A while ago, I received this June 2025 Volume 54, Number 6: Imprimis newsletter (physical) from Hillsdale College (the best and hardest college to get into, according to Charlie Kirk), I was a big news in on Feb 14 when JD Vance criticized Europe of their wokeness to their face, at the Munich Security Conference on 2/14, where Vance, representing president Donald Trump, spoke to European leaders.
Though I have already had the general idea of the post-modernism, being woke, left wing activism in Europe, I figured this article by Caldwell would help me understand the Euro-American relationship today better. So this is a summary of it.
It's clear that Christopher Caldwell was being very impartial on this as he does not offer strong defense for the left. This is because he tries to avoid speaking of this Left vs. Right fight as a conflict of values/cultures but of interest (i.e. Trump's understanding of networking) instead. I'm not in full agreement of such assessment because values and cultures certainly are involved, but I can see the significant effect on political debates/directions when it is not seen my way but theirs. Therefore, my summary will obviously reflect that:
This is important because, first, Europe and the U.S.A. share Western value traditionally, from that they are allies. Second, the great Atlantic ocean between the two great Western continents divides them geopolitically, just as the Eastern and Western Christendom was in the middle ages. So if there's any hope for unity, one of them has to say something and the straw fell on Vance, who may actually appreciate it because of his character.
The catalyst appears to be whether more immigration is good or bad. Or rather, if immigration is in the people's interest or not, since it's not a value thing for Caldwell. [The Ring Wing generally does not favor immigration in the nationalistic guise of "get out of my house if you don't like how I run things.", it sounds just but not necessarily, because this is about values, not about raising kids, outside cultures can bring better values sometimes to rebuke and correct the local ones]
Populists: Anti-establishment (i.e. government control), for the people, can be either left [communism] or right wings. In this context, Caldwell seems to be only interested in using this term from a Right Wing perspective: Trump (against DEI, ESG-Environmental-Social-Governance, wokeness), Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD, lead by Alice Weidel) party (against the Nazi traumatized), France's presidential elect Marine Le Pen, Romania's presidential elect Calin Georgescu, Hungary's PiS (a Catholic, populist, anti-immigration party in Poland called Law and Justice), Italy, Slovakia. Slovakia is currently left-wing populist but Caldwell doesn't speak more of it than admitting it as populist.
Elitists: The rich, the ones in power, technocrats, the ones claiming to stand on a better economy, making no distinctions between legislatures (create laws) and courtrooms (interpret laws), regulatory bodies (create regulations that implement the laws).
The Elites [the group of elitists, to clarify the definition distinction], are known to suppress the rise of the populists from taking over the federal leadership of their countries. This done by abuse of power in the guise of justice: Marine Le Pen was barred from the 2027 for embezzlement conviction (for an irregularity in the procedures for paying office assistants that her party established 7 years before she became its leader), Calin Georgescu was arrested for unproven alliance with Russian spreading disinformation on TikTok, banning him from May 2025 vote, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (right-wing populist) was replaced by Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicholas Sarkozy with a technocratic one. The EU withheld $60 billion from Poland until PiS was defeated in the 2023 elections by a pro-EU party, claiming justice on grounds of immigration policies.
Vance was worrying that the post-cold war era global economy has become less national, more partisan instead. The European Union, EU, based in Brussels, has been steering the politics of 27 nations since 1992, via the Maastricht Treaty. Usurping sovereignty of various great nations. The Western value is now about human rights, not Christianity.
However, EU did align with the capitalism of American since the 80s. European right wings distrust this as a form of Americanization. Trump criticized the EU for spending more in everything else (i.e. economy) but military which the EU convinced America to chip in. The EU concept is beneficial (social benefits) but national sovereignty is destroyed, diminished from great militaries of Belgium and Austria 40 years ago. From a dominating forces into whimpering dysfunctional shadows of the proud nations they once were. A good reason why UK left the EU with Brexit. Clearly, nationalism and military might go hand in hand in this context, but I don't think it has to always be so, as a Christian, something a Christian Nationalist would never understand: Not by power nor by might Zechariah 4:6. Of course, by His Spirit doesn't mean do nothing ourselves as if doing so would only mean pride and godless self-reliance, like many Western Reformed Christian (i.e. pastor Chris of my church) thought these days.
The EU ideology aligns with America's Democratic Party since 1992. This is a partisan thing and not a national one. Ireland, France and Germany are woke champions. Wokeness is not culture but a power network. It cares not about conviction but about the power of governments with punishments and threats.
My conclusion: My disagreement is from what I inserted above (my views are either apparent or bracketed [] above), but overall, I cannot say I'm fully for or against either partisans, if partisans is what I must use in this context. The complexity of the real issue is more overwhelming than what this article can describe. I can agree that immigration is the central issue and the only solution is a Christian one, not a nationalistic one in guise of Christianity, and certainly not a non-Christian one.
