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Diana West has written a book on America’s declining culture. Much of the book is taken up with the question of who is responsible? Did this happen because of a lack of vigilance? In that case, vigilance against whom? Among the many named enemies, Diana West sees a threat from globalism. Think of all those things having to do with the well-being of “the planet” or “humankind.” That is globalism, an ideology built up over the last century by liberals and communists. According to Diana West, the antidote to globalism is America First, led by Donald Trump.
By design, globalism ramps up concern for “the planet” at the expense of America. Globalism is about things that are supposedly good for the planet and bad for America. In fact, globalists frame many issues in a way that makes America sound like the worst country on earth. We consume too much, we contribute to global warming, and we are racist. The subtext might be that the world would be better off if America ceased to exist.
It is only natural that America’s enemies support globalism, since a great deal of guilt can be placed on the world’s leading nation for the world’s problems. Guilt is here used to blame America, or to place it under a backbreaking load of obligations. If globalist-guilting hijacks the culture, then Americans who care about America are the guiltiest of all. They are all enemies of “the planet.” They are also “thought criminals” in George Orwell’s sense of the term (see his novel, 1984).
Globalism naturally aligns with the communists and America-haters. These people do not favor freedom and are opposed to traditional American values. In terms of journalism, Diana West shows us a disconcerting series of events and stories, tragedies and injustices, set on by those who favor “the planet” over America. The people who want America to have an “open border,” who fear global warming, who think America is a racist country, who love socialism and hate Donald Trump, are destroying the American way of life. This destruction is intentional.
Diana West presents example after example of the damage done to innocent Americans. She shows there is a real threat here. She also shows that America’s own Establishment is largely behind the globalist agenda.
But why?
The answer is obvious. Globalists think they are saving the planet by opposing America; but as West shows, the globalists are dishonest and corrupt. They are also stupid; for if you get rid of America you will not have a better world. If America sank beneath the ocean, like Atlantis, China and Russia would be dominant. Look at the misery and oppression in Russia and China. Is this preferable to the American way? Being self-righteously responsible to a non-entity (i.e., the planet or humanity), globalist morality rings hollow. In its systematic zealotry, with all the particulars laid out, globalism does not help “the planet.” It is an excuse for political criminality.
America’s leaders should be for America. What kind of swindle is it when Americans hurt their own country? Think of children whose fathers put other children first. What happens to such children. Do they, in effect, become orphans? Of course they do, because a father who puts other people’s children first has effectively abandoned his own children. In reference to this idea, West asks a series of questions: “Is it not the most natural thing in the world for a politician to put his country first? How did such a world come to be?”
Donald Trump saw that America had been orphaned by its own leaders. Naturally, he hit on the idea of “America First” during an interview. According to West, “a thousand screeching headlines were born about ‘noxious,’ ‘isolationist,’ ‘defeatist,’ ‘anti-semitic,’ ‘pro-Nazi,’ America First.” But the American voters liked it. Trump won the 2016 presidential election. There was, indeed, a growing sense that the American people had been orphaned by their political fathers.
In old Rome the senators were addressed as “conscript fathers” or, in Latin, patres conscripti. Patres is related to the English word “patriotism.” It signifies devotion and support for one’s country. If the patres conscripti of America do not guard American interests, then who will look after those interests? If such fathers are globalists, worried about the planet, what will become of the American people? Trump was the antidote to this. According to West, “Trump’s convention-defying course of action was to double down on ‘America First,’ trumpeting his new slogan at campaign rallies. A few weeks later, in his first formal foreign policy address, he announced that ‘America First’ would be his guiding policy as president.”
There is, of course, another unhappy angle to all this that Diana West explores. Those who would “save the planet” are responsible to no one; for global humanity is a bloated nothing (to loosely paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard’s theme in The Present Age). It is neither a real person nor a conscious being. This misguided planetary (or globalist) idealism, in Kierkegaard’s sense, is dangerous because it involves the most respectable of all diseases: “to admire in public what is considered unimportant in private – since everything is made into a joke.” One analogue might be: A globalist liberal who cares so deeply about “the children” of the world yet has pedophilic art in his house.
The theme, for Diana West, is clear. American leaders should be accountable to the American people. The proper patriotism of an American is not planetary patriotism. It is American patriotism. Globalists are annoyed by American patriotism, to be sure. They want to phase out the nation state. After all, nationalism causes wars and borders are inherently racist. But then, without a country that people can identify with, how will society be defended? Can the European Union defend Europe? Who is ready to lay down his life for the European Union? Since when has there been such a thing as “European patriotism”? Such conglomerates as the EU are too large, too detached, too abstract. People will not fight for conglomerates. How is Europe defended, then? The national armies of NATO’s members.
West believes we are extremely far along on “the continuum between nation-state and global-system-region.” The most revolutionary thing Donald Trump advocates, according to West, was explained by Trump, who vowed that, “We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false Gods of globalism. The nation state remains the true foundation of happiness and harmony.”
Humans are born into specific ethnic groups, speaking the language of their tribe. To erase the tribe, or mix those tribes indiscriminately together, puts a country at risk for civil war. Globalists, then, are people who want to erase borders and destroy (especially) the most powerful tribe on the planet. And that tribe is America. It is shameful that we have forgotten these small truths, which have been kicked aside in favor of grandiose global ideals. It is in this context that West lays out the importance of Donald Trump.
As Diana West has elsewhere explained, we have not come to terms with the legacy of the Second World War. And we have not properly understood the Cold War. It should be no surprise that we are in a difficult situation today, with riots in California where the multicultural experiment has reached an advanced state. We have given priority, wrote West, to global interests rather than American interests. The result has been an erosion of American culture. The entire professional class of politicians, journalists, and academics think that American interests are one and the same as global interests. In a sense, we have been infiltrated by globalism even more than we have been infiltrated by communism. And here we find double trouble. According to West,
“When we couple this globalist infiltration and influence with the fact that the nation-state and its sovereignty, particularly our nation-state and our sovereignty, are the greatest obstacles to the continued spread of Marxism-Leninism and its multitudinous offshoots, it seems logical to study, to wonder about, the impact of the ideological war waged by Marxists on the American mindset.”
Diana West’s book, Wake Up and Smell the Culture, contains essential insights for our time. But more than that, West raises questions most writers are afraid to touch. She even repeats questions terrifying for the mainstream media – like Susan Sandler’s disturbing email to John Podesta where we read the most curious paragraph of the 2016 election season: “The realtor found a handkerchief. I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yours?”
West is fearless when presenting the niggling questions of yesteryear. Those who write about current events have an obligation to confront corrupt and wicked leaders. Otherwise, how will we keep our freedom? West reminds us that radical transparency “was once journalism’s ideal,” just as America First used to be common sense.