Sometimes a picture isn’t just worth 1,000 words, but 1,000 years of history. This tableau, justly famous already, depicts (with only slight exaggeration) the future of western civilization.
For some decades, it has been clear that Europe’s elites are in a nihilistic death-spiral. While many ordinary citizens still have the spiritedness to defend their rights and freedoms, the childless leaders of Western Europe are engaged in a kind of a “war of contrition.” Their strategic aims—domestic as well as international—focus on atonement for the sins of Western Christendom, which means above all appeasing Islam.
Europe has given up what little hard power it had. It seeks to use its last shreds of influence to constrain the U.S. while leaving China and Russia (who laugh at Europe) free to pursue their global aims. Washington’s old bankrupt and bipartisan liberal establishment fell for that. Trump does not.
Painful as it may be, the U.S. has to break Europe’s pretensions to save its civilization, which is also ours. That is the nature of Trump’s defiance.
Photo credit: Jesco Denzel/Bundesregierung via Getty Images