| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| The Closing of Civilization in Europe |
| 2006-02-28 |
| Hat tip Ms. Trailing wife and her WMD article for providing me the link, though I often read the Brussel journal. Europe’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture – a process that started with the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not anti-religious) – a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle. America’s immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. America’s major ethnic minorities – Blacks as well as Hispanics – are Christian, while the meanstream culture is also rooted in Christianity. In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves. One could also put it in a slightly different way: Europe lacks what America still has, namely the so-called “conservative reserves,” or as the German sociologist Arnold Gehlen explained over 30 years ago, “the reserves in national energy and self-confidence, primitiveness and generosity, wealth and potential of every kind.” Every so often I travel to the U.S. to recharge my batteries, and I am not the only European Conservative to do so. From time to time one needs to breathe the air of freedom before submerging again in the stifling atmosphere of Europe. America’s “conservative reserves” are far stronger than Europe’s, because America, unlike secular Europe, has remained rooted to a larger extent in traditional Christian values. I do not doubt that if these values continue to decline in the U.S., American culture will collapse as European culture and civilisation have collapsed. However, America can learn from the impending European catastrophe, and avoid a similar fate. The old European civilization – the pre-secular or the pre-post-Christian one – will live on in the U.S. If it perishes there too, mankind will relapse into the dark ages that are now taking hold of Europe, the cradle of Western civilization. I suppose one could feel sad about all this, but sadness is not what I feel. One can feel compassion for those who die in accidents, fall in battle or get murdered (like the countless unborn children that perish every day) but can one pity those who have killed their own future for the pleasures of the present? Europe’s predicament, I repeat, is entirely self-inflicted. Not Islam is to blame. Secularism is. The coming decade will witness the war between the values of Islam and the secular “values” of the decadent, hedonistic post-Marxist Left. We have seen the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, last November’s prelude to the French civil war, the Danish cartoon case. This is just the beginning of the beginning. I do not consider myself a pessimist, merely a realist. It is quite clear who is going to lose – and whose fault that will be. My thoughts, *exactly*. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #5 Don't forget we're currently holding immigration from Europe down. Let's loosen the limits and see what happens. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-28 21:23 |
| #4 Good point, GG. We get the self-motivators from the West, the go-getters, the make shit happen people. They get the self-boomers from Shitistan, the blow-uppers, the tear shit down cretins. Purdy good deal... for us. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-02-28 20:36 |
| #3 AmericaÂ’s immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. Actually, its an advantage. You forget we took in all those that Europe tossed out, both in the 19th and 20th centuries. They had the motivation to make something of themselves other than wards of the prince or state that you offered them. |
| Posted by: Gromoque Glaish6758 2006-02-28 20:33 |
| #2 Warriors exist to fight for a future. The fight is always about what kind of future will happen. Those who have no interest in any future won't fight at all. |
| Posted by: Thrinetch Tholumble7024 2006-02-28 19:50 |
| #1 I don't see it as Christianity fighting Islam here in the US, as opposed to atheism losing to Islam in Europe. Nor do I see the battle as being won by those believing in an afterlife,, and lost by those who don't. Eleven percent of Americans self-identify as atheist/agnostic, and they appear (if Rantburgers are any example) to be spread across the spectrum of American ideologies. Rather, this is a fight between those who firmly believe in colonizing the future in this life -- on one side with free individuals, on the other with the slaves of the nastiest version of Allah, with the nihilists gladly surrendering to slavery between the lines. Europe doesn't necessarily need to recover its Christianity, but its belief that it can make a future if it only reaches out its hand to do so. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-28 08:18 |