Essays in Idleness

Because he is a “populist” (i.e. give the people the stuff they want, which includes parades, incidentally), Mr Trump does not, and possibly cannot, grasp the appeal of “sovereignty,” or its expression in nationalism. This has already cost him, politically, outside of the USA and the anti-American forces at home. It is why Greenland, Canada, and now Australia have been going farther over onto their dark side, and making ruinous alliances instead with Red China.

One could go into those cases individually, but in Mr Mark Carney we see it most unambiguously. For the new Canadian prime minister is notoriously as pro-Sinitic as he is anti-carbon, and is willing to make huge sacrifices at the expense of Canada in order to line the pockets of his masters in Peking, and caress the pleasures and pretensions of the World Economic Forum. Nor is he entirely dishonest; he really believes in selling out. He also acknowledges the hard-left principle of universal multiculturalism, over against both nationalism and populism. His Liberal Party is filled, too, with traitors of that sort.

In order not to be a traitor, or some other kind of criminal fool, one must be loyal to something. This should not be to something arbitrarily assigned, but rather to principles rationally and viscerally true. In particular, we should pursue a foreign policy that combines all the higher allegiances — as Canada and Australia once did — and in which a civilized population (if one can be made to exist) will find its best features represented.

This is why I recommend that the Summa Contra Gentiles should be the basis of our foreign policy — not, perhaps, exactly as it was written in the XIIIth century by Saint Thomas, but updated in the same spirit. It gives, without directly depending on Christian revelation, a comprehensive view of the world, and of what is wrong with all non-Christian viewpoints. Our collective approach to this world must be founded in a natural theology, and this Summa, in its first three books, safely guides us to what that should be.