The strong gods are back. This is the message from the distinguished American think tank analyst and commentator N S Lyons (a nom de plume) in his latest article on Substack called “The Upheaval”. It is attracting attention because it captures the mood.
It’s hard to do proper justice to his argument in one column. Read it yourself. But, in brief, he argues that, after the Second World War, Western governing classes convinced themselves that conflict and war were caused by the “closed society”: that is, a society in which “strong gods”, strong beliefs and moral codes, strong identities, strong connections to history, place and nation, dominated political life.
And so the project of post-war liberalism became to tear down the walls of that closed society. They presented a choice of looking forward to the open society or back to Hitler. And if that really was the choice, only one direction was possible.
Hence what has happened since: secularisation and the public denigration of Christianity; the sexual revolution, LGBTQI+ rights; free movement and immigration; the rubbishing of Western countries’ history and culture and ultimately the trans obsession – all accomplished via a managerial bureaucratic state which aimed at taking the politics out of politics and managing opinion within acceptable limits.
This endless debunking of every kind of loyalty and norm meant that eventually the only acceptable political goal for most Western states became not the national interest or self-preservation but “a vague universal humanitarianism”.
So far, so familiar, at least in part, to readers of this column. But Lyons goes on to claim that now there is a reaction across the West.
People can see the open society is not enough. A society also needs the strong gods of communal bonds, common identity, common purpose, loyalty, duty, courage, and heroes and leadership. Yes, those things can have a dark side, but they also provide the energy to build societies and make things happen.
This reaction, argues Lyons, is what is behind much of the so-called populist wave. He sees Donald Trump as the turning-point figure in this new world, a man who “horrifies the ageing aristocracy of the long 20th century”, who “fear the return of the strong gods, which their whole project was conducted to preclude”.
I think Lyons is on to something. There is a mood shift. Voters want action and change. There is frustration with a politics in which the country’s national interest seems to come last and everything is too difficult. Trump is certainly breaking that mould in his first month in office. He made it clear what he would do and he is doing it.
That is true on Ukraine too, as we have seen this week. Of course Trump is mistaken to describe Zelensky as a dictator or to suggest that Ukraine started the war. But the horrified reaction to his words, while justified as far as it goes, misses the point.
Trump won the election, in part, with a promise to end the war. Perhaps some of his reasons are a bit murky, but others are wholly justifiable, above all the wish to focus on containing China. This is a task for which America bears near-sole responsibility, and to which Europeans will of course make no contribution whatsoever. So we should see in Trump’s words a crude message to Ukraine: “Do a deal now, the terms won’t get any better, and the Europeans won’t help you.” It’s realist international politics at its most brutal.
You can perfectly well think, as I do, that Ukraine is in the moral right and has suffered a great wrong. You can very much regret, as I do, that Putin seems likely to get something out of his aggression if a ceasefire does come soon.
You can think all of those things while also believing that the best outcome now is to end the war on the best available terms, to stop the killing, to get our own military house properly in order, and above all to remove the risk of escalation and nuclear confrontation about which many people have seemed remarkably casual.
The European alternative, which appears to be to insist the Americans continue to support the war until Ukraine is ready to settle or Russia collapses, is not a real alternative, because the Americans don’t want to do it, and because the Europeans have no power to fill the gap.
And that’s the core of the problem. Europe has no power because its societies, by and large, don’t think military power is important and very often don’t even think the nation is worth defending.
European elites are engaged in reality-avoidance, as the hysterical pearl-clutching reaction to J D Vance’s speech at the Munich smugfest last Friday demonstrates. They prefer posturing about principles from the moral high ground, an activity that is easy when you have such limited real power and don’t have to bear the consequences of the positions you take. Indeed one suspects that many Europeans will secretly be quite happy with an unsatisfactory ceasefire: they can blame the Americans in public while feeling private relief at getting back to spending on butter not guns and opening the Russian gas taps.
This is not serious. If we Europeans want the power to influence world politics in future, we need to bring back the strong gods ourselves.
With luck, that is beginning to happen. The return of national conservatism across Europe, the revival of movements to control borders, to restrict migration, and to rebuild the sinews of power, for example by abandoning the deranged net zero policy, is a positive sign.
Indeed it is essential. There is no point in spending on the military if no one will join it or if no one thinks the country is worth defending in the first place.
However much modern progressives like to compare Trump to the Nazis, the choice between the open society and Hitler is fake.
The correct way forward is to acknowledge openly that culture, identity, and national pride and cohesion all matter just as much to a successful country as non-discrimination, protection of the weak and openness to others’ ideas. Western civilisation has been built on all of these things. And civilisational confidence is crucial. Unless we can bring it back soon in Europe, we may find we don’t have anything worth defending.
The strong gods are back. This is the message from the distinguished American think tank analyst and commentator N S Lyons (a nom de plume) in his latest article on Substack called “The Upheaval”. It is attracting attention because it captures the mood.
It’s hard to do proper justice to his argument in one column. Read it yourself. But, in brief, he argues that, after the Second World War, Western governing classes convinced themselves that conflict and war were caused by the “closed society”: that is, a society in which “strong gods”, strong beliefs and moral codes, strong identities, strong connections to history, place and nation, dominated political life.
And so the project of post-war liberalism became to tear down the walls of that closed society. They presented a choice of looking forward to the open society or back to Hitler. And if that really was the choice, only one direction was possible.
Hence what has happened since: secularisation and the public denigration of Christianity; the sexual revolution, LGBTQI+ rights; free movement and immigration; the rubbishing of Western countries’ history and culture and ultimately the trans obsession – all accomplished via a managerial bureaucratic state which aimed at taking the politics out of politics and managing opinion within acceptable limits.
This endless debunking of every kind of loyalty and norm meant that eventually the only acceptable political goal for most Western states became not the national interest or self-preservation but “a vague universal humanitarianism”.
So far, so familiar, at least in part, to readers of this column. But Lyons goes on to claim that now there is a reaction across the West.
People can see the open society is not enough. A society also needs the strong gods of communal bonds, common identity, common purpose, loyalty, duty, courage, and heroes and leadership. Yes, those things can have a dark side, but they also provide the energy to build societies and make things happen.
This reaction, argues Lyons, is what is behind much of the so-called populist wave. He sees Donald Trump as the turning-point figure in this new world, a man who “horrifies the ageing aristocracy of the long 20th century”, who “fear the return of the strong gods, which their whole project was conducted to preclude”.
I think Lyons is on to something. There is a mood shift. Voters want action and change. There is frustration with a politics in which the country’s national interest seems to come last and everything is too difficult. Trump is certainly breaking that mould in his first month in office. He made it clear what he would do and he is doing it.
That is true on Ukraine too, as we have seen this week. Of course Trump is mistaken to describe Zelensky as a dictator or to suggest that Ukraine started the war. But the horrified reaction to his words, while justified as far as it goes, misses the point.
Trump won the election, in part, with a promise to end the war. Perhaps some of his reasons are a bit murky, but others are wholly justifiable, above all the wish to focus on containing China. This is a task for which America bears near-sole responsibility, and to which Europeans will of course make no contribution whatsoever. So we should see in Trump’s words a crude message to Ukraine: “Do a deal now, the terms won’t get any better, and the Europeans won’t help you.” It’s realist international politics at its most brutal.
You can perfectly well think, as I do, that Ukraine is in the moral right and has suffered a great wrong. You can very much regret, as I do, that Putin seems likely to get something out of his aggression if a ceasefire does come soon.
You can think all of those things while also believing that the best outcome now is to end the war on the best available terms, to stop the killing, to get our own military house properly in order, and above all to remove the risk of escalation and nuclear confrontation about which many people have seemed remarkably casual.
The European alternative, which appears to be to insist the Americans continue to support the war until Ukraine is ready to settle or Russia collapses, is not a real alternative, because the Americans don’t want to do it, and because the Europeans have no power to fill the gap.
And that’s the core of the problem. Europe has no power because its societies, by and large, don’t think military power is important and very often don’t even think the nation is worth defending.
European elites are engaged in reality-avoidance, as the hysterical pearl-clutching reaction to J D Vance’s speech at the Munich smugfest last Friday demonstrates. They prefer posturing about principles from the moral high ground, an activity that is easy when you have such limited real power and don’t have to bear the consequences of the positions you take. Indeed one suspects that many Europeans will secretly be quite happy with an unsatisfactory ceasefire: they can blame the Americans in public while feeling private relief at getting back to spending on butter not guns and opening the Russian gas taps.
This is not serious. If we Europeans want the power to influence world politics in future, we need to bring back the strong gods ourselves.
With luck, that is beginning to happen. The return of national conservatism across Europe, the revival of movements to control borders, to restrict migration, and to rebuild the sinews of power, for example by abandoning the deranged net zero policy, is a positive sign.
Indeed it is essential. There is no point in spending on the military if no one will join it or if no one thinks the country is worth defending in the first place.
However much modern progressives like to compare Trump to the Nazis, the choice between the open society and Hitler is fake.
The correct way forward is to acknowledge openly that culture, identity, and national pride and cohesion all matter just as much to a successful country as non-discrimination, protection of the weak and openness to others’ ideas. Western civilisation has been built on all of these things. And civilisational confidence is crucial. Unless we can bring it back soon in Europe, we may find we don’t have anything worth defending.