THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? (via Mike Daley):

The Spiritual Malaise That Haunts Europe: Continent faces a grim future if it turns its back on its religious roots. (George Weigel, May 1, 2005, LA Times)

[E]urope's demographic meltdown is best analyzed in the realm of the human spirit, and that it is directly related to European high culture's abandonment of biblical religion.

Getting at the roots of this crisis of civilizational morale means thinking about "history" differently. Europeans and Americans usually think of history as the product of politics (the struggle for power) or economics (the production of wealth). Both lines of thinking take a partial truth and try, unsuccessfully, to turn it into a comprehensive truth. Understanding Europe's current situation requires us to look at history through cultural lenses.

Europe began the 20th century confidently expecting unprecedented scientific, cultural and political achievements. Yet within 50 years, Europe produced two world wars, three totalitarian systems, a Cold War that threatened global destruction, mountains of corpses, the gulag and Auschwitz. What happened? And why? Political and economic analyses don't offer satisfactory answers. Cultural — which is to say spiritual — answers might do a better job.

When the European Union was debating its new constitutional treaty in 2003 and 2004, why were so many European intellectuals and political leaders determined to prevent any acknowledgment of Christianity as one of the roots of contemporary Europe's commitment to human rights and democracy? Because, over the last 150 years or so, the makers of European culture and politics have convinced themselves that, to be modern and free, Europe must jettison its Judeo-Christian heritage: that part of its culture formed by faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.

A free European public square, Europeans have convinced themselves, must be radically secular. That is why the 70,000-word European constitution awaiting ratification could not find room within it for one word — "Christianity" — in describing the sources of European civilization. That is why the French government — the embodiment of secularism in public life — was attacked for flying the flag at half-staff in honor of John Paul II. That is why Europeans can only debate grave issues in biotechnology in utilitarian terms; "will it work?" completely trumps "is it right?" European high culture's conviction that to be adult, mature and free is to be radically secular has led to a vast and withering spiritual boredom — a drastic shrinkage in personal and social aspiration.

That spiritual boredom, I suggest, is why Europeans seem content to leave all hard political decisions to courts and bureaucracies, as they seem content to leave most questions of international security to the U.N. That spiritual boredom is why Europe is depopulating itself. Europe, bored, asks only to be left alone with its pleasures.

But the cost of spiritual boredom is very high. Demographic vacuums don't stay vacuums; they get filled — in Europe's case, by Islamic immigrants, some of whom become radicalized in the process. Europe's effort to create a tolerant, civil, democratic civilization by cutting itself off from one of that civilization's sources — Jewish and Christian convictions about the dignity of the person — is likely to fail. If Europe rejects what Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday called its "unrenounceable Christian roots," the results are likely to be grim for those committed to decency, human rights and democracy.

It's too easily forgotten that The End of History was not merely a triumphalist notion, but sounded a cautionary note too:

Curiously, Fukuyama’s attitude toward the end of History is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, faithful Hegelian that he is, he regards it as the final triumph of freedom. He speaks of nations or parts of the world that are still “stuck in history” or “mired in history,” as if residence in the realm of history were something it behooved us to change. On the other hand, he foresees that “the end of history will be a very sad time,” partly because he believes that the things that once called forth “daring, courage, imagination, and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation,” and partly because “in the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.” Thus he acknowledges “a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed” and even suggests that the prospect of perpetual ennui that awaits mankind “after” History may “serve to get history started once again.”

That same caution was sounded years before by Albert Jay Nock:

Burke touches [the] matter of patriotism with a searching phrase. 'For us to love our country,' he said, 'our country ought to be lovely.' I have sometimes thought that here may be the rock on which Western civilization will finally shatter itself. Economism can build a society which is rich, prosperous, powerful, even one which has a reasonably wide diffusion of material well-being. It can not build one which is lovely, one which has savour and depth, and which exercises the irresistible attraction that loveliness wields. Perhaps by the time economism has run its course the society it has built may be tired of itself, bored by its own hideousness, and may despairingly consent to annihilation, aware that it is too ugly to be let live any longer.

Secular Europe perceives its own inevitable ugliness and welcomes annihilation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2005 9:17 PM