The State Department raised some eyebrows when it
launched a Substack last month. Its latest Substack essay highlighting both the importance of renewing Western civilization and the failure of global liberalism might be enough to give liberal establishmentarians ulcers and national conservatives butterflies.
Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford said of the recent essay, “To put it simply, the Department of State has been ground zero for undermining Western values and putting American interests last. This turnaround is just incredible to see, and it’s not getting the attention it deserves.”
President Donald Trump has set about bringing the
“golden age of America” into existence. While Trump’s is a U.S.-focused endeavor, his administration appears to be simultaneously working on the renewal and strengthening of Western civilization, broadly understood.
‘Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty.’
Vice President JD Vance, for instance, made abundantly clear in his controversial
February speech to America’s allies at the Munich Security Conference in Europe that it is high time to “change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction.”
While prioritizing the interests of America at home and abroad, the State Department has similarly been thinking in civilizational terms, as evidenced by a
recent post titled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” on the agency’s new Substack. The essay has already upset the usual suspects and wowed conservatives long accustomed to seeing liberal bromides and platitudes from their government.
Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, noted in the essay that the relationship between America and Europe “transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics,” representing a “unique bond forged in common culture, faith, familial ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage.”
Samson noted further that:
Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty. This tradition flows from Athens and Rome, through medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America’s founding documents. The Declaration’s revolutionary assertion that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” echoes the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other European heavyweights who recognized that all men possess natural rights that no government can arbitrate or deny. America remains indebted to Europe for this intellectual and cultural legacy.
Samson stressed that the deep, unique, and historic relationship between the U.S. and Europe warrants protection, which can take the form of constructive criticism, much like Vance’s comments in Munich.
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Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images
The vice president
angered European elites with the suggestion in his speech that the more concerning threat posed to Europe is not China, Russia, or any other external actor but rather “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance also put Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European nations on blast for their
suppression of political movements and ideas unfavorable to their respective ruling classes; for their dismissal of citizens’ concerns and common sense; for their routine attacks on religious liberties; and for their disastrous mass migration policies.
‘The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy.’
Samson echoed a critique now popular among
national conservatives and thinkers in the president’s orbit, suggesting that the globalist liberal campaign to “usher in an era of unprecedented peace” in the wake of World War II “by overcoming the anchors of nationhood, culture, and tradition” has proven to be a colossal failure.
“This promise lies in tatters,” wrote Samson. “What endures instead is an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.”
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Blaze Media Illustration
After recycling a number of Vance’s complaints — hammering again on
Britain for arresting Christians over silent prayer; on the German government for its clampdown on critics and on the country’s ascendant right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany; and on the European Union over its latest censorship scheme — Samson conceded that similar tactics were brought to bear in America against President Donald Trump and his supporters in recent years.
“What this reveals is that the global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy,” wrote the State Department adviser. “Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people.”
By committing to its Western heritage and by reversing the liberal project of deracination, disenchantment, and disorientation, Samson indicated that Europe will be better equipped to stand “firm against external threats and internal decay” and to cooperate with America on “shared foreign policy goals.”
‘We finally have political leaders who are brave enough to face the crisis head on.’
“Our relationship is too important, our history too valuable, and the international stakes too high to allow this partnership to be undermined,” wrote Samson. “Therefore, on both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come.”
One of Samson’s professors at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C., Dr. Matthew Mehan, associate dean and associate professor of government for the Van Andel Graduate School of Government, told Blaze News, “It is heartening to see from our government a seriously candid psychological operation, one that seeks not to gaslight our allies but to remind them who they truly are and what we have deeply in common, in our shared Western history and our principles of natural right and law.”
“This is exactly right,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R)
said in response to excerpts of Samson’s post shared on X by Blaze Media digital strategist Logan Hall. “Globalism, liberalism, censorship, mass migration — for decades, the West has been war with itself. We finally have political leaders who are brave enough to face the crisis head on.”
RELATED: Former ‘disinfo’ czar Nina Jankowicz tells Europeans to take a stand against the US, double down on social media regulation
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Photo by John McDonnell/Getty Images
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.)
noted, “The West has spent the last 30 years governed by people who were ashamed of their past and hate Western civilization. President Trump is embracing our heritage, which built the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.”
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, similarly suggested it was remarkable to see this essay from the State Department,
calling it “eloquent and true.”
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