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Guns Before Butter?

Posted on 22/02/25 in Politics

The left is keen to sever connections with the gangsterish new American administration, de Gaulle-style. Indeed – at a minimum, Europe must be able to make its way on its own, and certainly America can no longer aspire to leadership amongst liberal democracies, even if a fair election took place in 2028 in which J.D. Vance was defeated, which we might doubt. Until MAGA has burned out totally, America will be an unreliable partner, and Europe must stand on its own two feet. The transition will be painful and expensive, and will probably involve swallowing a lot of nonsense from President Donald Fart, but it will be worth it in the end.

The left is pleased to remind us it told us so, although so did Enoch Powell, in more or less the same terms. However, it’s not obvious it has processed the implications of independence. In particular, Europe’s giant welfare states, whose influence has crept into almost every corner of public life and many aspects of private life too, was made possible because we outsourced our defence to America, as well as our economic growth to Chinese importers. Have the anti-Americans, vindicated by the appalling behaviour of their traditional bogeymen, the courage and intellectual clarity to realise that we need to prioritise soldiers before welfare, materiel before equality, cybersecurity before diversity, a credible nuclear deterrent before inclusion, and a modus operandi with our hostile neighbours before exporting Western human rights doctrine?