On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler dive into how President Donald Trump’s newly revealed national security strategy statement takes Europe to task. They also ask the question, “Will Western civilization in Europe be around in 100 years?”
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Jack Fowler: We’ll talk about Europe. And we’ll start off with [President] Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy statement. I’m looking at today’s New York Post, which has an article on it.
And here’s what the statement says: “We want Europe to remain European, regain its civilizational self-confidence and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” reads the Trump-signed document that was posted online yesterday from the day we’re speaking.
“We will oppose elite-driven anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.”
The report says, “We reject the disastrous climate change and net zero ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States and subsidize our adversaries.” There’s much more to this report. Victor, what are your thoughts on this?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I read the report, and everybody’s angry about it because it didn’t have the usual boilerplate, “The United States is going to partner with our European allies and strengthen NATO, our role of the U.N. is essential, we need to increase our foreign aid to get the message about democracy abroad to our brothers in Africa and Asia, and we’re working with our partners” and that kind of stuff.
The last one was the most controversial because we were lecturing Europe. They said, “Now they’re letting us just go our own way.”
No, they didn’t. They said, “We just can’t defend you anymore because we just pay the bulk. We’re the most generous of the NATO allies, and we’re the most distant from where the problems are. And we keep telling you that your GDP is declining radically as a percentage of the world’s economy. Your fertility rate’s down to 1.4. You’re aging.
“You’ve got millions of these antithetical immigrants coming in that hate your culture. They’re going to be dominant majorities in 30 or 40 years. And you have to rearm, but we can’t we just can’t beg you anymore. You don’t do it.
“So, we’re trying to suggest you follow our model because we made the same mistakes that you do. Get back to natural gas and oil and nuclear and hydro development and get competitive. Open up your economies. Your capitalists, not socialists.
“Close your borders, encourage family formation and two or three children, and rearm, rearm. And if you can do that, we would like you to be an equal partner, not a higher lien or a client.”
And that’s got everybody angry. But that was the message. It was more of a message that I read that they wanted to be a partner with a strong Europe, and they were tired of being the patron and they were the client. And that’s why they’re angry now suddenly.
The subtext, Jack, was everything that we outline that’s wrong with Europe is known to Europeans.
And there’s probably a majority of Europeans in the 30 EU nations that now, I mean, the NATO nations, 31, who say to themselves, “We know what the problem is. We don’t produce energy we could. We’re spending too much on electricity. Our businesses are not competitive. We can’t assimilate these people. They hate us. They hate Christianity.
“We’re over-regulated and socialized and we’ve got to get people more independent and we’ve got to spend more defense.”
And that group is probably 53% or 54%. And the people who run the institutions and the government say we’re not going let them speak. They’re Nazis, they’re racists.
In England, you said they’re canceling trial by jury in many cases. They delayed the local elections. They said, “No, we’re not going to have local elections,” because they know that the Labour Party will be wiped out.
And in Germany, the Alternative for Deutschland has some radicals, it has some extremists, but it represents 40% of the people. And if you keep demonizing it as Nazis, you’re only going to make it bigger.
France, [President Emmanuel] Macron has no popular support. And Spain is a lunatic country now, the government.
But most of the others are starting to become more conservative, and the ones I mentioned have conservative oppositions that are growing in strength. And so, Europe knows now what it has to do with just a question of how obstructive will be this post-war left-wing utopian order. And they’re going to do anything.
They’re going to fine Elon Musk, what was it, $170 million? $140 million just because he won’t censor speech?
Fowler: Yeah, I think it’s $140 million.
Hanson: They’re going to delay elections. They’re going to do anything they can. And what Trump is saying is that if you do all that, we’re not going to be your friend anymore. So, let’s hope they don’t.
Fowler: One of the end games for Europe, Victor, is the assimilation. Let’s say you’re Germany and you had the moxie somehow to take all the Syrians and other illegals who came in thanks to [former German Chancellor] Angela Merkel and throw them out of the country, get rid of them. You still have a country with a [low] fertility rate. So, it’s just a death wish. It’s a death spiral.
I certainly advocate, personally, Europe getting rid of people that will not assimilate into Western civilization. The larger issue is: Is there going to be a Western civilization in 100 years if people just have an inability or refusal to reproduce?
Hanson: Well, there’s just three choices. Can people who were born in Europe have 2.1 children? Better to have three. And number two, will the 50, 60, 70 million people that are in there, will they acculturate and become European?
And right now, it looks like answer number one is no, they’re not going to harm their lifestyle, when they have full benefits for everything, by having to stay up at night with little babies and change diapers. And number two, the Islamic community feels that—they say this all the time—they can do with the womb what they couldn’t do with arms.
So, they’re going to keep having three or four children and they’re not going to assimilate.
And given that, three, what is the plan? What is the plan? And the plan is Europe is going to go back to what, 1100, 1200 AD when you have independent fiefdoms or you’re to have an Islamic Al-Andalus in like Spain, a whole enclave and a Dearborn, Michigan the size of a country? I don’t know.
But I’ll tell you one thing, listen to Ilhan Omar when she says Somaliland is only for Somalis.
There’s one big difference between Islam and Christianity. And the historian Tom Holland mentioned that a lot in his writings. He’s a great historian.
In the Christian world, you can be an apostate. You can be an atheist. You can be agnostic. You can be a deist. Christianity is tolerant for that. They try to save your soul, but they understand there will be a kingdom outside of Christianity as long as Christianity is not threatened by it. That’s a free choice. That’s why the Founders did not require a national [religion].
That’s not true of an Islamic country where you have a Muslim dominant population.
If you say, I am a Pakistani, I am a Saudi, I am a Syrian, I’m an Iraqi, I am a Gazan, and I don’t like Islam. I’m not going to be a Muslim. You’re not going to have an easy life. That’s not going to be tolerated.
Maybe in Egypt you can say you’re a Coptic, but even there the Coptics are shrinking and leaving. You can say I’m a Christian in Bethlehem, but you’re mostly going to Israel or Europe, the United States, to survive.
Fowler: Yeah, if you convert to Christianity in Bangladesh or Pakistan, you’re going to become a martyr. These things are just not tolerated. Where am I going to go to mass in Saudi Arabia? Where’s the Catholic Church?
Hanson: And the weirdest thing is the alliance between the Left and Islam. The Left will say Christian fanatics are destroying the country. And then they’ll look at fanatic Islamists and they’ll say, “Don’t engage in Islamophobia.”
Because they feel that they share a hatred of the West. The Left hates the West. So does Islam. And then you get into the Orwellian situations when they start to bond.
And you see them, and I could see gay students at Stanford protesting for Hamas next to radical Islamist students, and it didn’t look very congenial, believe me.
If anybody with pink hair and a nose ring and a Pride shirt thinks that they’re going to go to Gaza and help out, good luck. You’ll be hanging from a crane.
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