Matt Davis

Want to know what American conservatism/exceptionalism conserved? Look no further than where it never existed but the New Right has: Europe. The European right got the deal today’s postliberals want. Christian Democrats ruled Italy, West Germany, and Austria for decades. Franco held Spain for 36 years, Salazar’s regime held Portugal for 4 decades, and Ireland wrote the Church into its constitution. Faith and family had the state behind them. They conserved a Western Europe that is now among the least religious places on earth. The lowest birthrates on the continent sit in the countries with the deepest Catholic politics. Spain, 4 decades of National Catholicism later, has the 2nd lowest birthrate in the EU. Italy’s Christian Democrats governed for nearly 50 years and left behind a pension state. The family wage they promised never arrived. Give the state the job of protecting faith and family and they get protected for exactly as long as it pays politically to protect them. American conservatives created a jurisdictional guardian instead. The Founders barred Washington from establishing a national church, so faith never answered to whoever held federal power. Divide power, protect property, keep markets open, and leave churches, families and states to run their own affairs. Reaganism revived it. That order also built the largest economy and strongest military on earth, in a country where people still go to church. What exactly makes the European record a reason to abandon those principles? The New Right judges American conservatism by its failures and Europe’s alternatives by their promises, then calls importing them “America First.”