While Finland has already declared that it is not pursuing a NATO membership, Sweden still remains open to the idea. So long as the possibility remains open in the current international political climate, it undeservedly transplants the Ukrainian struggle for independence onto the Nordic scene.
Sven R. Larson —
The government-commissioned report is concerned about what it calls the “disappearance of the common systemic space.” But it identifies the problem without trying to find the multiple reasons for this space’s absence.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Thankfully, the authors of the European Economic and Financial System plan had the wisdom to include an executive summary. After all, there’s no way anyone’s going to read the whole thing. And we don’t have to read the whole thing because it’s obvious. As we all irresistibly jump on the bandwagon, we will learn that planned capitalism is the answer.
Todd Huizinga —
In politics, a term can have multiple meanings, to the point that, through rhetoric and semantic confusion, people can be convinced to assiduously pursue their own disempowerment.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
A single-payer system is nothing more than a promise of health care. If and when you actually get health care is a different matter, yet its American proponents continue to ignore this problem in Europe, fantasizing that it will not come to America.
Sven R. Larson —
Criminalizing the speech of half a billion people is a serious matter and those pushing for it must come up with something more convincing than ‘hate is hate.’ Enough is enough!
Paul Coleman —
In my experience, it was at the Masses that were less spectacularly arranged, externally less festive, where I sensed true Christian festivity. My favorite Mass is still the uninspiring Mass of the average Catholic parish.
Bridget Ryder —
The psychological games played by Ukraine’s abusive uncle are ruthless. He distorts the truth, and his lies create deep furrows. But, like all lies, they rest on shaky foundations.
Darina Rebro —
If the Partido Popular (PP) hopes to reconsolidate the Right and return it back under its centrally placed umbrella, it might be advised to follow the leads of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo.
Bridget Ryder —
When a myriad of local voices make the same complaint, we are in the presence of a genuine (as opposed to media generated) universal.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
New speech-restriction laws, whether national or at the EU level, would amplify a disturbing trend underway in Europe, where the right to free expression is gradually being replaced with a new legal default. What speech is not explicitly permitted, is banned.
Sven R. Larson —
Three important dates see out the month, each reminding us of heroism, martyrdom, and virtue: the anniversary of the murder of France’s Louis XVI in 1793 on January 21; the feast of Blessed Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor and King of France, on January 28; and the feast of Charles Stuart, King and Martyr on January 30.
Charles A. Coulombe —
Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as other countries like Greece, are the gatekeepers of Europe, protecting their neighbours from a destabilising foreign influx. Their governments continually face hard choices but are steadfast in their commitment. There can be no compromises with extortionists.
Daria Fedotova —
The euro itself is only part of the failure. An entire structure of government institutions, laws, and even constitutional provisions were erected around it in order to secure its success. It all looked impressive two decades ago; today, the structure itself, from the European Central Bank (ECB), to the so-called Stability and Growth Pact, is a package of sordid evidence that even under democratic governments, central economic planning is a bad idea.
Sven R. Larson —
The future does not belong to the champions of sterile sex and dumpsters filled with dead babies. Rather, it belongs to those who will fight for love, self-sacrifice, and the children of the next generation.
Jonathon Van Maren —
This year, celebrations of the taking of Granada have been repudiated by the establishment left, including a platform by the name of Granada Abierta, together with Podemos, who described them as an ode to cruelty and genocide. In contrast, VOX has called for the 2nd of January to be declared a national holiday.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
The distribution of votes among the various right-wing candidates resembles a game of communicating vessels. Marine Le Pen is ploughing her own furrow. Eric Zemmour puts ‘des mots sur des maux’ (words on evils): it is what he does best. He can participate in the reconfiguration of the French right. Will he go much further?
Hélène de Lauzun —
To suggest that the scientific community can reach irrefutable consensus on anything but basic conceptual and axiomatic structures of a scientific discipline is to dismiss the most sacred process of the scholarly endeavor itself: the peer review process. Nothing guarantees the integrity of scientific progress like the free practice of scholarly thought.
Sven R. Larson —
Catholics are surrounded by the upside-down chatter of ecclesiastical newspeak, and it is here to stay, that is, until a rediscovery that the Church derives her purpose from the Great Commission—the mandate to make disciples of all nations, and this cannot be substituted.
Sebastian Morello —
The CCP is little more than an international crime syndicate with political affectations. Knowing what is going on in China is dependent on sifting through their official lies, deflections, and ‘dezinformatsiya.’ The fact is, we just don’t know what unleashed monster they’re running from in Xi’an. All we know is that the CCP is lying about it.
Benjamin Harnwell —
For the uninitiated, ‘gendering’ is a new phenomenon in Woke High German. It means attaching a horribly out-of-place asterisk and the feminine ending of a word to the masculine noun. Woke High German leads to orthographic monstrosities like Verkäufer*in, Bürgermeister*innen, or even Studierende*r.
Mátyás Kohán —
High and rising inflation has put yet more pressure on the Turkish lira, but instead of making the hard choices to curb inflation, the response from President Erdogan’s government is likely to aggravate the situation.
Sven R. Larson —
Reporting on the link between palm oil and cancer is just one example of how the mainstream media avoids fair and balanced reporting, and squelches moderate voices. Some media, besides pushing an ideological agenda, try to make money by stirring up fear.
Pieter Cleppe —
I promised myself that I would ignore the global panic that has taken the world over (one might say it has ‘gone viral’) and substituted itself for every other known psycho-pathology. But the U-turn by the international commentariat was too much of a gift to satire to be missed.
James Bogle —
The common currency was a gigantic economic experiment, an application of political preferences rather than the product of sound scholarly research. As is always the case with grand government plans, for every problem they solve a new one is created.
Sven R. Larson —
Spanish political life will polarize around those offering policies that have straightforwardly led to present difficulties, and those whose program has promised to drastically reduce a state whose regional level is notoriously hypertrophic and reindustrializing the country. VOX is the most obviously poised to take advantage of this.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
The Pandemic shall mutate into oblivion sometime relatively soon. When it does, we will all be left with the aftermath. Wrecked economies, shuttered businesses, and life opportunities lost are only a small part of it all. Worse still are the questions that may be asked. When the rulership had us put on our masks, they took off theirs. The experience of the past two years make plain a reality only a few saw before: the modern citizen has only those rights his rulers deign to give him, and these may be taken away at any time. In a word, the myth of democracy is dead.
Charles A. Coulombe —
President Trump is no longer considered guilty of having caused the storming of the Capitol. He is now being accused of not having stopped it. This is not a shift in the nuance of the narrative regarding his role: it is a substantial retreat.
Sven R. Larson —
The strategy of the super-woke failson anticipates resistance by using terms and premises that the establishment cannot rebuff without rebuffing its own basis. He acts as real-world, unpaid HR department officer. This is a means for proving his ambition and ability to police discourse, that is, his managerial competence. At bare minimum, this provides an escape valve for the frustrated failson to take his anger out on culturally deprivileged groups (‘hicks,’ ‘deplorables’) while reinforcing hegemonic discourse.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
One of the fundamental laws of government powers is that they always invite mission-creep expansion. Laws that begin their lives as benevolent instruments for the common good can easily morph into tools of power for the sake of power itself. As the EU Commission finalizes its proposal for a Single Market Emergency Instrument, the citizens of the EU are well advised to keep themselves informed of that proposal.
Sven R. Larson —
What Augustine witnessed in his friend—that interior opposition between fidelity to the peace of Christ and addiction to violence—Joseph de Maistre presented at the societal level. Why was it that, prior to the arrival of Christianity, every culture practiced sacrifice, including human sacrifice? The reason, for Maistre, was that every society was seeking in nature what could only come by supernatural intervention.
Sebastian Morello —
The British economy has been largely unaffected by its exit from the European Union. That is not to say there will not be other repercussions; there is an ongoing debate about the future of the financial industry in London, with the implication that the British capital may lose its status as a global hub for the financial industry.
Sven R. Larson —
There are grave consequences from having a poor property rights ecosystem. Cuba is an example.
Giorgina Agostini —
The Right in France finds its birth in the original trauma of the French Revolution. It is on the side of those who lost, of a history that will never be written again. The French Revolution was also a period of intense persecution of the Catholic religion, and a painful synthesis took place in people’s minds: a fallen monarchy united to the martyred faith. The right-wing remained affixed to this double cause to defend.
Hélène de Lauzun —
With the case ‘Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,’ pro-life activists are holding their breath and daring to hope that a post-Roe America may be within reach.
Jonathon Van Maren —
Once countries with costly governments have created a Berlin Wall around their high-tax jurisdictions, they will be free to collude on other taxes beyond the corporate income tax. Personal income taxes, wealth taxes, death taxes… there is no end to the imagination of a government that does not have to worry about tax competition.
Sven R. Larson —
Central banks are recognizing that their own sustained monetary expansion has now awoken the sleeping giant of inflation. The goal now is to avoid trapping us in the same protracted inflation period we experienced 40 years ago.
Sven R. Larson —
Already before Boric takes office in March next year, there are troubling signs that he may lead his country far and fast down the same road that Venezuela took under Hugo Chavez.
Sven R. Larson —
Growing capital formation and a rising standard of living are irrefutable evidence of how the Hungarian government is successfully putting its conservative values to work. With a distinctly conservative welfare state, Mr. Orbán has led his country out of a demographic slump. Marriage and birth rates are up noticeably, which is precisely what the Hungarian government was aiming for.
Sven R. Larson —
Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, has just announced that he would put an end to the public subsidy previously granted to the branch of Institut d’Etudes Politiques located in Grenoble due to its “ideological and communitarian drift.”
Hélène de Lauzun —
How could an ‘innocent’ citizens’ initiative for democracy bring about powers of government that would pose any threat to our freedom? To answer this question, we first need to remember that freedom is not only lost to boots and bayonets. We can, actually, vote away our own freedom. By giving up our rights to government, small slices at a time, we can lose control over our lives just as definitively as if it happened through open oppression.
Sven R. Larson —
It seems that both the architects of the Brave New World and the serfs who live in it actually fear the state of nature found in the Rousseauian paradise. In fact, we have a profound aversion to nature. Rather than acting like animals, we feel a kind of queasiness not only when we witness the more animal-side of human life, but even when we witness animals acting like animals.
Sebastian Morello —
There is an ethical case to be made against vaccine mandates. It is far from straightforward, and it requires careful reasoning and methodical analysis. This conversation would be centered around the question about the role of government in our lives.
Sven R. Larson —
Until a few months ago, the French media believed that the presidential campaign would be a repeat of the 2017 campaign, with a second round that would pit Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen and end with the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. Today, nothing is written in stone, and the fundamentally unpredictable nature of political life gives us hope.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Nowadays, HR departments are focused on pursuing a ‘woke’ culture, dictating what staff can say or do or even think (or increasingly not), and introducing evidence-free, trendy but transient initiatives such as mandatory unconscious bias training, and ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’ courses.
Roger Watson, David Thompson —
In terms of ecology, conservatism is far from a nostalgic fixation. It can feed a profoundly human ecology, testify to a deep love of life, and help develop lasting attachments to a life shaped by the constant search for perfection and harmony.
Hélène de Lauzun —
The ‘classical liberal’ emphasis on negative freedoms tends to appeal to older conservatives, perhaps because they assume that what they grew up with was the spontaneous, neutral state of things, ever ready to mushroom forth again, just as soon as things return to normal. Yet sometimes, finding one’s home means building it, and that might take a village.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
As a sovereign country, Ukraine is in its full right to make whatever constitutional reforms it sees fit. Their right to independence is as strong as is Russia’s right to national security. If one is weighed against the other, national sovereignty always wins.
Sven R. Larson —
The European Commission’s promotional material makes ‘Next Generation EU’ comes across as oddly remote from the task of actually facilitating Europe’s next generation. Nor is it meant for a specialized audience, as it lacks any reference to how one might actually procure the product being advertised—namely, funding.
Carlos Perona Calvete —
We rarely learn from history; but we persistently repeat it.
Roger Watson —
The critiques of postliberals are all useful correctives in this regard. Nonetheless, conservative scholars—and perhaps even more so conservative politicians—must beware the potential perils of embracing postliberalism as a term and concept.
Kurt Hofer —
A reformed Ukraine could be the most dangerous development imaginable for those in Moscow who would like to keep things the way they are.
Pieter Cleppe —
The terrible incident of the Notre Dame fire should have been the occasion to renovate a church so damaged by the ravages of time, to make it even more beautiful. Instead, the sorcerer’s apprentices in charge of its destiny have preferred to indulge in their dreams of experimentation, as if a centuries-old cathedral were a creative laboratory subsidized by the Ministry of Culture.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Having managed the country with the sole aim of keeping her ‘clientelist’ system in power for as long as possible, Angela Merkel is disappearing from the political scene—just as the first cracks in the German ‘ship of state’ are beginning to show.
David Engels —
If the EC and ECJ are to have general power of competence, then the EU becomes not about the pooling of sovereignty but about the removal of sovereignty of the member states.
Krzysztof Mularczyk —
Bullying a part of the population into undergoing a certain medical procedure is a poor precedent, given the dystopian applications of the instrument that one can imagine.
Pieter Cleppe —
Like any great performer, Boris knows his audience. So when, last month, it came to his first in-person speech at a Tory Party conference as leader—it is not surprising that we heard little about the challenges facing the UK. Instead, we were left smiling at jokes about lockdowns accounting for the fall in reported crime or, better still, about the return of beavers to the British countryside—“Build back beavers”—and enough alliteration to keep a poet happy for months. Here was Boris promising nothing except that it would all be alright.
K.V. Turley —
Progressives believe that the right-wing populists must be destroyed. Not because populists are smashing norms; it is because they are, in many cases, defending the norms that progressives are busy dismantling.
Jonathon Van Maren —
A good chair can be ‘conservative’ because it speaks of ‘home’—the place that Roger Scruton said “defines us, that we hold in trust for our descendants, and that we don’t want to spoil.”
Fr. Benedict Kiely —
There are numerous instances of international organizations, such as the OECD and the WHO, not asking for—and in some cases even suppressing—input from those with different opinions. Is this “cancel culture” among multilaterals?
Pieter Cleppe —
While our current monetary system rests on national currencies and regulated banks, every new user of a cryptocurrency unlocks the potential of a system that cannot be overruled, made redundant, or inflated away. This is what scares monetary authorities the most.
Yaël Ossowski —
When people live in an ideological ‘echo chamber,’ it encourages them to become more intolerant of what other people think.
Pieter Cleppe —
We are a deeply superstitious people. Unfortunately, there are those who have taken full advantage of this over the past two years to effect massive economic- and power-shifts, none of which have been to the benefit of civil liberties, families, or small businesses.
Sebastian Morello —
A closer look at the ‘number three’ of the Islamic State—a man who grew up in Brussels and became the mastermind of the 2015-2016 terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Pieter Cleppe —
Despite the challenges it faces, the U.S. is still the best option to help maintain the age-old balance of national identity and power.
Michael O'Shea —
Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” With its new measures, Italy— and, for that matter, the many other European governments pursuing a similar path—is sacrificing a lot of liberty in exchange for hardly any extra safety.
Pieter Cleppe —
One easy way to cultivate the humility and sanity we need is to celebrate the upcoming festivals of the Autumn months rightly and well.
Charles A. Coulombe —
As the National Trust is essentially a conservative organisation, so too its membership largely comprises people with conservative instincts, that is, people who like long walks in the countryside, historic buildings, and fine art. It is astonishing, therefore, that the National Trust chose to go in a direction that, if continued, would lead to its suicide.
Sebastian Morello —
The EU puts little faith in the people of Europe; it prefers to oversee national policies—all for the common good, it argues—and to preach progressive values. It is a self-absorbed and overbearing organisation, drowning in red tape, one that costs billions to taxpayers across the continent.
Daria Fedotova —
When healthcare becomes a part of politics, directly gifted by the State, rather than associated with the State’s duties in an indirect way, it necessarily becomes part of the State’s governmental repertoire. This is a problem.
Sebastian Morello —
It takes a lot of trauma to invoke a historic naval defeat such as Trafalgar as a metaphor for a diplomatic reversal.
Paul du Quenoy —
When Pope Francis visited Hungary recently, he couldn’t leave fast enough. But the Hungarian Prime Minister used the occasion to remind the Pontiff that the defense of national borders is neither unprecedented nor “immature.”
Fr. Benedict Kiely —
Rats crawling under a Périphérique underpass at Porte de Bagnolet. Graffitied cement cubes serving as the bases for traffic lights from Place Victor Hugo to Boulevard de La Villette. Dirty, yellow-striped concrete guardrails—blocking off traffic or marking bicycle lanes—dropped casually on historic Parisian boulevards, from Rue Royale to Boulevard Saint-Michel to Gare du Nord. Paved […]
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet —
Unionism has long been a negative creed—it has defined itself by being opposed to things—while her opponents appear, by contrast, progressive and modern. To win hearts and minds, unionists need to make a positive case for the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But today Ulster’s unionists appear more disunited and demoralized than at any time in the last century.
K.V. Turley —
After years of chasing Islamic extremists, however, Western governments and their intelligence services, as well as the mainstream media, today seem to have broadened the scope of what they mean by “extremism” to encompass all ideologies, philosophies, and political movements that are somehow deemed “too dangerous” to exist. And these, according to them, are increasingly found on the Right.
Yaël Ossowski —
When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out, the WHO amazed many by brazenly prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party’s political interests over the health of the world’s population.
Benjamin Harnwell —
The manipulations of the Left are easy to avoid if one does not try to prove one’s virtue using social media.
Daria Fedotova —
There is no indication that David French has ever visited Hungary, but the idea that leading figures of an American political movement in which he no longer possesses even a crumb of influence or credibility feels affinity for that country clearly angers and frightens him.
Paul du Quenoy —
It seems obvious that Russia, as it is now, cannot be an ally of the West. Perhaps in the future the Ukrainian government will be able to rebuild proper relations with Russia while protecting its boundaries. But this currently seems doubtful.
Darina Rebro —
Conservatives and hippies would do well to recognise and foster the relationship that already exists between them. Strength in numbers and all that.
Sebastian Morello —
No amount of flag-wagging by uncouth or brutish xenophobes will reverse, or even oppose, the wilful undoing of an entire culture.
Anthony Daniels —
After ten years of war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and the mass displacement of millions of civilians, the Syrian people are desperate for peace and stability.
Fr. Benedict Kiely —
In a conservative analysis, employed to detect the presence of revolution, one must distinguish the revolutionaries from all others. Revolutions always mark the overthrowing of an established order in favour of a new system.
Sebastian Morello —
Today is a historic day, for it marks the re-launch of this website. It also marks the commencement of expanded activities, both online and in our new quarterly print edition, which aim to enhance the “media space” for conservatives in Europe and around the world. Our purpose is to serve as a platform for conservative […]
The Editors —
A tactical alliance between conservatives and unorthodox figures of the left makes sense.
Joseph Shaw —
A major dilemma in Europe has become more acute with the substantial increase of Muslim asylum seekers from impoverished or devastated countries.
Fr. Mario Alexis Portella —
The Western artistic tradition is exhausted, modernism being both a symptom and a cause of that exhaustion.
Anthony Daniels —
Mayor Anne Hidalgois currently engaged on a campaign to save the planet by making the streets of Paris hideous and increasingly unbearable.
Anthony Daniels —
Emotional decisions are rarely prudent. A statesman who allows himself to be swayed by momentary feelings, risks forgetting the interests of the country he represents.
Daria Fedotova —