732 And All That

I seem to have quite a few readers in France, and more than one has been in touch to say that they were wondering when I might notice the striking trend there towards defending both the French bulwark of Christian civilisation and the bourgeois bulwark of French civilisation by deliberately and systematically out-breeding both the Muslims and the semi-feral underclass.

That latter exists in France to nothing like the extent that it does in the "Anglo-Saxon" economies, because the French do not deny the obvious point that if you believe, as you should, in the economic, social, cultural and political benefits of a large and thriving middle class, then you need to will the means in the form of direct and indirect central and local government action; the same is also true of agriculture, of rural communities, of a manufacturing base, of family life, of national sovereignty, of cultural distinctiveness, and of so many other things that true conservatives exist precisely in order to conserve. Such action also sustains a working class properly so called, rather than an underclass. But even what they have is enough to frighten them into both prevention and retaliation, not least demographically. And that in itself says a very great deal in France's favour.

Not only is France the land of Charles Martel, whose spirit is clearly still abroad there, but she is also a country which well into living memory was actually dismembered in the service of Islamic expansion. Three départements - not colonies, but integral parts of France - were lopped off as recently as 1962, and their large communities of Latin Catholics speaking a Romance language, than whom no one could have been more Western, were violently expelled, recalling the violent expulsions of large Christian populations further east in order to create two states especially favoured by those who are now noisiest in professing to be the defenders of the West. For what was once Christendom on Three Continents, covering every inch of the Mediterranean's every coast, 1962 was the biggest catastrophe since 1948, and the biggest catastrophe until 2003.

When France opposed the catastrophe of 2003, she did so from that perspective. It is a shame that Lebanon was never constituted as one or more départements, with the same requirement as in coastal Algeria when it came to civic participation: renunciation of the Sharia as public law. If France had been conscious of herself as the restoration of a Christendom on all three Mediterranean shores, then she would never have given up that status. But it was as a nation and state mutilated by Islamic expansionism only 40 years before that she took her stand on Iraq, and we ought to have listened to her. If she says much the same about Syria, a country of which she has vast experience, then we should listen as we should have done before. Or, at any rate, we should do so if Sarkozy does not take this opportunity to manifest the fact that he is scarcely, if at all, a figure of la France éternelle. In any event, we should pay heed to those who are.

As the demographic war restores more and more of la France éternelle, we should pay more and more such heed. Not least by joining in the fight. Once again, let battle be joined for Christendom on at least three continents. But in this case, on the three continents of Europe, North America and Australasia. At least.