The 20th century philosopher George Santayana made an observation playing out in Europe today. He noted, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." French citizens today, oblivious to Santayana's warning, are ignoring the historic role their country played on the continent centuries ago as a unifying force.
It was France that impacted Italy's early history when Italy existed as just a number of fragmented states functioning independently. In an effort to unify those states, a movement known as the "Risorgimento" arose in 1815, lasting until 1861. The term "Risorgimento" referred to a unification ideology stressing cultural, political and social sameness. In the end, it was France that helped its neighbor to the southeast achieve unification.
Reflecting upon the Risorgimento movement and what is happening in France today, however, gives rise to two ironies.
First, as indicated, the Risorgimento movement helped arouse a national consciousness of "one for all and all for one" among the Italian people. The irony is, contrary to today's liberalism stressing diversity to the extreme, the classic interpretation of that movement's success back then was embraced as a triumph for liberalism.
Second, while France's own 19th-century nationalism helped trigger Italian nationalism, we see French nationalism today in a tailspin – the result of a declining Catholic influence and liberal ideologues embracing mass immigration without demanding the assimilation necessary to preserve a shared nationalist spirit.
Among those grasping what is happening in France is French writer Michel Gurfinkiel – founder of an educational institute established in 2003 to promote various French values including "the civilization of freedom, a democratic Europe and the strengthening of the European-American partnership." Sixteen years later, those values suffer from severe devaluation.
Gurfinkiel reports a "Great Switch" is in progress in his country involving "the passing of France as a distinct country, or at least as the Western Juedo-Christian nation it had hitherto been presumed to be." Because what is happening is the result of France's own doing by extending a welcome mat to thousands of immigrants not sharing similar values, Italian journalist Giulio Meotti more accurately describes the process as "suicide."
The burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral was somewhat symbolic of the demise occurring in France. Catholicism, which has long served as a driving force for French nationalism, is in serious decline. Once led by an army of priests, monks and nuns, numbering as many as 177,000 in 1950, that army has dwindled to less than a third that size. In 1961, while 38 percent of baptized Catholics were attending Mass every Sunday or as often as possible, in 2012 that number has dropped to only seven percent.
While it was the French Catholic Church during the 19th century supplying three-quarters of the missionaries who went on to found churches in Africa and Asia, ironically France now depends on clerical recruits from those very same regions to keep approximately 7500 of its own parishes operating.
And while the country's once-main religion is failing, undermining "a traditional view of life, death, family, individual destiny and politics" contributing to the demise of nationalism as well, rapidly rising "immigrant Muslim communities with completely different outlooks and values … (are) getting ever more assertive." With such a growing assertiveness and sense that Islam will one day dominate all other religions, it is no wonder many Muslims reveled as the 850-year old Notre Dame Cathedral burned.
Helping to diminish French nationalism's influence, as well, is a birth rate – normally the highest in Europe – now hitting a 40-year low. While falling below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain the country's native population, a Muslim birth rate above that level is shifting the demographics. It is estimated by 2057, France will transition from a Catholic nation to an Islamic one as Muslims become the majority – and sharia becomes the law of the land.
The impact of a growing and more assertive Muslim minority is already having an impact. Jews have been fleeing France in record numbers due to a scourge of anti-Semitism French officials have refused to rein in. Since 2000, there has been a 20 percent decline in the Jewish population there. This mass emigration, correlating with Muslim immigration, has been described by one critic as "an ethnic cleansing" who warns, "In a few decades, there will be no Jews in France."
One would think this trend would cause French leaders to rethink a standing invitation to non-assimilating Muslim migrants. However, President Emmanuel Macron is apparently unconcerned about a problem with which later generations of French citizens will have to contend. He recently dispatched an emissary to Morocco to sign off on an agreement that rivals in stupidity the pact signed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 to secure "peace in our time" with Nazi Germany. By signing the UN's "Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration," defining immigration as "beneficial" for host countries, France pledges to continue welcoming the Muslim hordes destabilizing the country. Adding insult to injury for the French people is that Macron turns a blind eye to the fact that 80 percent of them oppose further immigration.
In 732 A.D., having reunited the entire Frankish realm and perceiving a Muslim invasion was soon to come, Charles "the Hammer" Martel is credited with defeating Islam's attempted advance into Europe. He was the right man at the right time to save the Western world from falling under the sword of Muhammad. Sadly, there is no European leader in office today of Martel's ilk. As a result, the 21st century is witnessing a transition of historic France to one that may well be unrecognizable in less than three decades.
Like the title of the 1940 Woody Guthrie song, as we bid the France of old adieu, we hear the chorus echoing "So long, it's been good to know ya."