{"id":2223330,"date":"2024-04-17T14:43:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T18:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/in-postliberal-brussels-a-mayor-sends-police-to-shut-down-natcon\/"},"modified":"2024-04-17T14:46:08","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T18:46:08","slug":"in-postliberal-brussels-a-mayor-sends-police-to-shut-down-natcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/in-postliberal-brussels-a-mayor-sends-police-to-shut-down-natcon\/","title":{"rendered":"In a move reflecting the values of Postliberal Brussels, the mayor dispatched police to shut down the NatCon event"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">38<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fin-postliberal-brussels-a-mayor-sends-police-to-shut-down-natcon%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2223330&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A mayor in Brussels ordered the police to shut down the National Conservatism Conference citing &#8220;public safety&#8221; concerns. Despite no disruptions, the mayor&#8217;s actions were seen \u2064as authoritarian, challenging freedom of speech. The conference was allowed to continue by a\u2064 Belgian court ruling, highlighting the tensions between postliberalism and traditional values. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/as-ufo-anxiety-grows-canadian-search-teams-hunt-for-wreckage\/\" title=\"As UFO Anxiety Grows, Canadian Search Teams Hunt for Wreckage\">incident raised questions<\/a> about the erosion of fundamental rights in\u200c Europe.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>If you want to know what postliberalism and the end of democratic self-government look like, a mayor in Brussels just gave us a glimpse.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Belgian police surrounded and temporarily shut down the National Conservatism Conference on an order issued by Emir Kir, the mayor of the district where the conference was being held. The order, said the mayor, was \u201cto <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/california-suspends-permits-for-driverless-vehicles\/\" title=\"California halts permits for self-driving cars.\">guarantee public safety<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1369155543\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-3f52794bcf89daffaaf31c78a59228ab fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-3f52794bcf89daffaaf31c78a59228ab\"><\/div>\n<p>Mayor Kir has a capacious view of public safety. His shutdown order declared that NatCon\u2019s \u201cvision is not only ethically conservative (e.g. hostility to the legalisation of abortion, same-sex unions, etc.) but also focused on the defense of \u2018national sovereignty\u2019, which implies, amongst other things, a \u2018Eurosceptic\u2019 attitude.\u201d Some of the speakers, the order went on, \u201care reputed to be traditionalists,\u201d and the conference must be banned \u201cto <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/brussels-police-try-to-shut-down-conference-featuring-orban-farage-other-leading-european-conservatives\/\" title=\"Brussels Police Attempt to Close Conference Hosting Orban, Farage, and Prominent European Conservatives\">avoid foreseeable attacks<\/a> on public order and peace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But of course, the invocation of \u201cpublic safety\u201d was a fig leaf to cover the mayor\u2019s naked authoritarianism in a country where freedom of speech and assembly is supposed to be enshrined in the 1830 Belgian constitution, as the country\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/russia-shuts-off-gas-to-european-nations-refusing-to-pay-in-rubles\/\" title=\"Russia Shuts Off Gas To European Nations Refusing To Pay In Rubles\">prime minister noted<\/a> on X after the incident.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <span class=\"G5Pbh7lKf9EeX0r3RNaBuF2wAd8qT6iCc1\"><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">What happened at the Claridge today is unacceptable. Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy but can never overrule the Belgian constitution guaranteeing the freedom of speech and peaceful assembly since 1830. Banning political meetings is unconstitutional.Full stop.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Alexander De Croo \ud83c\udde7\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa (@alexanderdecroo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alexanderdecroo\/status\/1780266715277914324?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 16, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>There was, of course, no disturbance and no threat to public safety. The conferencegoers\u2019 real crime was questioning the ruling postliberal regime in Europe and daring to espouse conservative or traditionalist ideas that the globalist left wants to stamp out. <\/p>\n<p>The event, which was supposed to be a two-day affair featuring leading European conservatives such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, former British politician Nigel Farage, German Cardinal Ludwig M\u00fcller, and French writer and politician \u00c9ric Zemmour, was proceeding smoothly (and peacefully) when police in riot gear arrived and blockaded the entrance of the building, barring anyone from entering. It wasn\u2019t until much later in the day, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2024\/04\/16\/police-threaten-shut-down-conference-europes-far-right-elites\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a report<\/a> in The Washington Post, that about 40 protesters showed up and chanted slogans 300 feet from the conference venue. In other words, nothing happened.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-c192263df25cd35ae012e90caf56e3ce fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-c192263df25cd35ae012e90caf56e3ce\"><\/div>\n<p>(The Post, for its part, disingenuously framed the incident as \u201cgiving Europe\u2019s hard-right elites a further opportunity to rail against cancel culture and Brussels overreach.\u201d As if <em>they<\/em> were at fault for objecting to the mayor and police trying to shut down their conference!)<\/p>\n<p>In the end, a Belgian court <a href=\"https:\/\/adfinternational.org\/free-speech-prevails-for-nat-con\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">struck down the mayor\u2019s order<\/a> in a late-night legal challenge, allowing the conference to continue the next day. The court\u2019s decision noted, \u201cit does not seem possible to infer from the contested decision that a peace-disrupting effect is attributed to the congress itself,\u201d and that \u201cthe threat to public order seems to be derived purely from the reactions that its organization might provoke among opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So the little tyrant mayor was thwarted in the end, but only by the swift action of one of Belgium\u2019s highest courts. Before his order was struck down, though, the mayor offered a window into the emerging postliberal Europe: It\u2019s the kind of place where the police show up to peaceful conferences about conservatism, where things like free speech and freedom of assembly count for nothing, and where deviating from the left\u2019s political orthodoxy marks you as a threat to public safety.<\/p>\n<p>How could this happen, one might ask, in a country where human rights are supposedly sacrosanct? The answer is straightforward but unpleasant. Europe might have been the cradle of Western civilization, but today it\u2019s postliberal and indeed post-Christian, which means the basis for things like free speech and freedom of assembly is gone. That the NatCon conference was allowed to go forward is a result of vestigial liberalism, the last dregs of Christian civilization being drained from public life in Europe. No one should presume there\u2019s much left in the cup at this point.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-b58f89202c950b69568575d8c7cd6931 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-b58f89202c950b69568575d8c7cd6931\"><\/div>\n<p>Why is that? Because once you reject normative claims about the human person that give these ideas coherence, they eventually go away. Having rejected the Christian teaching of <em>imago Dei<\/em>, on what basis are the political leaders of Brussels going to affirm that every person has the right to speak freely? Human rights such as freedom of speech are only self-evidently true if one accepts certain underlying claims about God and man. And I assure you Mayor Kir doesn\u2019t accept those ideas. He thinks they\u2019re dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>The prime minister of Belgium might still invoke the country\u2019s old 19th-century constitution, but the public official who sends in the police to break up a quiet meeting of conservatives and traditionalists is more true to the spirit of the age. You might say the future belongs to him.<\/p>\n<p>How well does the mainstream American right understand the dynamic here? Not well enough. An <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1XbgxCblTJsh9JZXwFmNfV0nTvK3yFZm4ZrazEWsWFp0\/edit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">open statement<\/a> organized by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University was circulated Tuesday condemning the attempted shutdown of the NatCon conference and expressing support for the organizers\u2019 right to hold a peaceful assembly. The signatories stated that while they support NatCon\u2019s <em>right<\/em> to gather, they \u201cbelieve that national conservatism as a political and ideological movement is profoundly mistaken, both empirically and normatively, on most fronts. We also believe that our profound and deep differences should be the subject of public contestation and debate, not silencing and cancellation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s all well and good, but this way of thinking belongs to a world that\u2019s disappearing. Public contestation and debate about deep differences \u2014 as well as tolerance, freedom, pluralism, and all the other hallmarks of liberal societies \u2014 are luxuries that only <em>Christian<\/em> societies can afford. We flatter ourselves to say that only <em>liberal<\/em> societies can afford them because, of course, liberalism depends for its sustenance on the Christian faith, alive and active among the people. Cut off from its source of vitality, liberalism withers and dies, as it is now doing in both Europe and America.<\/p>\n<p>Do the signatories realize that? I\u2019m not sure. The last line of their open letter declares: \u201cWe are critical of national conservatism as an ideology because of its incompatibility with the principles of a society of free people. But we are opposed much more deeply to the illiberalism on display in Brussels today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Opposing blatant illiberalism is necessary and good, but one must go further and ask how it became ascendant. Perhaps secular liberalism is playing a role in its own demise. To preserve free societies, perhaps we\u2019re going to have to question whether liberalism can really be secular, whether the public square can really be neutral, and much else besides. National conservatism might have something to say about all that, and also about how to restore liberalism\u2019s vitality. Those are going to be hard conversations for those on the secular, mainstream right, who, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/04\/02\/the-decline-of-christianity-means-the-end-of-neutral-spaces\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">like Richard Dawkins<\/a>, think you can have the culture without the cult. You can\u2019t, and we should all know that by now.<\/p>\n<p>The irony, of course, is that national conservatism as a political and ideological movement might just represent the last, best hope for the preservation of free speech in Europe. But if men like Mayor Kir keep at it and have their way, then we\u2019d better batten down the hatches. There are rough seas ahead.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-b4c89a3b85ba574eb72c6bb09dc452e8 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-b4c89a3b85ba574eb72c6bb09dc452e8\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get a glimpse of postliberalism and the erosion of democratic self-government through a recent incident in Brussels. The mayor, Emir Kir, ordered Belgian police to encircle and temporarily close down the National Conservatism Conference, providing an insight into this ideological shift<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2223331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Paul-NatCon.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Paul-NatCon.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2223330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2223331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2223330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2223330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2223330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}