American Thinker

by Allan J. Feifer

    Britain is America's mother country. Regardless of what one may think of the once-Great Britain today, much of America's essence sprang from that island's political philosophy, cultural inheritance, legal tradition, and national character. Our language, common law, conception of liberty, parliamentary instincts, and stubborn individualism all trace back directly to Britain. Britain may have declined, but the DNA of its greatness lives on in us. Its decline is therefore not merely a foreign story. It is a cautionary tale written in a language we understand because we inherited it. We ignore those linkages at our peril.

    Margaret Thatcher represented perhaps the last great demonstration of Britain's willingness to behave like a world power. The Falklands War was not merely a military victory; it was a psychological one. It proved that Britain still possessed the will to act decisively, defend its interests, and project power beyond its shores. For a moment, Thatcher restored something of the Churchillian confidence Britain had lost before that moment too faded away.

    She could not reverse the forces already embedded in the country's institutions. The political class increasingly embraced managerialism, the intellectual class fashionable self-doubt, and the bureaucracy technocratic caution. Britain turned inward, consumed by domestic demands and increasingly skeptical of the burdens of global leadership. Its decline was not simply imposed from outside. A nation that loses confidence in its own purpose eventually loses the political will to sustain it.

    That is where the parallel to America becomes unavoidable.

    Britain became increasingly burdened by internal social obligations that expanded faster than its economic capacity and political will. America has accumulated similar burdens for decades. However noble their original purposes, domestic obligations expand, demand resources, and rarely contract. A great power cannot be defined solely by what it redistributes. It must also be defined by what it builds, protects, and leads. When internal obligations consume the resources and political attention required for those purposes, national power begins to erode into irrelevance.

    But Europe's problem is not simply that its governments became more cautious or its welfare states ever more expensive. Europe also changed itself. Over the past several decades, large-scale immigration has transformed the demographic and cultural composition of countries built around relatively strong national identities and shared expectations.

    France illustrates the scale of the transformation. In 2024, 7.6 million immigrants lived in France, representing 11.2 percent of the population. In 1968, nearly three-quarters of foreigners living in France were European nationals; by 2024, nearly half were African nationals and only about one-third were European.

    Those numbers do not prove social failure on their own. They do, however, describe a profound demographic transformation. When that transformation occurs alongside concentrated communities, weakened assimilation, and the state's reluctance to insist on a common civic framework, demographic change becomes a source of social and political friction rather than simply population growth.

    And this is where immigration intersects with the larger problem of European decline. A confident state can absorb substantial change because it knows what it expects of those who enter it. A state that has lost confidence in its own culture, doubts its right to demand assimilation, and fears the political consequences of enforcing its laws has a much harder task. The question is no longer simply how many people a country can admit. It is whether the country still possesses the confidence and authority to insist that everyone living within its borders belongs to the same civic order -- and what it must do when some refuse.

    France may be showing us the next stage.

    What makes the French crisis particularly dangerous is the convergence of three different pressures against the state: the red -- economic grievance; the white -- cultural conflict; and the black -- violence and disorder. The red attacks its economic legitimacy. The white attacks its cultural legitimacy. The black attacks its monopoly on force. They are not a coalition or even a unified movement. Together, they constitute a stress test.

    When those pressures erupt simultaneously, a parliamentary system built around compromise and negotiation becomes incapable of meeting the moment, hesitating when it must act and debating when it must decide. It fears backlash when it must assert authority.

    The danger is not necessarily that the French state will be overthrown. It is that it will surrender functionally -- by narrowing its ambitions, avoiding confrontation, tolerating disorder, and accepting that certain neighborhoods, groups, or behaviors are beyond its reach.

    That is how decline accelerates, not through dramatic collapse, but through the quiet acceptance of limits that did not previously exist.

    And, in the wings, our own Red, White, and Black forces are taking notes. America cannot simply watch Europe decline from across the Atlantic. The lesson of WWII is that geography no longer protects a nation from the collapse of the civilization to which it belongs. Had America simply assumed that events across the Atlantic could never threaten us, the history of the twentieth century might have been very different. Oceans provide distance, not immunity.

    Europe is not simply another collection of foreign countries. It is the civilization from which we emerged. If Europe loses the capacity to govern itself, defend itself, assimilate newcomers, and maintain the institutions that made the West prosperous and free, America may eventually discover that it is next.

    This is not a prophecy of America's future, not yet, but it is a warning.

    Great nations do not remain great by accident. They remain great because their people choose renewal over resignation, responsibility over retreat, and courage over comfort. America still has the economic, military, cultural, and political capacity to help Europe regain its footing and, in the process, ensure our own stability.

    We should do so not out of nostalgia or charity, but self-interest.

    Europe helped create the civilization that made America possible. As the elder child, America now has a responsibility to help preserve it -- not because Europe is entitled to American protection, but because a weakened Europe ultimately weakens the West.

    If Europe recovers, America's foundations are strengthened. If Europe continues to decline, America will eventually discover that oceans are no substitute for civilization.

    So goes Europe.

    God Bless America.