We have met the enemy and he is us……..
“At just this moment, to complicate the picture, the West, and Europe in particular, has largely abandoned its patrimony. Philosophy no longer offers a defense of Western values against the insidious onslaught of despotism from without and nihilism from within. Law, detached from its moorings in the divinely ordained order of nature, is now seen as the embodiment of human rights of any and all kinds, themselves deduced from a liberal politics that rejects any foundation in biblical morality. The hurricane of relativism has swept all before it, bending to breaking point the mighty tree of Western civilization, hollowed out by self-hatred and weakened by the loss of its religious roots.”
Does Europe Have a Future?
It’s both a continent and an idea, with an alternately heroic and ignominious past and, until recently, an enviable present. Can the heart of the West survive the 21st century?
Europe is a continent, and an idea, with an alternately heroic and ignominious past and with what seemed, until recently, to be an enviable present. But does it have a future? The November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris marked the culmination—so far—of a concerted campaign directed mainly at Europeans and orchestrated, or inspired, first by al-Qaeda (Madrid 2004, London 2005) and more recently by the self-proclaimed caliphate based in the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq.
The latest round of carnage began with the 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, was stepped up in January of this past year with the Charlie Hebdo and kosher-supermarket massacres in Paris, continued with shootings at a free-speech gathering in Copenhagen and mass assaults on European tourists in Tunisia, followed by explosions in Ankara and Beirut and reaching a crescendo with the multiple attacks in Paris.
Europeans are now faced with questions they have hitherto preferred to dodge. Are Europeans ready to fight for Europe? What is the place of Islam in a post-Christian Europe? Or, to look at it from the jihadist point of view, what is the place of Europe in a fast-expanding and globalized Islam? Is 21st-century Europe still the heart of Western civilization, or is it changing out of all recognition?
However one answers those questions, a brave new world seems to be emerging in which Europe becomes the theater where the clash of civilizations is played out. So far, the signs are that this encounter will be no more peaceful than it has been in the Middle East.
More here. H/T: ChanahS.
