'The Way We Were' - Europe's Newfound Defiance Of Islam And Commitment To A White, Christian Culture

Mem'ries light the corners of my mind; Misty water-colored memories of the way we were; Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind; Smiles we gave one another for the way we were

Barbra Streisand sang this treacly homage to romantic love, love lost, love distantly remembered, and a time of youth never to be recovered.  

Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, when told by his friend Nick that you cannot repeat the past, says, 'Of course you can, Old Sport' and turns to look out over the water to the house where Daisy Buchanan lives.  Their love of five years ago, so promising, so hopeful, and so passionate can indeed be relived in the same way.  Time and circumstances cannot change such an enduring, deep love. 

Of course Gatsby is hopelessly romantic; but that is what is most enduring about him, says Nick who has never met a man with such a unique quality of romantic suspension, a quality that gives him a special status in a life usually confined by the ordinary and the practical. 

Marlowe feels the same way about Lord Jim in Conrad's novel of the same name.  Jim is a cut above the rest, a man with a romantic vision of himself that never dies.  Wracked by guilt over his abandonment of a sinking ship carrying eight-hundred pilgrims, and haunted by shame, he wanders the world until he finds salvation and reward in the forgotten island of Patusan. 

Thomas Wolfe in You Can't Go Home Again wrote of that irresistible longing to do so - to return to simpler, more idyllic days of happiness and contentment:

But why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter, and if this little town, and the immortal hills around it, was not the only home he had on earth? He did not know. All that he knew was that the years flow by like water, and that one day men come home again.

 

Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris is about a man who believes that the past was far better than the present, and in a magical interlude visits the Twenties.  He meets Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Fitzgerald all happy and collegial, going from party to party, enjoying themselves and the life around them.  Of course such fantasies cannot be sustained, and the Owen Wilson character has to return to an unhappy marriage and an unfulfilling job but that does not change the timeless desire to return to an imagined past. 

Men like Gatsby, Jim, and Wolfe's narrator are one of a kind.  For them the way we were is not ineffable but recoverable.  Jim's childhood romantic notions of adventure and acclaim are finally realized.  Gatsby and Daisy recover their love, although life interrupts it, the blush is off the bloom of the rose, and it all ends badly - all of which does not change that special quality of illusion which separates men like Gatsby from the rest of us. 

Such nostalgia for an idyllic past is common and not confined to romantic men like Gatsby and Jim.  We all look homeward, to simpler, less complicated, happier times; but what is more interesting is that we collectively want to do so.

Europe, faced with the immigration of millions from a foreign culture - Islam - which threatens the very identity of the region, has finally said No! and has begun to close its borders and to insist on obedience to old, traditional, historical principles and behavior. 

The way we were, La France, la fille ainee de l'Eglise, is the nation which centuries ago stopped the Muslim Saracen invaders at Roncesvalles and preserved Christian Europe.  France has always been Europe's cultural leader - a shining beacon on a hill.  Its mission civilisatrice - its civilizing mission - brought learning, arts, science, and philosophy to its colonies.  France's confidence in its culture and its place in the world was unshakeable.

 

Now that all this is being threated by the medieval primitivism of Islam, a culture which unhesitatingly condemns the excesses and moral dissipation of its European hosts, Europe wants to return to the way it was.  The damage has been done, and it can no longer be universally white and Christian, but it can try to reverse the order of things, to restore, rejuvenate, and reclaim its heritage. 

Countries like Poland and Hungary which have rejected illegal immigration have never been influenced by Islam or the underdevelopment of Africa; and so they are what France aspires to be - a white, traditional, Christian nation. 

Progressives in both Europe and America shout Racism! eugenics, and a systematic denial of the ethos of diversity.  A return to old Europe is a return to colonialism, cultural oppression, white supremacy, and antediluvian mores.  The desire to stop the inflow of asylum-seekers is nothing but a hateful neo-colonialist policy. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Conflating a legitimate desire to restore traditional demographic balance and cultural uniformity with racist pogroms, Southern American segregation, and Jim Crow is ignorant at best.  France cannot expel the African and Middle Eastern Muslims who have become French citizens - it is too late for that - but it can demand cultural integration, to respect, obey, and follow French laws, traditions, and customs. 

More importantly, it can stop the waves of illegal immigration.  European leaders like Le Pen, Marechal, Meloni, Orban, Wilders, Farage, and Duda have all spoken unashamedly and forcefully about wanting to keep Europe European.  Meloni has said that she is proud of her Greco-Roman, Catholic, European roots and is committed to preserving their place and influence in Italy. 

For Meloni 'the way we were' goes back three thousand years.  India's Modi is no different.  What critics call Hindu Nationalism is no more than a desire to return to the ancient empires of the Guptas and the Mauryas to reinforce the religious foundations of the nation.  Vladimir Putin and Xi of China have looked to their imperial pasts for inspiration. These nations are great because they stand on the shoulders of the past. 

Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' is a familiar refrain, echoing that now heard throughout Europe.  This is not what progressives have decried as a desire to return to the slave-owning, segregationist antebellum ways of the 19th Century; but a return to the foundational principles of Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin - a nation built on individualism, enterprise, initiative, Christianity, and patriotism. 

Like Europe, it is too late to completely restore that vision; but not too late to stop the corrosion of these originalist principles that is undermining the nation itself.  The problem in America, while inspired by the same historical nostalgia as Europe, is internal.  We are not threatened by a violently jihadist culture from the outside, but a weak, inclusivist culture from within.  In both cases countries want to return to 'the way we were'. 

The tide is turning.  Politicians no longer intimidated by progressive charges of racism, nationalism, and autocratic rule, have been publicly outspoken about the need to confront the dangers of 'multiculturalism' to honor Greco-Roman and Christian values, and to restore pride in Western civilization. 

Progressivism has been increasingly shown to be the febrile, illusionist, baseless movement it is.  Conservatism has a restored credibility and respect.  A coalition of conservative politicians on both sides of the Atlantic is strengthening.  The world is not turning backwards.  It is turning to historical restoration.