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The Sicilian weekend of July 17–19 will host one of this summer’s most anticipated events – European Awareness Days: A Safer Mediterranean for a Stronger Europe – which will take place in Catania and Palermo, the key cities of the largest and most idyllic island in the Mediterranean. Members of the Italian government, Members of the European Parliament, national lawmakers from several European countries, top officials from Sicilian local government, as well as journalists and representatives from various institutes and think-tanks will gather to debate in one of those places in Europe – and not only – that remain forever engraved in your memory. Like a beautiful dream you’d wish to keep dreaming.
Not only the splendour of unique landscapes and the wonder of ancient sites and mosaics, but above all the authentic experience of what this world represents – a true bastion of European identity, classical beauty, and the Christian faith, the place that gave birth to wonders and civilization.
The Mediterranean region represents not only living history, but also a crucial warning to civilization; it is both a powerful call to return to our roots, to natural order, and to reason, and a crucial signal regarding the imperative need to respond to the apocalyptic challenges of our time. How important it is for the Mediterranean basin to be safer, so that the Old Continent may truly be safer and stronger – an issue that will surely spark lively debates during these hot summer days on the coast of Sicily.
One of the eagerly awaited panels at the event in Catania will be the one titled “The Mediterranean as a Shared European Cultural Heritage,” which will take place on the morning of Saturday, July 18.
When we talk about cultural heritage, one of the first words that comes to mind is conservatism. It is the Left that divides and labels, but certain things are crystal clear. The conservative, a realist, is the one who values heritage, the one who understands the crucial importance of preserving authenticity and the values that have built civilization. The progressive hates heritage and despises beauty with every fibre of his being.
The Mediterranean has been and remains Mare Nostrum, the “internal” sea of the Christian world; yet beyond its unique geographical significance, the entire Mediterranean region represents an unparalleled intellectual wealth – millennia of wisdom and creativity, the enduring roots of our civilization. Those roots and those cultural traditions that the far-left, pseudo-liberal and hyper-globalist, seek to eradicate or at least to dilute. Philosophers, statues, myths – a unique legacy that the brave new world no longer needs simply because it belongs to the past. In the name of a utopia no less dangerous than the Marxist-Leninist utopia, the culture of cancellation aims to wipe away thousands of years of intellectual development and achievements without which today’s civilization would not have existed.
What a striking contrast between the diversity of the riches we inherited from the Greeks and Romans, and the “diversity” brought today by the millions of asylum seekers – “in search of a better world” in an increasingly terrified Europe. What a powerful contrast between the innovative spirit of our ancestors and the barbarism of those who seek to disfigure the world they have been invading.
Nevertheless, let us not be overly optimistic: the Mediterranean heritage is not preserved by admiring the ancient theatre in Taormina or the majestic Acropolis in Athens, but by strongly supporting families and future generations, by firmly professing our faith, and by awakening the peoples who have realized that there is absolutely no time to lose. A return to values means a constant struggle to restore security where it no longer seems to exist.
The question we should ask ourselves is: What do we want our children to inherit? The beauty that this generation has inherited, or the ugliness and devastation brought by the invaders.
Tons of pages have been written about what the Mediterranean basin has offered the world in terms of culture, art, and wisdom. Nevertheless, a debate on this topic – such as the panel organized by the ECR Party in Sicily – will always be most welcome.