The war against the West, and its defender

None of this is compatible with a free society. It is more redolent of totalitarianism under Stalin, Mao or in 17th century Salem. And so Britain currently has no political leader who will meet the epic challenge of defending western civilisation.

It is in this most shocking and baleful context that we should view President Trump’s July 4 Mount Rushmore speech and the reaction to it. The speech, which you can read in full here, was a magnificent statement by an American patriot who has now firmly planted his standard as the defender of his country’s culture against the ferocious attempt to destroy it from within.

In words which displayed deep emotion, he showed how deeply he appreciated both the importance of American cultural and political values and the unprecedented attempt now under way to destroy them.

The vitriol hurled at this speech from the left proved exactly his point. Los Angeles Times: “Trump uses Fourth of July celebration to stoke a culture war”; New York Times: “Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message”; Washington Post: “At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day”.

As the Wall Street Journal observed in a fine editorial, there was absolutely nothing divisive or dark about this speech. Instead, it extolled what is fine and good about America…

I still believe as I did in November 2016 that if he were to lose the presidential election to the Democratic party, America and the west would be lost. The slim chance of their surviving this great crisis for civilisation would be snuffed out altogether if the morally bankrupt and venomously west-bashing left were to come to power in America. I also thought the west was now in such disarray, and the political and cultural establishment was so uniformly bankrupt, that it was only an individual defying conventional rules of behaviour who – paradoxically – would stand any chance of restoring America’s centre of moral and political gravity.  And I believe all that even more strongly now.