I can only suggest you read the whole. I cannot speak with the power that typifies much, though not all, of Mr. George Weigel's work.
Europe, and especially western Europe, is suffering from a crisis of civilizational morale. ⦠No, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the fact that Europe is depopulating itself.[\[1\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
…
Europeans and Americans alike typically think of "history" as the product of politics (the contest for power) or economics (the contest for wealth). Both "history as politics" and "history as economics" take a partial truth and try, unsuccessfully, to turn it into a comprehensive truth. Understanding Europe's current situation, and what it means for America, requires us to look at history in a different way, through the prism of culture.[\[2\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
…
One of European civilization's most distinctive cultural characteristics is the conviction that life isn't just one damn thing after another, about which little or nothing can be done; Europe learned that from its faith in the God of the Bible.[\[3\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
…
Human freedom and human greatness required rejecting the biblical God, according to such influential thinkers as Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. ⦠\[From these ideas you get\] the great mid-twentieth century tyrannies -- communism, fascism, Nazism. ⦠ultramundane humanism, in its quest for a worldly utopia, is inevitably inhuman humanism.[\[4\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
…
This crisis could only become fully visible after the end of the Cold War. Its effects were first masked by the illusory peace of the interwar period; then by the rise of totalitarianism and the Great Depression; then by the Second World War itself; then by the Cold War.[\[5\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
…
Europe today is profoundly shaped, however, by a kinder, gentler cousin, which the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has termed "exclusive humanism:" a set of ideas and political default positions according to which (and in the name of democracy, human rights, tolerance, and civility) all transcendent religious or moral reference points must be kept out of European public life -- especially the life of the European Union.[\[6\]](http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2750/pub_detail.asp "Europe and America: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow")
Mr. Weigel continues, illustrating in brief the reality that this "exclusive humanism" is just yet another form of totalitarianism. Following the depopulation to its logical conclusion, he connects it with the rise of Muslim jihad-ism, and the potential for the future of Europe to be a Muslim one.[7]
Western society is destroying itself. It is doing so by ceasing to believe in its very underpinnings. This deconstruction, this mutation into something unsustainable, has radical, extreme implications for the world that our children and grandchildren will live in. Pope Benedict XVI thinks we can turn this around, that just as Saint Benedict saved much of western civilization once by the spiritual renewal he triggered as Rome dissolved, we can save our contemporary society by a similar spiritual renewal.
Societies are built of families. To change the definition of the family is to critically undermine the very basis of society. For to turn the family into just yet another societally defined construct is to leave the society defining foundation-less. What is then left to provide stability, with both Church and family excluded? Who will work to establish (or re-establish) justice if those who would do were killed in the womb? For this reason marriage and life were the critical battles of the last election, and continue to be the critical battle fields as we look ahead.
We were hit hard in this last election. For while we stood firm in preserving the family, we failed badly to protect human life. It is in light of that failure that the turnover in congress takes on significance. For while the Republicans cannot be trusted, the Democrats have of late been the more threatening.
For Europe's present could well be our future. Let us pray that we, with our separated (Protestant and Evangelical) brothers, can turn aside that grim possibility.