Globalism is Dead – Long Live Patriotism

Globalism is dead. It was on its way out since 2016, with the passage of the Brexit Referendum in the UK and the election of President Donald J. Trump in the US. However, the final nail in the coffin was the Wuhan Virus (COVID-19), the Coronavirus pandemic, also known as the “Chinese Virus” or #WuFlu. If the Wuhan Virus has taught us anything, it’s that open-boarders, the ideal of globalism, puts all the nations of the world into the very vulnerable position of a global plague. While closing the borders might not have stopped the spread of the Wuhan Virus, it most certainly would have slowed its progress, giving the West precious time to prepare. Globalism abhors this notion, insisting of free travel of all people across national boarders, regardless of plague and pandemic. There are many other problems with globalism as well, highlighted by the 2016 Brexit and Trump election, ranging from unrestrained migration, to exporting jobs into cheaper markets where labor is more easily exploited. The quality of food products is a constant problem as well. Then we have the loss of national identity in Europe, the fall of Christendom and the rise of Islamic Europe (Europistan), where violent crime has become a way of life and Europeans feel like strangers on their own continent. In summary, globalism is a colossal failure of epic proportions. It simply doesn’t work, and it’s destroying peoples and nations in the process. Of course, that doesn’t stop the globalists, who insist that the solution to globalism’s failures is simply more globalism.

The English words “patriot” and “patriotism” derive from the Latin word patriam, meaning “fatherland” which is derived from the Latin word pater for “father.” It generally has a positive connotation attached to it, as opposed to “nationalism,” which while meaning basically the same thing, often has a negative connotation attached to it. That’s mainly because of the excesses of nationalism in the early 20th century, leading to two world wars. Though we could point out that nationalism wasn’t really the cause at all, but rather nationalistic aspirations toward globalism. Regardless, the word patriotism has a nice ring to it, and it’s one Americans are very fond of. The Latin origin of the word brings us into a more traditional mindset. In today’s world, tradition is something we are sorely in need of anyway.

In the third decade of the third millennium (2020s) globalism will be replaced with patriotism. It must be. It has to be. Or we will all perish. Globalism as wrought nothing but misery upon the European people, as well as Americans, on the backs of the poor in developing nations. They are nothing more than cheap labor for a globalist cause that does little more than destroy the developed nations, once the goals of globalism are realized. Globalism is nothing short of a cancer that is eating our world alive. It must be eradicated, and its proponents must be stopped.

The Wuhan Virus is our wake-up call. The principles of globalism are what turned a pandemic into a planetary catastrophe. There can be no more open-boarders. Total dependency on other nations for vital resources can no longer be an option for the United States or any other free nation. We must care for ourselves now, as we once did before, so we must do again. Americans cannot rely on China for cheap goods, because cheap goods rely on cheap labor, and that is exploitation of the poor at the expense of American jobs. The same goes for Europe, but for Europe it’s far more than trade. It’s also about national identity. They’re losing it — fast! If anything good comes out of the Wuhan Virus, it will be the death of globalism and open boarders. The best thing that could happen to Americans and Europeans is the rediscovery of patriotism — love for the fatherland.

Patriotism is a Catholic virtue. It’s considered a good thing, according to Catholic teaching. Most people would never know that, listening to many Catholic leaders today, many of whom are globalists at heart. But that doesn’t change Catholic teaching on the matter…

Patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love…I believe that the same could be said of every country and every nation in Europe and throughout the world.

The cultural and historical identity of any society is preserved and nourished by all that is contained within this concept of nation. Clearly, one thing must be avoided at all costs: the risk of allowing the essential function of the nation to lead to an unhealthy nationalism.

Whereas nationalism involves recognizing and pursuing the good of one’s own nation alone, without regard for the rights of others, patriotism, on the other hand, is a love for one’s native land that accords rights to all other nations equal to those claimed for one’s own. Patriotism, in other words, leads to a properly ordered social love.

— Pope Saint John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 65-67

This Saint who walked among us, not long ago, valued patriotism as a virtue, but he contrasted it with his understanding of nationalism. To him, the difference between the two was simply love, condensed to the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them to unto you” (Matthew 7:12). When people love their country while following this rule, they are patriotic. When people ignore this rule, they become nationalist. St. John Paul II was not alone, his successor to the Chair of Saint Peter likewise had something to say about this…

In response to the divisive nationalism and the hegemonic ideologies that had given the old hostilities a radical form in the Second World War, it was intended that the common cultural, moral, and religious inheritance of Europe should shape the awareness of its nations. This common identity… was to open up a path to peace, a path into the future that all could take together. The search was for a European identity that would not extinguish or deny the individual national identities but would bind them together in a higher fellowship to form one single community of peoples.

— Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval, 152

Pope Benedict XVI outlined the path forward for patriotism in the 21st century. The horrors of the 20th century came from the foolishness of the 18th and 19th centuries, wherein Christendom was abandoned in favor of secular humanism, which of course led to globalism. The abandonment of Christianity, for a more humanist, public piety (the worship of mankind) stripped Europeans of their very identity, and caused them to revert to a more primitive kind of mindset that manifested itself in nationalism, or the love of “my country at the expense of yours.” The valuation of other countries and cultures was lost in the feverish zeal to build up one’s own. Nationalism, particularly the bad kind, is the natural human response to the push of globalism. It’s a simple action-reaction relationship. One is the causation of the other. Unfortunately, people often get it backwards. Globalism is not the well-reasoned and level-headed response to nationalism, as some make it out to be. On the contrary, nationalism is nothing more than the knee-jerk reaction to globalism. If you want to make a country of nationalists, it’s really very simple. Just push globalism upon them against their will. Then watch them react with nationalism. This has been going on in Europe for years, and to a smaller degree, one also sees it in the United States.

The solution, as Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, is the search for a common identity in Jesus Christ. Christendom becomes the “glue” that holds nations together while keeping them apart. It allows nations to exercise their sovereignty without doing so at the expense of others. Within Christendom, nationalism becomes patriotism once again.

There is only one global order that actually works, and that is one under Jesus Christ, otherwise known as Christendom, wherein nations are recognized as sovereign and free, able to determine their own destiny, but in doing so, they voluntarily consider the needs of others too.

The United States, though technically a secular republic, occasionally has bursts of authentic patriotism, wherein we Americans show profound love for our own country while caring for the needs of others. That’s because the American people still have some remnants of old-fashioned Christian beliefs, wherein one can find a shell of Christendom. Because you see, in order for Christendom to work, enough people have to actually believe in Christianity.

The lie of the Enlightenment Period, the period in which the United States and Western Europe was born, proposes that man alone is enough to solve his own problems, and that God operates as a mere watchmaker, having wound up the universe in the primordial past, letting it tick-tock on its own without much intervention. This is Deism not Christianity. From this humanity-vanity came the lie of the Industrial Revolution, the period in which the Soviet Union and Socialism was born, which proposes that man alone is divine and thus government is the Supreme Being. This is militant Atheism not Christianity or Deism. All of this was trending toward a New World Order, a world order without Christendom, which arrived in 1945 following the Second World War, and has been with us ever since. The conspiracy theorists who warn us of a global takeover, a one world government, seeking to dominate us all, have missed a very important detail. The New World Order is already here. These conspiracy theorist can’t see it because they’re living in the middle of it, and it’s been “hiding” in plain sight all along, The New World Order is nothing more than the post World War settlement, the formation of the United Nations, and the rise of the European Union, trading blocks, open borders and globalism.

Thus Christendom gradually gave way to globalism over the course of 200 years, and globalism gave us nationalist reactionaries in the early last century on into today. That gave us two world wars, and now here we are, dealing with a global plague that is crippling every national economy around the world, even to the point of burying the Church underground by banning all public celebrations of Holy Mass (the topic of my next essay). My point here is that this whole process has been going on for a very, very, long time, leading us gradually to this very point, and this very question. What shall we do now?

The path before us diverges three ways…

1. We can continue on the path of godless secularism, atheism and globalism. But after the Wuhan Virus it seems there is nothing left down this path but disease, economic strife, social breakdown and ultimately, barbarism.
2. We can react to globalism with mindless nationalism in a knee-jerk reaction that will ultimately lead us to another world war.
3. We can reject both globalism and nationalism for patriotism which is love of our fatherland couched in Christianity, love for others, working toward the restoration of Christendom.

To me, it seems the choice is clear. We must choose the third path, and re-learn how to love our fatherland (patriam) within the context of the Christian gospel and the social Kingship of Jesus Christ. The only global order that can ever work is one based on the gospel of Jesus Christ, which guarantees our human rights, national sovereignty, and self determination. Globalism is dead. It’s just that a lot of people don’t realize it yet. What replaces it is the only thing that matters now.

Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church through Anglicanism. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com