The West has always had a story.

It has been the civilization of Athens and Rome, of gladiators and Vikings, of exploration and conquest, of Christendom and culture, of the Enlightenment and progress, of bold discovery and faithful pursuit. Though our story has changed with time, one truth has always endured: Europe is a city on a hill—a continent with a glorious past and a bold future. Through every age, the meaning of Europe has always been about the uniqueness and beauty of Europe itself.

But something has changed since the end of World War II.

Our old identity has died, and the substitute our elites hand us is wholly different and quite strange. The civilizational mission offered to replace our own dying sense of purpose is this: we are bulldogs for Israel.

America’s new purpose, we are told, is to protect and support Israel.

Our foreign policy is oriented to this effort, the national dialogue centres around it, and deviation from the pro-Israel position is deemed treasonous. Criticize Israel or question the American-Israeli alliance and you will be attacked by lobbyists, media organizations, and political donors.

Churches have even had their theology hijacked and the Christian mission redirected to funnel energy toward Israel. Jews are God’s chosen people, the argument goes, and Christians therefore owe them deep deference and respect—a view which relies upon an odd interpretation of scripture. Many prominent conservative politicians more commonly speak of the alleged biblical command to support Israel than they do of the Great Commission to proselytize on behalf of Christ.

And it is not just rhetoric. Where one’s heart is, there one’s money is also. Accordingly, many American leaders seem more concerned with funding foreign wars in the Middle East than they do rebuilding domestic infrastructure or investing in Americans at home. Between Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, staggering sums have been poured into conflicts—often at the explicit behest of Israeli. The Watson Institute at Brown University estimates that the cost of America’s post-9/11 spending is 8 trillion dollars.

To put in perspective, the entire Apollo program of the ’60s and ’70s—including six moon landings, Project Gemini and the robotic lunar program—cost $280 billion in 2020 dollars. In other words, the money spent on wars since 9/11 could have funded 28 Apollo programs.

This decades-long spending binge has fueled inflation in the United States, making it harder for working-class families to afford groceries, rent, or buy a home. As much as America’s leadership would like to pretend otherwise, inflationary spending is always an indirect tax on ordinary people—everyone say it together.

So why do our leaders feel compelled to send trillions overseas while Americans struggle at home?

People desire to serve a higher purpose, and that desire is often fulfilled by service to the nation. Ancient Romans loved their civilization so much that the city of Rome itself became a divine entity. We have lost such love of the West, and in that gap a new identity has been planted. Longing for the purpose that devotion to a beautiful society brings, we have found it elsewhere. In this new narrative, we are still the defenders of a glorious civilization—it’s just not our own.

Perhaps the clearest example of the pedestal on which some Western commentators place Israel is a statement Douglas Murray made in a recent interview with Ben Shapiro:

“It’s conceivable that at some point 15 million Christians could be killed. It would be a disaster, a tragedy. It’s conceivable that at some point…15 million Muslims could be killed. It would be a disaster. It would be a tragedy of unimaginable scale…but if 15 million Jews were killed, that’s the end of the story. That’s it…Western Civilization would die.”

What an odd statement. Western Civilization has existed for 3000 years; the State of Israel has existed since 1948. Yet this statement provides a profound insight into the mind of an Israel-obsessed Westerner. Douglas Murray and those like him believe that Jewish lives are worth more than the lives of Christians and Muslims and that the entire Western project is predicated on a foreign state that has existed for only 77 years. Of course these people believe the civilizational purpose of the West should be based around Israel.

It is worth pointing out that this view has nothing to do with a dislike of Israel or Jewish people. It is simply an odd perspective to hold about a foreign state. If a politician or newspaper made the case that the purpose of America was to uphold and protect Korea, or Japan, or Thailand, or Poland, or Nigeria, or Lithuania, this would also be strange.

The supplanting of our story with the story of a foreign state could only take root in a civilization completely lost. Our story has faded, words from a page difficult to read in the dimming light. Not only have we forgotten our glorious past, we struggle to write our future. Shame and guilt are more common in the West today than pride and purpose, a catastrophe that has left Europeans susceptible to strange new ideas.

If we wish to move forward and claim a bold future, we must first reorient our story inward again. We must regain our pride and our belief that our civilization is beautiful, rare, and worthy of the utmost devotion and sacrifice.