This article was published in our print edition’s Special Issue on the European Union.
Liberalism Caused the Fall of the West—the Fall of Liberalism Can Halt Our Decline
One of the most insistent human follies is what we might call the ‘exceptionalism of the present moment’. Ever since the ‘Enlightenment’, men of ‘progress’ universally believed with unshakable certainty that they were living in the best of times. Today, the overwhelming majority of liberals would swear that everything is different for us than it was for our ancestors. They may have fought wars, believed in God, used leeches to cure fever—or any number of other foibles or brutalities—but we, the enlightened, would never stoop so low. Various tragedies may have befallen our forebears in the past, but we—surely—are far too well prepared for that to happen now. We are an amazingly advanced and modern people who will overcome whatever fate may throw at us. That distant sound you hear is the muse of history, Clio, laughing at us. In fact, human nature has changed very little since the time of Creation, or at least the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and we are just as subject to the whims of fate as our ancestors were.
‘The transformation of the global order away from the West is not a unique tragedy, but a return to normalcy’
Our most recent conceit, of course, was Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’, which turned out about as well as anyone remotely familiar with the past might have expected. It is particularly ironic that this declaration of liberalism’s total and final victory came mere decades—the blink of an eye, in historical terms—before the West’s current state of almost unprecedented weakness. The ‘Age of the West’ has lasted for a little over half a millennium if we begin counting from the Age of Exploration. Prior to that, in an admittedly less globalized world, despite the achievements of the Greco-Roman civilization and even the spread of Christianity, the ‘West’ was not the geopolitical centre of the world. What existed before the era of Columbus and Vasco da Gama was a world populated by multiple civilizations, some falling, some rising, and some flourishing. Those five centuries when the West formed the preeminent civilization were the exception rather than the rule, and the natural state of international relations is exactly what the future has in store for us.
Viewed from this vantage point, the transformation of the global order away from the West is not a unique tragedy, but a return to normalcy. From our native perspective, however, the fall from grace is painful, and rightly so. Western civilization gained much from the Golden Age of the West; our wealth, political, diplomatic, and military power were largely the result of our special place in the now-fading global order. I would argue, however, that we gave the world a great deal in return in terms of technology, medicine, the arts, religion, and yes, political theories—even if the ‘crowning achievement’ of statecraft, liberalism, has metastasized into a self-destructive Woke cult in our twilight years. Yet it is man who must conform to reality and not vice versa: the age of multipolarity is inevitably upon us.
In a world where the cumulative GDP of the BRICS nations outstrips that of the G7 even before the enlargement of the former, it is foolhardy to dream of ‘Western hegemony’.1 And this, of course, is just one of many symptoms. The loss of American influence in the Middle East and the Biden administration’s utter inability to deal with a ragtag band of Yemeni pirates is a glaring sign of weakness. France’s humiliation in the Sahel region of Africa at the hands of Wagner’s Russian mercenaries2 drove Emmanuel Macron to insane posturing about sending troops to Ukraine. That war has itself turned from the West’s last chance to regain moral leadership of the world into an ignominious defeat in a propaganda war in which we lost most of our remaining influence with the Global South.
‘The West has descended into an insane, suicidal cult that has broken our concentration, shook our convictions, and tore down our defences’
In the half millennium of the ‘Age of the West’, we have become accustomed to our ideas in all fields of human endeavour, from science to economics, flowing east and south, dominating the currents of thought far beyond Europe and North America. In the last decade, however, centres of human knowledge have emerged in Singapore, the Middle East, and China that not only rival what the West has to offer, but often break new ground in scientific and engineering progress. China has become the world’s leading producer of electric vehicles, to name but one, perhaps shocking, example. The seemingly permanent supply chain disruptions first caused by the COVID pandemic, and exacerbated by the West’s ill-advised sanctions war in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, are likely to deepen now that the Yemeni Houthis have effectively sealed off the Red Sea from a portion of international trade. Indeed, the inability of the US and its European allies to defeat this pirate threat seriously undermines the myth of our mastery of the seas. This will have the profound effect of completely reshaping global maritime trade away from the Western-centric configuration which we have grown used to. All of our wallets will feel the change.
The rise of the East is no accident, and while the return to the stage of such traditional geopolitical powerhouses as China and India may have always been inevitable, this process has certainly been accelerated by liberalism’s and capitalism’s dearest love children: globalization and trade. Although they certainly contribute to the previously unimaginable civilizational heights that the West has conquered in recent decades, we must accept that they have also helped our rivals and competitors to catch up with us.
It is not only in trade, technology, and finance that the East and the Global South have made giant strides, but also in education. As Western schools descend into the cesspool of Woke brainwashing, it is no longer just China that has overtaken us in teaching children about real life; the Islamic world is also rediscovering its ancient traditions of scholarship. Conservative teachers and professors, driven out by Woke faculty zealots, are increasingly ending up outside the West in an ironic reverse brain drain. While Hans is taught that he may become pregnant, Mustafa and Fang learn about the latest advances in physics and the coding of quantum computers for when they finally become widely available.
Our Western ideas were once eagerly embraced by the rest of the world in the fields of science, technology, economics—who would have thought that capitalism would prove to be a universal value?—trade, even pop music, and action movies. Liberals therefore assumed that their political ideology could fare similarly well. This was the West’s greatest hubris: the relentless certainty of liberalism’s inevitable march across all borders, cultures, and religions. It turned out to be exactly what conservatives and geopolitical realists had been warning about ever since Fukuyama published his insanely arrogant ideas: a self-defeating error befitting a Greek tragedy. Aggressive, proselytizing liberalism and military adventurism turned the world against the West even before the terminal mind virus consuming the ideology from within became apparent. But when the cult of Woke came into full bloom, any chance of a Western comeback was lost.
Take the absolute worst postmodern brainchild. No one is going to look up to, or even deal in good faith, with a culture that sacrifices children at the altar of ‘trans’. Tens of thousands of kids are put on puberty blockers across the West yearly. Hundreds suffer irrevocable surgical changes to their bodies. Mutilation. Gender insanity is, of course, just one dimension of the Woke delusion, but it is perhaps the one that future generations will be least likely to forgive.
Mass migration has also been elevated to the status of dogma. As a result, it is tearing apart social cohesion and solidarity in the most powerful nations of the West. One need only look at the burning cities of France to understand what will happen when demographic change manifests itself in a shift of political power. The same awaits Britain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and many more.
This is the true cause of Western decline. Liberalism, left to its own devices in the absence of a major challenger, mutated into an abomination tearing itself apart. Cancel Culture was elevated to the level of official policy, mass media and institutional education turned against historical memory, our real values, and true culture. The rejection of our Judeo-Christian heritage manifests itself in everything from Netflix to corporate culture. St Stephen may have chosen Western Christianity, but what are we to do with a West that has turned its back on Christ?
‘The tragic mistakes in Europe’s response to the conflict in Ukraine destroyed European competitiveness through a self- inflicted energy crisis caused by misconceived sanctions policies’
The West has descended into an insane, suicidal cult that has broken our concentration, shaken our convictions, and torn down our defences. How liberalism first morphed into a politically correct, ultra-progressive version of itself and then mutated into the Cult of Woke was a process that took place on many levels. The malaise spread through schools and universities, popular culture, and journalism, until it reached the halls of Congress, the White House, and those once impregnable bastions of hard-headed realism and rational self-interest, the corporate boardrooms.
The march through the institutions may have been a complex campaign involving many variables, but the entire nefarious scheme originates from a single wellspring: the rejection of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Nietzsche knew they killed God, but he never imagined what would actually take His place: a literal culture of death. Mass abortion is perhaps its most obvious expression. I never thought I would see the day when the killing of babies in the womb is celebrated as a ‘constitutional right’, but that is exactly what has happened in France. The Green Jihad has now pronounced the birth of European babies ‘ecocide’, and the LGBTQ etc. lobby wants to make sure that no child is allowed to grow up untouched by the gender brainwashing that has invaded schools and kindergartens.
It is the duty of every conservative, every man and woman of common sense and decency, to rise up against this darkness. History will not be turned back, time does not reverse course, the fundamental errors and sins of the last decades cannot be undone, but the fall of the West must be arrested. We can and must do this by fighting the death wish that emanates from the obscene, malformed spawn of liberalism. We still have a chance to take back the citadels of power in Brussels and Washington this year, and that is what we will be working towards, including at major conservative conferences like CPAC Hungary on 25 and 26 this April in Budapest.3
In the half-century that passed since its inception, the Conservative Political Action Conference has grown from relatively humble beginnings into a grassroots conservative movement with a global presence. The first international CPAC was hosted by Japan in 2017, and has been a regular fixture ever since. Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Israel have all staged CPACs in the years since. The conference arrived on European soil for the first time in 2022, when the inaugural CPAC Hungary took place in Budapest. It has become an annual event and will return to the capital this spring. The Hungarian iteration of the political jamboree features high-profile speakers from the US, Europe, and around the world. This year, conservatives from six continents will converge on Budapest to strategize for the momentous election year ahead.
Indeed, 2024 is an election super year. By the turn of the year, some four billion people around the world will have cast their votes in elections that are likely to have a significant impact on the flow of history. CPAC Hungary is conscious of all these polls but will focus primarily on Europe and America. Our own continent has been pushed perilously close to a civilizational precipice by decades of liberal misrule. Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008, the EU establishment has botched every crisis. The continent’s economies have never fully recovered in the past sixteen years, and our financial institutions never fully regained their credibility. The migration crisis is still festering and has become the leading cause of violent unrest in major cities around our continent. The tragic mistakes in Europe’s response to the conflict in Ukraine destroyed European competitiveness through a self-inflicted energy crisis caused by misconceived sanctions policies. The uninterrupted flow of ever more deadly weapons into the war threatens a violent and explosive escalation. Europe’s only option to avoid catastrophic economic decline and strategic obscurity is to repudiate liberal hubris, reject Wokeness in foreign policy, and return to common sense realism. Voters can bring about the necessary changes in the European Parliament elections this June.
The United States has been plunged into a profound political, institutional, and moral crisis that can only be described as a cold civil war. The Biden regime has weaponized the judicial system and security services of the world’s leading Western democracy, with the Supreme Court serving as the last obstacle preventing the left from turning the United States into a banana republic. The brazen attempts to imprison and bankrupt the leader of the American opposition and the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party is an outrageous attack on the fundamental pillars of the Republic, one that is wholly unprecedented in the history of the United States. Our friends overseas may be shell-shocked by this development, but for us, Hungarians, the script is familiar: seizure of institutions, kangaroo courts, massive propaganda campaigns, and dirty prosecutors have always been the weapons of choice for the radical left in this neck of the woods. Yet Hungary managed to overcome the hegemonizing ambitions of Eastern Marxism and has successfully resisted all attempts by the new, postmodern Western version of the ideological virus to subvert our society. We have a range of solutions to share with our allies at CPAC Hungary, and we hope they will find ways to adapt them to the realities of contemporary America.
‘We must consign postmodern liberalism and the Cult of Woke to the trash heap of history’
The November presidential elections will not only be a crucial test for the United States, but also a pivotal point on which history will turn. If the globalist left overwhelms this desperate last stand by the forces of common sense and realism, symbolized by the person of Donald J. Trump, America will be condemned to languish in its self-inflicted systemic crisis for the foreseeable future. The consequences for the world are immense: progressive arrogance and liberal hubris are the main factors that eroded the global standing, diplomatic potential, military power, and security of the US (and the wider West). Should President Trump return to the White House, however, peace through strength is once again within reach. He was the last president in living memory to start no new wars in his first term. With his Abraham Accords, he created the best chance the Middle East had in a generation for peace and prosperity. We have every reason to believe that Donald Trump’s brand of hard-edged realism in foreign and security policy will not just make America and the West strong again but will also help bring peace to the long-suffering people of Ukraine and the Middle East.
The emerging multipolar, multicivilizational world still needs and will be grateful to have a strong, rational, reliable, and consistent Western civilization, and I believe we still have much to offer the community of nations. But for that to happen, common sense will have to rule us, and we must consign postmodern liberalism and the Cult of Woke to the trash heap of history. Then we can take our rightful place on the world stage and be welcomed to it.
NOTES
1 ‘BRICS and G7 Countries’ Share of the World’s Total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) from 2000 to 2023’, Statista (13 February 2024), https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-world-gdp-g7-brics/.
2 ‘The End of Françafrique?’, Foreign Policy (26 February 2024), https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/26/france-sahel-mali-niger-francafrique-burkina-faso/.
3 ‘CPAC Hungary Returns in 2024 with Keynote Speaker Viktor Orbán’, Hungarian Conservative (12 January 2024), www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/cpac_hungary_2024_budapest_viktor_orban/.
