Most of these young French conservatives’ arguments presume this organic conception. Why do they consider the European Union a danger? Because it rejects the cultural- religious foundation of Europe and tries to found it instead on the economic self-interest of individuals. To make matters worse, they suggest, the EU has encouraged the immigration of people from a different and incompatible civilization (Islam), stretching old bonds even further. Then, rather than fostering self-determination and a healthy diversity among nations, the EU has been conducting a slow coup d’état in the name of economic efficiency and homogenization, centralizing power in Brussels. Finally, in putting pressure on countries to conform to onerous fiscal policies that only benefit the rich, the EU has prevented them from taking care of their most vulnerable citizens and maintaining social solidarity. Now, in their view, the family must fend for itself in an economic world without borders, in a culture that willfully ignores its needs. Unlike their American counterparts, who celebrate the economic forces that most put “the family” they idealize under strain, the young French conservatives apply their organic vision to the economy as well, arguing that it must be subordinate to social needs. Most surprising for an American reader is the strong environmentalism of these young writers, who entertain the notion that conservatives should, well, conserve. Their best journal is the colorful, well-designed quarterly Limite, which is subtitled “a review of integral ecology” and publishes criticism of neoliberal economics and environmental degradation as severe as anything one finds on the American left. (No climate denial here.) Some writers are no-growth advocates; others are reading Proudhon and pushing for a decentralized economy of local collectives. Others still have left the city and write about their experiences running organic farms, while denouncing agribusiness, genetically modified crops, and suburbanization along the way. They all seem inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ (2015), a comprehensive statement of Catholic social teaching on the environment and economic justice.

Maybe you can understand why I feel so much more at home when I’m in Europe with Christian intellectuals like these people than I do anywhere among American conservatives (unless Patrick Deneen, Mark Mitchell, Jeff Polet or someone in their Front Porch Republic circle are hosting). If you have a subscription, read the whole thing.

Lilla points out that many establishment intellectuals in France don’t take these young Catholics seriously. They mistakenly (says Lilla) view them as National Front apologists. I can tell you from personal experience that Lilla is right: this is simply not true at all. This is typical left-liberal ideological stupidity. I would not be at all surprised if the center-right Gaullist were making the same mistake. We saw Establishment conservatives in the US make the same kind of mistake with Trump.

Lilla points out that Marion Maréchal Le Pen left the National Front’s successor party, and dropped the “Le Pen” from her name. Unlike her infamous grandfather and her aunt Marine, Marion is an intellectual and a serious Catholic. And she is young. She is the kind of political figure that certain young right-of-center intellectuals in the US want Trump to be, but that’s beyond his capacity. He’s just not that into it.

I wish J.D. Vance would get to know the Limite and L’Incorrect crowd (I could make introductions!). He could be our own Marion, I think — though I concede that might be my own unrealistic political fantasizing. Marion Maréchal, like the writers and thinkers around those small magazines, come out of and speak to a coherent conservative cultural view that we simply do not have in America. Our conservatism is far more classically liberal, and captive to uncritical worship of the free market. The new French conservatives are not anti-capitalist, but they believe that economics should be understood and practiced with a more holistic ideal of the common good and national flourishing.

Some of these new French conservatives are readers and followers of The Benedict Option (indeed one of them, Hubert Darbon, translated it into French). Lilla points out that the Limite crowd is more inclined to move to villages, plant gardens, and raise kids in traditional Catholicism — check out my posts from earlier this year about the Journeés Paysannes — whereas the L’Incorrect gang is more interested in confronting the decaying Establishment, and undertaking a Gramscian march through the institutions. There’s a lot of crossover between Limite and L’Incorrect, in real life — my friend the journalist Yrieix Denis writes for both. I see no contradiction between the two approaches. I would only counsel strongly that those who favor more direct engagement with the world should make absolutely certain that they do so from a position of real spiritual strength and discipline.

If you read French, check out Limite here. Here is a translation of the magazine’s “manifesto”:

Limite is an ecology magazine founded in 2015. The journal promotes an integral ecology that is based on the sense of balance and respect for the limits specific to each thing. Ecology, because it is a science of interactions and conditions of existence, can not choose the human against nature or nature against the human. Promoting integral ecology means caring for the most vulnerable and the oppressed as well as opposing all that our ways of life can have degrading and alienating. Refusing the omnipotence of technology and money, Limite wants to work towards ecological awareness by promoting sobriety, the relocation of our lives, conviviality and fraternity. In this perspective, Limite is orchestrated by different sensibilities that coexist in a common project: encouraging all alternatives to the market society. Refusing the “alternation without alternative” of the right/left split, Limite reaches out to all those who fight the double empire of soulless technology and the lawless market.

Here is the website for L’Incorrect, which is much more straightforwardly political.

Marion Maréchal, as Lilla points out, is very much on the side of firm and decisive engagement and battle. Her CPAC speech (watch it below) was about this. I honestly don’t know if this kind of conservatism can ever take root in America, but I deeply hope so. It has a better chance in Europe — and, as I’m reading right now Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe, and learning in much greater detail how the European establishment — left wing and right wing — sold out their civilization to mass immigration for the sake of global capitalism and “diversity,” I believe that that Establishment deserves to be smashed. The new French conservatism, and its political frères in the former Eastern Europe, represent the best hope Europe has to avoid real fascism. EU-style technocratic, deracinated liberalism is dying, and deserves to die.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIfcjQfJKY]

UPDATE: Well, this from a conservative French Catholic reader is discouraging. I had forgotten that Marion abandoned her husband. And I did not know the Maurras/Mauriac distinction with the Limite movement. I would appreciate further explanation and discussion by French readers about these things:

I don’t share your enthusiasm for Marion Maréchal, however. Her conception of the “French identity” indeed is based on religion but above all on race, which has always been – and hopefully will remain – a notion foreign to French culture. Also she is a hypocrite, having divorced her husband and father of her daughter after a few years of marriage to live “sinfully” with a National Front cabinet member. That’s not the behaviour you’d expect from a faith-on-her-sleeve Catholic. I’m also distrustful of the Limite movement, though it’s home to some remarkable people. Their Catholicity owes more to Maurras than Mauriac. I agree with them that secularism is a poison but we shall overcome by being better, not by conforming to the enemy’s clichés. Unlike them, I feel a stronger connection to my conservative, modest Muslim neighbour than my progressive, secular and Charlie-loving fellow-compatriots, and those I feel threaten most my way of life and values are not those they think.

UPDATE.2: From reader Robert_C: