At the feet of the American Statue of Liberty lies a set of broken chains which Lady Liberty is stepping out of as she carries aloft the Torch of Enlightenment. These broken chains, often unnoticed by the American public due to their position around the feet of the statue, are no less important than the torch which the statue is renowned for.

This towering symbol of freedom was a gift to the American people from the people of France, symbolizing their common national ideals and the alliance which brought both of those European peoples out of the darkness of absolute monarchy and into a new (if not imperfect) age of experimental freedom.

Today another French woman has taken up this torch and endeavors to lead Europe out of the darkness, decline, and malaise that has descended upon not only continental Europe but the whole of the West.

On February 8^th, 2025 more than a dozen European political leaders met in Madrid at the conference of the new European political alliance Patriots.eu. Some were government ministers, such as Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Lega Nord leader Mateo Salvini, while others such as Holland’s Geert Wilders or Hungary’s Viktor Orban are leaders of ruling governing parties.

All of these men and women gave enticing speeches but no one held the unvarnished admiration of the attendees like Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally and front-runner to be the next President of France.

Le Pen’s arrival was electric. Despite following second behind Vox leader Santiago Abascal and being followed by a dozen or so leaders, it was Marine Le Pen that every head turned to follow. Every phone was recording her, and almost all clapping hands followed her movements. The camera panned to her most often during each speech, and her own speech drew a rapturous applause that can hardly be described in words. The real magic was in the content of her speech, though.

Marine Le Pen waxed poetic about not only Europe but about the entire West. Madame Le Pen has proven that she has a civilizational view of the West that includes Europe, the British Isles, and America among others. She spoke first of how mass immigration was “draining our coffers and filling our prisons” and how the dying liberal order in Brussels was a threat to global peace and stability.

Le Pen spoke not of individuals or atomized persons only in terms of nations and most often in terms of peoples and ethnic groups. Her perception of the world is through a lens of group relations, and she explicitly rejected the deconstructive and destructive view of nationhood that the flailing global order has foisted upon the West.

Of particular note was her assertion that “the migration pact is a programmed demographic submersion of Europe” and her belief that the spirit of the West’s “inventive and conquering” peoples was on the verge of a revival that would see this civilization propelled into a new age of invention. At every turn she asserted that Europe has contributed for more to the world than it has ever taken away and in doing so she has revived a moral confidence that the neoliberal order has spent decades attempting to crush out of Europeans, Americans, and others.

The entire speech was an invocation to move forward and build something new with old Europe. She spoke of technological development, alternative fuels such as hydrogen, of food sovereignty, and of reviving an industrial base.

More than anything Marine Le Pen has proven herself to be the spiritual leader of continental Europe and perhaps the whole of the West. For, Donald Trump may rule in the most powerful nation of the West but it is Marine Le Pen who has taken up a vocal defense of the entirety of European civilization in the old world and the new.

Le Pen was far from the only great or notably speaker at the event, however. The first speaker was Martin Helme, leader of the Estonian People’s Conservative Party. Mr. Helme’s most notable moment was in stating that it was not enough to merely stop the arrival of immigrants but that it was “time to send them back where they came from” and enact a Reconquista of Europe.

Helme was followed but by Afroditi Latinopoulou, a young 33-year-old woman who founded and leads the Voice of Reason party which now polls at 10% in Greece.

The party believes in national homogeneity, courting Greece’s diaspora to return home, and strong borders. Ms. Latinopoulou was followed by a series of speakers who covered a range of issues from energy security to the inauguration of Donald Trump, and the need to combat the loss of national sovereignty.

Eventually the current kingmaker in Dutch politics, Mr. Geert Wilders, would take the stand speaking against the guilt tripping of the “multiculturalists” and asking the audience if they had had enough of illegal and Islamic immigration. His questions were met with loud answers of “Yes” from the Spanish audience.

The conference also included video messages, most notably from Argentine President Javier Milei who recently said that Europeans should no longer feel guilty for speaking out against mass immigration and that accusations of being a “mid-century German” was now a meaningless insult by the liberal-left elite.

Through the course of the conference commentary on immigration ranged from calls for remigration and repatriation to calls for the deportation of illegal aliens and criminals. Regardless of the style of deportation called for there was a universal message of strong borders, active deportations, and the end of multiculturalism. The political winds in the left have shifted toward nationalism.

“There is no European people that has not given birth to geniuses whose intelligence has not enlightened the world” – Marine Le Pen