Of course Europe matters -- and protecting it has to matter. Don’t be Philistines and write off the cradle of Western civilization. They have as many museums and historical plaques lining their streets as we do Starbucks. If you have any sense of history, culture, or awe, that has to matter. Europe may be living on the fumes of past beauty, but that beauty is still there. It may not be in their politics, but it lives on the walls of their museums, in their concert halls, even in the very stones beneath their feet. Even if some Europeans can’t see what makes us great, that’s not an excuse for us to be equally incurious about what makes them great. If anything, it’s the opposite. Great, you think Europeans are dumb. Don’t be dumb like a European. Don’t erase history like a woke Leftist. Refusing to engage with another culture is a sign of fear. We have nothing to be afraid of and everything to learn. Being an American who fears to visit Europe is like being a cloistered coastal liberal elite who refuses to leave the city. Do you actually think America could exist if we’d learned nothing from Europe? Do you think John Locke grew up next to a Dairy Queen? Do you think Montesquieu ate at McDonald’s? Do you think Magna Carta was signed at Macy’s? Of course not. Yet that’s where the inspiration for the greatest American documents – the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence – came from: the French and the English. The classical American culture we are currently trying to rediscover is rooted in European greatness. You cannot rediscover what is best in America without acknowledging its origins in Europe. Imagine scoffing at The Freedom Trail in Boston or the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia because both cities now vote blue. Do you really want to act as if the Pilgrims just apparated out of the ocean? And what about what Europe learned from us? They’d never know how to overthrow tyrants in the first place. Which means fascism and communism would probably still be alive and well. The two geopolitical victories which cemented America’s status as a superpower would’ve been impossible. And therefore, American greatness itself would not have existed. Our greatness does not, and cannot, exist in a vacuum. We need Europe because without their culture, we have no roots. They need us because without our freedoms, they wilt. Just as they gave us the seeds of both American and Western civilization, we can offer them the courage to grow anew. Such is our proper role as citizens of the greatest, freest nation on the face of the earth. So if Europe won’t appreciate where they came from? If they won’t preserve it? Then we must.