While recently reading G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics, I came across a chapter that he wrote against the famed English writer Rudyard Kipling. While the chapter contained many bits of wisdom and insight, as is usual for any work by Chesterton, there was a passage that stuck out. Chesterton writes that “He [Kipling] knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice. He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place.” I was a bit perplexed after reading this about whether Chesterton was writing against Kipling or Emmanuel Macron. Alas, there is a great bit of wisdom in this seemingly esoteric passage that is easily applicable to our present-age politics and the machinations of many in the Western security apparatus. 

The first problem is the idea that we know things. Socrates, that great philosopher of yore, famously quipped in his apology before the Athenaian government that he was wise because he knew what he did not know. However, in the modern age of looking things up with a sprightly ease and in an age filled even more so with arrogance and smugness, we hesitate to say we do not know something. We are a society of idiots and experts at the same time. Yet, that is beside the point. What does it mean to know? To know something is to know it more than nominally or at its superficial existence. In his writing on division, the medieval philosopher Boethius talks of various ways of dividing something to learn what it is. A book is not just a word, but a collection of words written by someone in order to tell some kind of story. Likewise, England is not just England nor Venice, just Venice. These are not just places on a map, but the result of a culmination of architecture, art, and a religion erecting a civilization. In modernity, we struggle with the same problem as Kipling. We do not see a nation as something that is a result of these things, but as a mere geographical location on a map, which may or may not be allied to us or may or may not be in our interest to interact with. This is the story of the Western failures in the Middle East over the past few decades. This is the story of American influence in South America or Russian influence in Ukraine. These are not merely places on a map, but people who are not merely citizens of the world, but of a nation which has been forged in the sweat and blood of their forefathers.

Then comes the fact that we have been to a place, which somehow makes us an expert on it. This was the American idea about the Middle East. We had been in the Middle East long enough taking their oil, so we surely knew what was best for them in terms of governance. Russia had occupied Ukraine long enough as a soviet socialist republic, so they certainly know how to govern Ukraine better than the Ukranians do. This is a byproduct of the liberal globalism that dominated foreign policy for centuries. This part of the liberal notion that we are all basically the same and that to know London is to know Kowloon. However, we are not all the same, but rather different. That is a good thing. Yet, the liberal globalist will scoff to find such things out. I cannot help but recall Bill Buckley’s line when he said “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Globalists claim to support cultural diversity and then are surprised to find that there is diversity.

The final passage of Chesterton’s quote is perhaps the most intriguing. The globalist does not belong to any place, but the world. During the 2017 French Presidential election, Emmanuel Macron said this during a rally, “French culture doesn’t exist in and of itself; there is no such thing as a single French culture. There is culture in France and it is diverse.” This is the most pure elocution of the globalist ethos. There are not cultures, but that of diversity. It may seem that I am contradicting my claims by formerly stating that diversity is good and now stating it is bad. Diversity of cultures is good, but diversity as culture is asinine. It is a wonderful thing to have French culture and Indian culture, but French culture is not synonymous with Indian culture; they are distinct and unique in and of themselves. When a culture consists in having elements of all other cultures, it ceases to be unique and is just the same as others. The last part of Chetserton’s line is that Kipling mistakenly thought of England as just a place. This is the problem of modernity. We do not see the metaphysical and spiritual realities behind things. It was not a big deal to the globalists after World War II when they gladly participated in international gerrymandering and created countries, such as Yugoslavia and re-created the failed nation of Czechoslovakia. These countries were not seen as different groups of people, but just a swath of land in Europe. Likewise, who cares if the Palestinians have to be relocated to Egypt or other various Arab countries? They’re just people and the West Bank is just land. But, people are more than just people, they are rational animals, as Boethius’ division would have it. Furthermore, the land on which they reside is more than just land. It may be solely material to the globalist, but to the normal citizen, it is the land of their ancestors; it is Eden. Let us not forget that patriotic ditty we all learned as children: “My country, ’tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride…” Have we forgotten that other people’s fathers also died on their land? The answer is that some in the upper echelons of Western government have.

The answer to this globalist malaise is a return to truly conservative values. I am not merely talking about our modern conception of conservatism, but a deeper conservatism that has Edmund Burke as a grandfather and Chateaubriand as an uncle. We must take up the Burkean mantle and defend various cultures in their entire uniqueness. We must look back to the most rudimentary elements of our humanity and remember the words of Genesis 1:27 “And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.” We are all created in the image and likeness of God, but we are all different, both on an individual and cultural level. The true answer to this madness is to recognize the root of our shared identity in God and then delight in our divers differences.