Western Civilization Has Reached Its Turning Point After Charlie Kirk’s Death

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Something is happening in the United States and, I think, worldwide too. It’s almost as if there were fuel and the death of Charlie Kirk ignited it.

It’s not a George Floyd movement at all, or moment. We’ve talked about that. It’s very different. It’s building up frustration. It’s not a top-down DEI mandate. It’s a grassroots kind of collective shrug throughout Western civilization. And I guess it could be characterized as enough is enough.

We’re witnessing large-scale demonstrations in Ireland, Great Britain. The government of France has fallen, and French President Emmanuel Macron will have to appoint a new prime minister. There is unrest in the Netherlands.

We used to think, during the Cold War, that Eastern Europe was supposedly backward, politically, under the Soviet sway, economically stagnant. But since the Cold War, and especially lately, the Eastern Europeans seem the most sensible of all Westerners. They believe in tradition. They believe in borders. They believe in legal-only immigration. They believe in fossil fuel development. And they have strong militaries because they’ve experienced Soviet aggression and German aggression in the past. And yet, they also are having a reinforcing moment.

What is this moment? We’re seeing it in the United States with thousands of people commemorating the death of Charlie Kirk. There’s no tolerance for the usual left-wing, socialist craziness, the abhorrent, violent smears of conservatives who’ve died. And you don’t see major bureaucrats, or generals, or Hollywood figures—increasingly, they’re not coming out and rejoicing because they feel that they’re going to get a big pushback.

This is not violent. It’s just a collective shrug. And what is the shrug, basically? It’s saying we’re tolerant of people with alternate lifestyles. But whether we like it or not, the nuclear two-parent family, for 2,500 years, has ensured the survival of Western civilization. It gives us two to three to four children, and we can reproduce the species.

We’re tolerant of Islam and Buddhism, Hinduism. We have a multiracial, multicultural population. But whether we like it or not, the foundations of the United States are Judeo-Christian, as they are of Western civilization in general. We have no apologies for that. Sermon on the Mount is a unique document.

We also are tired of what I call boutique anti-Americanism. We see Rep. Ilhan Omar suggesting that our elected government is worse than the dictatorship in Somalia; or we see Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling President Donald Trump a fascist, as she has in the past; or we see Rep. Rashida Tlaib just demonizing and damning the United States, even though her parents fled the Middle East to come here. And we’re tired of it.

It doesn’t mean we’re gonna outlaw free speech or try to use the same tactics as the critics of America do. But what we’re saying is, we’re a unique place. We’re better than the alternative. We don’t have to be perfect to be good. So, you can say all you want, but we’re gonna not just ignore you, we’re gonna do our best to make sure your voices have no influence.

And that’s why people are taking to the street in Europe. They’re saying an open border and illegal immigration brings in millions of people from the Middle East. They have no proven desire that they wish to readily assimilate, integrate into a culture and a civilization that they feel is antithetical to that of their home.

And that presents a paradox because they voted with their feet to join the West, but they want to bring their culture and values into the West, which, if they were successful, would mean that the West would look like their homelands, of which they have forsaken. Doesn’t make sense.

But we see the same thing in the United States. We have an open southern border. We’re criticized by immigrants that come across. And yet, if we were to embrace the values and culture of Latin America and turn the United States into Latin America, then the immigrants would not wish to leave Latin America to find another Latin America. The Left cannot deal with that paradox. But we can on the conservative side.

So, we’re saying open borders do not work. We’re saying that if you dismantle natural gas, energy, if you dismantle oil, if you dismantle nuclear power, and you choose to subsidize inefficient and unreliable solar and wind, then you’re going to be a pre-civilizational society. Germany was the juggernaut of Europe, and now it’s a pathetic weakling, economically. Why? Because its energy costs are four times what they used to be. And it’s not a competitive country.

So, what I’m getting at is people throughout the West say we’ve sat still where we had open borders. We have let in millions of people that do not like us and do not share our values. We have opted for economic irrationalism that has, in suicidal fashion, harmed our economies and hurt our lifestyles. We have embraced critical legal theory, critical race theory, that suggested the criminal is a victim rather than a victimizer. And we see the effects. And the verdict is in, it doesn’t work. And we see that our governments, our bureaucracy, our culture, at large, doesn’t want to hear this message.

And we know they’re influential in the media, in the corporate boardroom, in the university. But they don’t have one thing. They don’t represent 51% of the people.

And crowds are now marching in Europe, in the United States. And the message is: What has worked in the past does not have to be perfect, as I said, it’s better than the alternative. And we’re gonna return to it. And we wish you would join us. But if you don’t wanna join us and you want to dismantle Western civilization, or you hate the United States, or you despise your particular European country, then you’re gonna be voted out of office, and you’re gonna have zero political power, as it should be.

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