rorism. No,themostdramaticmanifestationof some EuropeanleadersdisplaytowardIslamistter- ductivity orintheappeasementmentalitythat pension plans,inEurope’s lagging economicpro- devotion tofiscallyshakyhealthcareschemesand fondness forgovernmentalbureaucracyorits tation ofthatcrisisisnottobefoundinEurope’s civilizational morale.Themostdramaticmanifes- cially westernEurope,isinthemidstofacrisis ture ofcontemporaryEurope. do notreachdeeplyenoughintothehumantex- mately fail,however, becausesuchexplanations strategic, andeconomictermsalonewillulti- real. Attemptstounderstandtheminpolitical, differences overIraq.Thepolicyare the KyotoProtocolonglobalenvironment, United Nationsinworldaffairs,differencesover on terrorism,differencesovertheroleof differences: differencesoverprosecutingthewar usually discussthoseproblemsintermsofpolicy leaders, mediacommentators,andbusinessmen lantic debateforthepastseveralyears.Political ica problem”havebeenstapletopicsoftransat- America’s “Europeproblem”andEurope’s “Amer- of CivilizationalMorale Is EuropeDying?NotesonaCrisis will bepublishedbyBasicBooks inApril. dral: Europe,America,andPolitics WithoutGod is asynopsisofhisnewbook, Public PolicyCenterinWashington, D.C.Thisessay George Weigelisaseniorfellow oftheEthicsand intellectual, andpubliclifeoverthelastcentury. Western .ThatcrisisisdrivenbythemarginalizationofChristianityinEuropeancultural, Europe’s anemicbirthratesarethemostconcretemanifestationofaspiritualcrisisinhomeland By GeorgeWeigel 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, www.aei.org/nai D.C. 20036202.862.5800 To putthematterdirectly:Europe,andespe- for Public Policy Research American EnterpriseInstitute The CubeandtheCathe- , which indeed throughoutthedemocratic world. centuries areatworkinthe ,and eaten awayatEuropeanculture overthepasttwo Americans becausesomeof the acidsthathave origins isimportantinitself, andimportantfor crisis ofcivilizationalmorale.Understandingits description forthat“something”thantocallita thing veryseriousisafoot.Icanthinkofnobetter sense—by creatingthenextgeneration—some- ate thehumanfutureinmostelemental ier, andmoresecurethaneverbefore,failstocre- Black Deathofthefourteenthcentury. is depopulatingitselfatarateunseensincethe ulation willdeclinebyalmostone-quarter. Europe tion oftheformerEastGermany;andSpain’s pop- Germany willlosetheequivalentofpopula- has putit). “senescent” (asBritishhistorianNiallFerguson result ofthatisaEuropeincreasingly a brother, asister, anaunt,uncle,oracousin; Italian peoplewillhavenopersonalexperienceof sent fertilitypatternscontinue,60percentofthe early 1950s.Bythemiddleofthiscentury, ifpre- integration wereformedinthelate1940sand unimaginable whentheinstitutionsofEuropean have createdsituationsthatwouldbeen fact thatEuropeisdepopulatingitself. Europe’s crisisofcivilizationalmoraleisthebrute When anentirecontinent,healthier, wealth- Europe’s below-replacement-levelbirthrates ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ I N NITIATIVE March–April 2005 EW A TLANTIC 2 And one 1

European Outlook - 2 - Reading “” through Culture just one damn thing after another; Europe learned that from its faith in the God of the Bible. Getting at the roots of Europe’s crisis of civilizational The proponents of nineteenth-century European morale requires us to think about “history” in a different atheistic humanism turned this inside out and upside way. Europeans and Americans usually think of “his- down. Human freedom, they argued, could not coexist tory” as the product of politics (the struggle for power) with the God of Jews and Christians. Human greatness or economics (the production of wealth). The first way required rejecting the biblical God, according to such of thinking is a by-product of the French Revolution; avatars of atheistic humanism as Auguste Comte, Lud- the second is one of the exhaust fumes of Marxism. wig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Both “history as politics” and “history as economics” And here, Father de Lubac argued, were ideas with con- take a partial truth and try, unsuccessfully, to turn it sequences—lethal consequences, as it turned out. For into a comprehensive truth. Understanding Europe’s when you marry modern technology to the ideas of current situation, and what it means for America, atheistic humanism, what you get are the great mid- requires us to look at history in a different way, through twentieth century tyrannies—, fascism, cultural lenses. . Let loose in history, Father de Lubac con- Europe began the twentieth century with bright cluded, those tyrannies had taught a bitter lesson: “It is expectations of new and unprecedented scientific, cul- not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize tural, and political achievements. Yet within fifty years, the world without God. What is true is that, without Europe, the undisputed center of world civilization in God, he can only organize it against man.”4 Atheistic 1900, produced two world wars, three totalitarian sys- humanism—ultramundane humanism, if you will—is tems, a that threatened global holocaust, inevitably inhuman humanism. oceans of blood, mountains of corpses, the Gulag, and The first lethal explosion of what Henri de Lubac Auschwitz. What happened? And, perhaps more to the would later call “the drama of atheistic humanism” was point, why had what happened happened? Political and . For whatever else it was, the “Great War” economic analyses do not offer satisfactory answers to was, ultimately, the product of a crisis of civilizational those urgent questions. Cultural—which is to say spiri- morality, a failure of moral reason in a culture that had tual, even theological—answers might help. given the world the very concept of “moral reason.” Take, for example, the proposal made by a French That crisis of moral reason led to the crisis of civiliza- Jesuit, Henri de Lubac, during World War II. De tional morale that is much with us, and especially with Lubac argued that Europe’s torments in the 1940s were Europe, today. the “real world” results of defective ideas, which he This crisis has only become fully visible since the summarized under the rubric “atheistic humanism”— end of the Cold War. Its effects were first masked by the the deliberate rejection of the God of the Bible in the illusory peace between World War I and World War II; name of authentic human liberation. This, de Lubac then by the rise of totalitarianism and the Great suggested, was something entirely new. Biblical man Depression; then by the Second World War itself; then had perceived his relationship to the God of Abra- by the Cold War. It was only after 1991, when the ham, Moses, and Jesus as a liberation: liberation from seventy-seven-year-long political-military crisis that the terrors of gods who demanded extortionate sacri- began in 1914 had ended, that the long-term effects of fice, liberation from the whims of gods who played Europe’s “rage of self-mutilation” (as Aleksandr games with human lives (remember the Iliad and the Solzhenitsyn called it) could come to the surface of his- Odyssey), liberation from the vagaries of Fate. The tory and be seen for what they were—and for what they God of the Bible was different. And because biblical are. Europe is experiencing a crisis of civilizational man believed that he could have access to the one morale today because of what happened in Europe true God through prayer and worship, he believed that ninety years ago. That crisis could not be seen in its full he could bend history in a human direction. Indeed, and grave dimensions then (although the German gen- biblical man believed that he was obliged to work eral Helmuth von Moltke, one of the chief instigators toward the humanization of the world. One of Euro- of the slaughter, wrote in late July 1914 that the coming pean civilization’s deepest and most distinctive cul- war would “annihilate the civilization of almost the tural characteristics is the conviction that life is not whole of Europe for decades to come”5). The damage - 3 - done to the fabric of European culture and civilization Italian philosopher and minister for European affairs in in the Great War could only be seen clearly when the the Italian government, was chosen by the incoming Great War’s political effects had been cleared from the president of the European Commission, Portugal’s José board in 1991. Manuel Durão Barroso, to be commissioner of justice. Professor Buttiglione, who would have been considered The Naked European Public Square an adornment of any sane government since Cato the Elder, was then subjected to a nasty inquisition by the Contemporary European culture is not bedeviled by justice committee of the European Parliament. His atheistic humanism in its most raw forms; the Second convictions concerning the morality of homosexual World War and the Cold War settled that. Europe today acts and the nature of marriage were deemed by Euro- is profoundly shaped, however, by a kinder, gentler parliamentarians to disqualify him from holding high cousin, what the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor office on the European Commission—despite has termed “exclusive humanism”6: a set of ideas that, in Buttiglione’s clear distinction in his testimony between the name of democracy, human rights, tolerance, and what he, an intellectually sophisticated Catholic, civility, demands that all transcendent religious or spiri- regarded as immoral behavior and what the law regarded tual reference points must be kept out of European pub- as criminal behavior, and despite his sworn commit- lic life—especially the life of the newly expanded ment, substantiated by a lifetime of work, to uphold and . This conviction led to two recent defend the civil rights of all. This did not satisfy many episodes that tell us a lot about Europe’s crisis of civiliza- members of the European Parliament, who evidently tional morale and where that crisis leads politically. agreed with one of their number in his claim that The first episode involved the drafting of the Euro- Buttiglione’s moral convictions—not any actions he had pean Union’s new constitution—or, to be technically undertaken, and would likely undertake, but his convic- precise, a new European constitutional treaty. This tions—were “in direct contradiction of European law.” process set off a raucous argument over whether the Buttiglione described this to a British newspaper as constitution’s preamble should acknowledge Christian- the “new totalitarianism,” which is not, I fear, an exag- ity as a source of European civilization and of contem- geration. That this new totalitarianism flies under the porary Europe’s commitments to human rights and flag of “tolerance” only makes matters worse. But where democracy. The debate was sometimes silly and not does it come from? infrequently bitter. Partisans of European secularism One of the most perceptive commentators on the argued that mentioning Christianity as a source of Euro- European constitutional debate was neither a European pean democracy would “exclude” Jews, Muslims, and nor a Christian but an Orthodox Jew born in South those of no religious faith from the new Europe; yet Africa—J. H. H. Weiler, professor of international law these same partisans insisted on underscoring the and director of the Jean Monnet Center at New York Enlightenment as the principal source of contemporary University. Weiler argued that European “Christopho- European civilization, which would seem to “exclude” bia”—a more pungent term than Taylor’s “exclusive all those—including avant-garde European “postmod- humanism”—was the root of the refusal of so many ernists”—who think that Enlightenment rationalism Europeans to acknowledge what Weiler regarded as got it wrong. obvious: that Christian ideas and values were one of the The debate was finally resolved in favor of exclusive principal sources of European civilization and of humanism: a treaty of some 70,000 words (ten times Europe’s contemporary commitment to human rights longer than the U.S. Constitution!) could not find and democracy. This deliberate historical amnesia, room for one word, “Christianity.” Yet while following Weiler suggested, was not only ignorant; it was constitu- this debate, I had the gnawing sense that the real argu- tionally disabling. For in addition to defining the rela- ment was not about the past but about the future— tionship between citizens and the state, and the would religiously informed moral argument have a place relations among the various branches of government, in the newly expanded European public square? constitutions are the repository, the safe-deposit box, of A disturbingly negative answer to that question came the ideas, values, and symbols that make a society what four months after the final Euro-constitution negotiation. it is. Constitutions embody, Weiler proposed, the In October 2004, Rocco Buttiglione, a distinguished “ethos” and the “telos,” the cultural foundations and - 4 - moral aspirations, of a political community. To cut civilizational morale would reach its bitter conclusion those aspirations out of the process of “constituting” when Notre-Dame becomes Hagia Sophia on the Europe was to do grave damage to the entire project.7 Seine—another great Christian church become an Whether that happens remains to be seen, as it is Islamic museum. At which point, we may be sure, the not clear that the European constitutional treaty will be human rights proclaimed by those narrow secularists ratified by E.U. member states. But what is unhappily who insist that a culture’s spiritual aspirations have clear at this juncture is that Europe has produced a con- nothing to do with its politics would be in the gravest stitution that denies the vision of three of its most danger. prominent founding fathers—Konrad Adenauer, Alcide It need not happen: there are signs of spiritual and de Gasperi, and Robert Schuman, serious Christians to cultural renewal in Europe, especially among young a man, all of them convinced that the integrated and people; the Buttiglione affair raised alarms about the free Europe they sought was, in no small part, a project new intolerance that masquerades in the name of “tol- of Christian civilization.8 Europe’s contemporary crisis erance;” the brutal murder of Dutch film maker Theo of civilizational morale thus comes into sharper focus: van Gogh by a middle-class Moroccan-Dutch has Europe’s statesmen—or, at the least, too many of reminded Europeans that “root causes” do not really them—are denying the very roots from which today’s explain Islamist terrorism. The question on this side of “Europe” was born. Is there any example in history of a , though, is why should Americans care successful political project that is so contemptuous of its about the European future? I can think of three very own cultural and spiritual foundations? If so, I am good reasons. unaware of it. The first involves pietas, an ancient Roman virtue that teaches us reverence and gratitude for those on Boredom and Its Discontents whose shoulders we stand. A lot of what has crossed the Atlantic in the past The demographics are unmistakable: Europe is dying. several centuries has been improved in the process, The wasting disease that has beset this once greatest of from the English language to the forms of constitutional is not physical, however. It is a disease in democracy. Yet pietas demands that Americans remem- the realm of the human spirit. David Hart, another ber where those good things came from. A United theological analyst of contemporary history, calls it the States indifferent to the fate of Europe is a United disease of “metaphysical boredom”—boredom with the States indifferent to its roots. Americans learned about mystery, passion, and adventure of life itself. Europe, in the dignity of the human person, about limited and Hart’s image, is boring itself to death. constitutional government, about the principle of con- And in the process, it is allowing radicalized twenty- sent, and about the transcendent standards of justice to first century Muslims—who think of their forebears’ which the state is accountable in the school of freedom military defeats at Poitiers in 732, Lepanto in 1571, and called “Europe.” Americans should remember that, with Vienna in 1683 (as well as their expulsion from Spain pietas. We have seen what historical amnesia about civi- in 1492) as temporary reversals en route to Islam’s final lizational roots has done to Europe. Americans ought triumph in Europe—to imagine that the day of victory not want that to happen in the United States. is not far off. Not because Europe will be conquered by The second reason we can and must care has to do an invading army marching under the Prophet’s ban- with the threat to American security posed by Europe’s ners, but because Europe, having depopulated itself out demographic meltdown. Demographic vacuums do not of boredom and culturally disarmed itself in the process, remain unfilled—especially when the demographic vac- will have handed the future over to those Islamic immi- uum in question is a continent possessed of immense grants who will create what some scholars call “Eura- economic resources. One can already see the effects of bia”—the European continent as a cultural and political Europe’s self-inflicted depopulation in the tensions extension of the Arab-Islamic world. Should that hap- experienced in France, Germany, and elsewhere by ris- pen, the irony would be unmistakable: the drama of ing tides of immigration from North Africa, , and atheistic humanism, emptying Europe of its soul, would other parts of the Islamic world. Since 1970, which is have played itself out in the triumph of a thoroughly not all that long ago, some 20 million (legal) Islamic nonhumanistic theism. Europe’s contemporary crisis of immigrants—the equivalent of three E.U. countries, - 5 -

Ireland, Belgium, and Denmark—have settled in the United States, for their triumph would inevitably Europe. And while, in the most optimistic of scenarios, reinforce similar tendencies in our own high culture, these immigrants may become good European democ- and ultimately in our law. The judicial redefinition of rats, practicing civility and tolerance, there is another “freedom” as sheer personal willfulness, manifest in the and far grimmer alternative, as I have suggested above. 2003 Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas, was Europe’s current demographic trendlines, coupled with buttressed by citations from European courts. And what the radicalization of Islam that seems to be a by-product would it mean for the democratic project around the of some Muslims’ encounter with contemporary, secu- world if the notion that democracy has nothing to do larized Europe, could eventually produce a twenty-sec- with moral truth is exported from western Europe to ond century, or even late twenty-first century, Europe central and eastern Europe via the expanded European increasingly influenced by, and perhaps even dominated Union, and thence to other new democracies around by, militant Islamic populations, convinced that their the world? long-delayed triumph in the European heartland is at So Americans should, and must, care. We sever our- hand. selves from our civilizational roots if we ignore Europe Is a European future dominated by an appeasement in a fit of aggravation or pique. Our security will be fur- mentality toward radical Islamism in the best interests ther imperiled in a post-9/11 world if Europe’s demo- of the United States? That seems very unlikely. Neither graphics continue to give advantage to the dynamism of is a Europe that is a breeding ground for Islamic radical- radical Islamism in world politics. The American demo- ism; remember that the experience of life in Hamburg cratic experiment will be weakened if Europe’s legal def- was decisive in the evolution of both Mohammed Atta, inition of freedom as willfulness reinforces similar leader of the 9/11 “death pilots,” and of the pilot of the tendencies here in the United States—and so will the “fourth plane” of that grim day, the plane forced down democratic project in the world. in Shanksville, Pennsylvania—the one intended to hit the Capitol or the . Notes The third reason why the “Europe problem” is ours as well as theirs has to do with the future of the democ- 1. Nicholas Eberstadt, “What If It’s a World Population ratic project, in the United States and indeed through- Implosion? Speculations about Global De-population,” the out the world. The strange debate over the mere Global Reproductive Health Forum (, 1998; mention of Christianity’s contributions to European available at www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet/ civilization in the proposed European constitution was HUpapers/implosion/depop.html). especially disturbing because the amnesiacs who 2. Niall Ferguson, “?” New York Times Magazine, wanted to rewrite European history by airbrushing April 4, 2004. Christianity from the picture were doing so in service 3. Ibid. to a thin, proceduralist idea of democracy. To deny that 4. Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (San Christianity had anything to do with the evolution of Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 14. free, law-governed, and prosperous European societies 5. David Fromkin, Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the is, to repeat, more than a question of falsifying the past; Great War in 1914? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 224. it is also a matter of creating a future in which moral 6. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Mod- truth has no role in governance, in the determination ern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, of public policy, in understandings of justice, and in the 1989). definition of that freedom which democracy is 7. J. H. H. Weiler, Un Europa cristiana: Un saggio esplorativo intended to embody. (Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2003). Were these ideas to prevail in Europe, that would be 8. See Robert Wendelin Keyserlingk, Fathers of Europe bad news for Europe; but it would also be bad news for (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1972).

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