At the same time the covid demonstrated the need for a society based on the values of conservatism: nation, solidarity, community, presence of the state in strategic sectors such as health, the importance of borders. If it was not a global pandemic that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, one might say "we told you so". Because the importance of national borders and the dangers of globalization emerged clearly by reading the works and texts of authors, thinkers, journalists, and conservative intellectuals written in past years. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be pleased about.
The accusation of the limits and faults of the globalist model of society, that the West has particularly embraced in recent years, can be limited today to a mere rhetorical exercise and analysis concerning what happened in the past months and it becomes necessary to prevent what we are experiencing from happening again in the future.
The second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping Europe in recent days is the consequence of what happened last spring and requires a reflection from a health and socio-political point of view. How was it possible that a pandemic born in China within a few weeks has spread around the world with dramatic consequences? Undoubtedly, the ease of contagion of covid-19 had an impact, but there are deeper reasons linked above all to the concept of globalization. The coronavirus has sanctioned the failure of the globalized and interconnected world.
First of all, because the development model that we have built has favored the spread of the contagion, secondly because, when the individual States needed health equipment, masks, or protective tools, we have realized how an economy based on the import and not on the internal production of strategic tools for health is destined to fail. Thus, the values dear to the conservative world were rediscovered: the centrality of the nation and its borders and the importance of the state to protect strategic economic sectors. The importance of the concept of boarder was already emphasized by the ancient Romans who referred to it as limes, which separated the Roman civilization with its traditional values represented by the mos maiorum from the barbarians.
The concept of mos maiorum, understood as a set of values that characterize the traditional morality of Roman civilization, is typically conservative. In ancient Rome, traditions represented the foundation of ethics and consisted of civic sense, pietas, military valor, the austerity of behavior, and respect for the laws. The mores were precepts accepted by the whole community because they were invested with auctoritas, the same auctoritas of the institutions, of the parents, of the professors, that is now being challenged daily in post-1968 society. The sharing of the belief system represented by the mores determined the public and private action of individuals who were led to respect these values. The opposite of what happens today where, as Roger Scruton denounces in numerous of his texts, the West is suffering from an oikophobia for which it hates its home and the values at the basis of our civilization.
Francesco Giubilei has been featured recently on the MCC-Danube Institute online conference series, "Patriotic Talks"
This contempt for the values at the basis of European civilization has led the European Union to become the architect of the concept of "open society" by promoting a relativist conception of society (a concept that was strongly denounced by Pope Benedict XVI) with the attempt to erase the individual identities of peoples and therefore of nations.
The choice of the Hungarian government to close the borders at the beginning of September proves correct in this sense, since it avoids the indiscriminate entry of people within the Hungarian borders with the risk of spreading the virus even more and at the same time helps in internal tracking of infections. But the centrality of nations emerges not only from a health point of view but also from an economic point of view. Covid has shown us that an economy based only on imports or exports and not on a solid internal market is too fragile because it is conditioned by unpredictable external factors.
It is a complicated issue in a now globalized economic system but there are some sectors, and health care is undoubtedly one of them, in which external self-sufficiency is needed to prevent what has happened in recent months from happening again.
In our country, for example, FIAT has started large-scale production of masks: but one thing is to prevent, another to intervene when the situation is out of control. The centrality of the nation also emerges about the health system, despite the difficulties due to the scientific world lack of knowledge of the virus, it was the national health system that responded to the needs of individual citizens. This has led to a renewed patriotism also on the part of those who, until a few months ago, were advocates of a Europeanism that did not take into consideration the prerogatives of individual nations. The recovery of the sense of community, a value at the basis of conservative thought and widespread solidarity, is giving way in these days, particularly in Italy, England, and other Western European nations, to protests due to the increasingly difficult socio-economic context to which, once again, national governments will have to find a solution.
The author is an Italian Conservative thinker and President of the Nazione Futura movement.
Cover photo: mapreport.com
