Europe is not the sum of its parts

Europe is not the sum of its parts
By Spengler

Apropos of the debate over a European constitution, it should be
remembered that Europe did not arise as an agglomeration of nations.
On the contrary, Europe existed before any of its constituent
nations, and the unified Europe of Church and Empire created the
nations along with their languages and cultures. As individual
nations, Europe's constituent countries will die on the vine.

That, sadly, is the way things are headed. Europe's leaders on
Thursday announced another tilt at a European constitution, after the
rejection of a first draft in French and Dutch referenda in 2005. The
prospect of an all-powerful entity in Brussels, less accountable to
voters than national governments, continues to provoke sufficient
revulsion that the European summit eschewed the word "constitution"
in favor of the euphemism "institutional settlement".

Pope Benedict XVI raised hackles by insisting that the European
constitution make reference to the Christian heritage of the
continent, not only among European secularists, especially the
government of France, but also of course in Turkey, a Muslim country
that aspires to European Community (EC) membership. In fact, Benedict
could have put the matter even more forcefully. There is no reason
for Europeans to adopt a secular constitution. Absent the Christian
mission that created Europe, the destinies will diverge of the
European peoples, to the extent that no common policy will be
perceived as fair and just.

Hilaire Belloc's famous quip - "Europe is the faith, the faith is
Europe" - was precisely correct. Europe came into being before a
single Frenchmen or German was born, at the crowning of Charlemagne
as Holy Roman emperor in AD 800. Voltaire was only partly correct -
the Holy Roman Empire was neither Roman nor an empire, but it was
holy. European monarchs donned the robes of ancient Rome like small
children playing dress-up, and the power of their emperors was more
symbolic than real. But the unifying concept of Christendom is what
made it possible to create nations out of the detritus of Rome and
the rabble of invading barbarians.

Why do European nations exist in opposition to Europe? That fact, I
believe, is not a measure of Europe's political maturity but rather
of its decadence. The German language in its modern form was born at
the court of Emperor Charles IV at Prague, when Teutonic grammar was
standardized on the Latin mold. Dante Latinized his local Tuscan
dialect to create an "eloquent vulgate". The Catholic monarchs
imposed the Castilian language on the fractious Iberian tribes,
without complete success, as the survival of philological relics such
as Catalan and Galician makes clear.

Why is there a Germany, and not merely a Brandenburg, Bavaria,
Franconia, Swabia and Hanseatic League? Why is there a Spain, and not
merely a Navarra, Andalusia and Castile? It is because European
languages and European literature made possible a common discourse
within the great national divisions. Europe's common faith and the
institutions that supported it created this common culture as an
expedient for worship and administration. Europe is the faith, for
the faith gave birth to Europe.

Under Church and Empire the nations owed fealty to a higher power by
virtue of the authority of faith. Its common language was Latin, and
its ultimate authority was pope rather than emperor. The empire was
weak, but it was holy, as a series of German emperors discovered when
they attempted to substitute their own secular power for the ultimate
authority of faith. Henry IV stood bareheaded in the snow for three
days waiting for Pope Gregory VII to reverse his excommunication in
1077; the Staufen dynasty came to a terrible end after its prolonged
war with the papacy in the second half of the 13th century. Without
the faith, Europe's civil society could not exist, and a challenger
to the authority of faith, no matter how powerful, ultimately must fail.

Nationalism as an antipode to Empire did not effervesce from the
rising bourgeoisie, or develop out of Protestantism. It was the
invention of Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIII. As I
have reported elsewhere, [1] Richelieu for the first time proposed
that the welfare of Christendom could be represented in a single
European nation, whose particular interests thus defined the
interests of the Christian world. In that spirit Richelieu kept the
Thirty Years' War raging until half the population of central Europe
was dead.

Europe's nationalism of the 19th century was a response to France,
specifically to Richelieu's successor Napoleon Bonaparte. One can
trace the roots of nationalism to Romantic interest in the songs and
stories of the European peoples, to Johann Herder and Johann Fichte
and so forth - but it should be remembered that the "Romantics" took
their name from Rome. Their object was to renew the medieval Church.
When Napoleon invaded the rest of Europe with a mass popular army,
the other nations of Europe responded by creating mass armies. German
nationalism was born at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, when all
Germany stood on the same field for the first time since the Thirty
Years' War - but this time on grounds of sovereignty, not religion.

Ethnically defined nationalism led Europe into World Wars I and II,
from which it has not recovered, and from whose wounds it yet might
die. Europe's secular nationalism stands in contrast to popular
sovereignty on a Christian foundation in the United States - but it
was not just "the people", but what Abraham Lincoln called an "almost-
chosen people" that made this possible.

For reasons I have detailed elsewhere, I believe that the European
concept of universal empire was doomed to failure. [2] But I have
certain sympathy for those who defended it against Richelieu's
alternative. European is a tragedy in which all the protagonists
deserve a measure of sympathy, for they are all too human - in this
respect I have a sympathy for the human predicament of Muslims, as
well. In Hamlet or Wallenstein, one does not hiss at the villain and
cheer at the hero, but rather tries to strike the right balance of
empathy and detachment. I have no sympathy for Richelieu, but rather
a grudging admiration. His long duel with his Spanish counterpart,
the Count-Duke of Olivares, was the ultimate exercise in cunning
applied to modern statesmanship.

As secular entities, the nations of Europe will go their separate
ways to perdition. As their demographics shift, they will fall one by
one to Muslim majorities.

Even as a practical matter in the relative short term, a European
government cannot work. Consider a simple example: Only 15% of
Germany's population is at the age of household formation, and real
housing prices have fallen by 2% during the past 10 years. By
contrast, 23% of Ireland's population is at the age of household
formation, and real home prices have risen by about 15% in the past
10 years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. The OECD shows that there is a trend line across its
member states between these two variables. Demographics are
significant for home prices, although other factors are important.
Now, suppose the EC should consider subsidies to families with young
children to purchase homes. In effect it will tax Germans to support
Irishmen. Or suppose it should consider a wealth tax to support
pensions - in that case it


would tax the capital gains on the homes of Irishmen to support Germans.

The US constitution must deal with such regional problems
continuously, but they are easily solved through free movement of
people through the country. Even with mobility of labor it is much
harder for a German to become an Irishman than for a Hoosier to
become a Tar Heel (ie, move from Indiana to North Carolina).

To recapture Europe means re-creating the faith. It is hard to
imagine that the Roman Catholic Church might re-emerge as Europe's
defining institution. The European Church is enervated. But I do not
think that is the end of the matter. As I argued last month, Russia
has become the frontier between Europe and the Islamic world and,
unlike Europe, is not prepared to dissolve quietly into the ummah.
[3] Pope Benedict's recent pilgrimage to Turkey, it must be
remembered, only incidentally dealt with Catholic relations with
Islam; first of all it was a gesture to Orthodoxy in the form of a
visit to the former Byzantium, its spiritual home.

Franz Rosenzweig, that most Jewish connoisseur of Christianity,
believed that the Church of Peter (Rome) and the Church of Paul
(Protestantism) would yield place to the Church of John (Orthodoxy) -
that the churches of works and faith would be transcended by the
church of love. If Europe has a future, it lies in an ecumenical
alliance of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and at least some elements of
Anglicanism.

For the time being, Europe's constitution will be stillborn. But
Europe is not yet dead. Russia is the place to watch, and the quiet
conversation of Catholicism is the still, small voice to listen for.

Notes
1. The sacred heart of darkness, Asia Times Online, February 11, 2003.
2. Why Europe chooses extinction, ATol, April 8, 2003, and The Laach
Maria monster, ATol, June 1, 2005.
3. Russia's hudna with the Muslim world, ATol, February 21.

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