The trend today in the West, on both the left and the right, is to join forces with our worst enemies by proclaiming that we are responsible for all the world’s misfortunes, that we must apologize for them and compensate the victims—or their descendants—for all our crimes.
No one can deny that the West has been colonialist and slave-owning, that it has plundered the resources of the rest of the world, that it is responsible for political regimes—Nazism and communism—that have perpetrated genocides, and for an economic system—capitalism—that destroys the environment.
But no one should deny either that, long before the West (and even today, alongside the West), almost all other civilizations were (and still are) colonialist and slave-owning, including those that later became victims of Western colonialism. Nor should anyone forget that all these civilizations have caused horrific religious wars, destroyed the environment, and committed genocides; and that even today, all the world’s civilizations use and refine the machines invented by the West to enable them, too, to exploit women, children, men, and nature.
This should at least lead Westerners to feel a little less self-loathing. And it should remind the world of a few obvious truths: the West has contributed enormously to humanity, which will refuse to acknowledge this if the West itself denies it.
Let’s start with a definition: the West is not limited to Christianity or Europe. It began in Asia Minor, in the Greek and Jewish worlds. From that moment on, it laid the foundations of an extraordinary civilization, which gradually—and single-handedly—established the rights of individuals to respect, justice, reason, the rule of law, the protection of the vulnerable, and the freedom to speak, think, doubt, write, create, and question established knowledge. The West also represents the development of machines that have been tremendously liberating for both women and men: the windmill, the printing press, the loom, the steam engine, electricity, cinema, radio, television, and household appliances. The West also represents the accumulation of a vast library of knowledge, which it is our responsibility to learn, enrich, and pass on: from Shakespeare to Tolstoy, from Cervantes to Goethe, from Pascal to Spinoza, from Boccaccio to Hume, from Dante to Dickens, from Jane Austen to Mary Shelley, from Virginia Woolf to James Joyce, from Montaigne to Schiller, from Racine to Dostoevsky. All of them are essential to the formation of the European spirit, which has become an integral part of humanity’s shared heritage. And while some of these creators were Christians, very few of them made faith the foundation of their thought.
Moreover, the West was shaped by music, which for a long time was compelled to be partly religious and thus produced immense masterpieces (from Hildegard of Bingen to Verdi), before moving away from that tradition as early as the 17th century with geniuses whose inspiration was no longer bound to refer to faith—from Marin Marais to Stravinsky and so many others. The same could be said of painting, sculpture, dance, photography, and cinema.
Moreover: without Europe, there would obviously be no United States or Australia as we know them today—nations born of genocidal conquests that went on to become the foundations of major civilizations. Nor would there be modern Japan, Korea, or China—all of which were built in imitation of the West, even as they seek to distance themselves from it.
This greatness of the West, which we must not allow to be taken from us, is particularly true of French culture and language, which are essential components of European culture.
It is appalling to see today’s pseudo-elites in French politics believe that they will be better heard because they use a vocabulary of only five hundred words, in an attempt to “come across as young”; it is lamentable to hear them also refuse to speak our language abroad. France no longer exists without its language. It is nothing without the culture that this language conveys. It is everything thanks to it. The French are nothing either without the thousands of words that make up their language and that shape the neural capacity and intelligence of its speakers.
Our passion for modernity, our fascination with social media, and the fleeting successes of passing artists must not make us forget that we are nothing in France without engaging with the works of Louise Labé, Molière, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, and Camus, who built this extraordinary national cathedral; that we must protect it, defend it, pass it on, and help it grow; nor must we forget that this is also in our material interest, since this is what foreigners are also buying when they consume French products or services. Finally, it is also our role to pass on the French language and culture to all those foreigners who come to live and work among us, so that they may become their own and those of their children: we must not let them believe that nothing of importance existed in France before they brought their vocabularies, their literature, their ways of thinking, their lifestyles, and their music here. We must not accept as a permanent resident in France—and even less so as a citizen—anyone who would fail to integrate into the national culture, even though they are welcome to contribute those aspects of their own culture that are compatible with our founding values. Drawing inspiration from others, yes. Forgetting oneself, no. Many civilizations have perished because they fell into this trap.