planned in our embassy.

For long, the seas confined our attentions to our own hemisphere. But by 1898, we had a navy sufficiently strong enough to challenge the weakest of the European powers—Spain—for control of low-lying fruit: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. Queen Maria Christina, regent for the boy King Alfonso XIII, appealed for aid to the rest of Europe’s monarchies. She warned that the United States would only grow stronger and stronger until America was completely dominant and not a monarchy remained in Europe.  

Two decades later, when Woodrow Wilson dictated the peace after World War I, her prophecy was proved right. The result, as Winston Churchill was to pithily observe, was World War II: 

This war only came because, under American and modernizing pressure, we drove the Habsburgs out of Austria & Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones.

Keen on replacing the British Empire with ourselves and splitting the world with “Uncle Joe” Stalin, FDR initiated the Soviet-American dyarchy over Europe which would endure until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson would continue the work of dynamiting our European allies out of their colonial possessions—often in concert with our Soviet opponents—thus reducing them to client states of ours and condemning their former subjects in the Third World to endless horrors. These last would be further badgered by Obama and Biden to give up their own mores in favor of our various kinds of immorality. After decades of this sort of American hegemony over them, the European elites have been infantilized down to their current position.

In recounting all of this, it is not my intention to simply proclaim a sort of right-wing wokery. But it must be understood that the accidents of American history and culture have almost always ensured a leadership that is inimical to the altar and throne concepts upon which Europe’s grandeur and civilization were built; it is a mark of that leadership’s triumph that these are almost entirely effaced in modern Europe.  

But their departure from the scene as practicalities has put Europe in the situation where it is now, without doing the United States or their denizens any good. Mr. Trump’s Greenland and Gaza comments underline the fact that he is going to do whatever he thinks best for America—and Europe may be helped or hindered by it as events shall prove later. In a word, those who think of Mr. Trump as some sort of savior for “Populist” Europe are very much mistaken—as are others who look to Mr. Putin, who has openly denied the role of God in human affairs. Many Catholic Americans are excited by such things as the Trump White House’s embrace of Ash Wednesday and Vice President Vance’s Catholicism—while ignoring Mr. Trump’s acceptance of abortion and promotion of the even more lethal IVF.

Up to this point, we have not mentioned the two inheritors of Europe’s altar and throne foundations—the Catholic Church and the State Churches of the Orthodox and Protestant countries on the one hand, and the Royals—reigning and non-reigning—on the other. To deal with the latter first, they have been indoctrinated with the same sort of programming we all have. Those nominally reigning could never contradict “their” governments—that would be anti-democratic, since the political class are the voice of the people, who must be punished by their masters when they are bad. The non-reigning, for all that they, too, continue to wield a certain amount of influence, have in their own family histories relatively recent examples of what happens when one defies the powers that be: exile and/or death. While one would love to see heroism out of such folk, one cannot in good conscience demand it—especially if one does not know if he himself could play the hero.

Ecclesiastically, the established churches of the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and northern Germany have for the most part entirely lost the doctrinal underpinnings they had. But if they have lost their faith, they continue their function of blessing and sanctifying whatever the elites-of-the-moment want sanctified, from abortion to gay marriage. The Orthodox Churches had all sorts of interior splits before the Ukraine War that has divided Constantinople from Moscow in a seemingly insoluble manner. 

That leaves the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. We, of course, have any number of problems of our own, from top to bottom. In the near future, however, we may be receiving a new leader, a new Vicar of Christ. We must pray very hard that he can play the role of Gregory XVI, of Bl. Pius IX, of Benedict XVI, of Pius XII, of St. John Paul II (at least as regards Communism). 

That is to say, in the absence of any credible and Catholic lay rulership anywhere today, we need a pope who will stand up as leader of the Catholic people against the enemies of the Faith—and who is dedicated to evangelization. Under such a one, not only the Europeans and Americans but the denizens of Latin America, the Anglosphere, and the Catholic enclaves of Asia and Africa shall be ever more united and dedicated to their common mission. If once-Catholic lands across the globe regain their Faith, and the rest embrace it, then all of the matters we have been looking at shall change organically. But it really does—in this Lenten Season—begin with each of us, one prayer at a time.