Well, the continent had a great run. Almost 500 years of leading the world. And that doesn’t even include two of the most magnificent civilizations in human history, Greece and Rome, out of which some of the wisest human philosophy, science, governmental theories, law, and freedom arose. The British Empire and Navy were the catalysts in ending slavery. That empire also spread democracy and human freedom around the globe—two concepts England apparently no longer believes in. Europe gave us the spread of Christianity, the roots of the American Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and so much more.
It gave us, in a backhanded way, the United States of America, the most dynamic, innovative, and successful country the world has ever seen. Indeed, the last half of the second millennium after Christ was perhaps the peak of human history to this point.
But Europe has almost totally, completely abandoned what made it supreme.
What happened to Europe?
That’s a historical question, of course (in one sense, every question is), and the answer is subject to many and varied interpretations. Some people obviously like what Europe has become; the people there keep voting for what they are getting, so they must have some affinity for the socialist, welfare, oppressive, nanny states that now dominate the continent. Some people actually like being slaves; it’s easy. And some of those countries, if you don’t mind being burped all your life by the government, are nice places to live, with some of the longest life spans on the planet. You can have that—if you don’t mind being burped by the government all your life.
But that’s the problem—governments never know when to stop burping their citizens and start making them live mature, grown-up, responsible lives. It’s called tyranny, and Europe has fallen into it, big time. Donald Trump doesn’t trust Europe one bit, and that continent, sadly, has given him every reason not to do so. Vice-President Vance ripped into the Europeans, to their faces, last week, denouncing their “social democracies” as illiberal, intolerant, authoritative, and globalist. They’ve opened their borders to massive, illegal, barbaric hordes, disrupting social services that many Europeans have become dependent upon, spiking crime, and creating dangerous ethnic “diversity” composed of people who hold their host countries in utter contempt. Mr. Vance was exactly right, and the Europeans were aghast that somebody—especially a Trumpian American—exposed their hypocrisy and decadence to the world.
But European leaders almost certainly have no intention, in the immediate future at least, of taking any corrective measures. They’re planning a meeting to try to figure out what to do about Trump. Europe, once the greatest continent on earth, is now an utter cesspool of degeneracy and decrepitude. Another Dark Ages.
Again, I ask, what happened to Europe?
The simple and most direct answer is that Europe has turned its back on what made it great in the first place—God and its Christian heritage. Edmund Burke wrote correctly that Christianity is one of the major foundations (along with Greece and Rome) of Western Civilization. After the fall of Rome, Europe arose from the ashes within a Christian milieu. Christianity civilized the savages and gave Europe education, morality, science, art, commerce, and freedom. Europe, over the past few generations, has abandoned God, having accepted the anti-religious, secular philosophies of the French Enlightenment, Darwinism, and Marxism. As a result, the continent has drifted from its roots and is now floating aimlessly in a sea of nihilism, with no agreement on what is right or wrong, good or bad, righteous or evil, with no commonality to unite the people, with goals undefined. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalms 11:3). In this case, with the foundations destroyed, where ARE the righteous?
I lived in England for about two years earlier in my life, and their “unchurched” society was quite manifest. Not that the British were “bad” or “evil” people, they just had little or no interest in Christianity anymore. And that was/is true all across Europe now. Oh, there are still countless near-empty church buildings all over the continent, but what little Christianity exists in Europe now is basically form over substance. It is no longer the driving or guiding force for their leaders or the people. Even their current Catholic Pope is a Marxist and globalist. Thus, again, we see a continent adrift from its origins, being guided by its own unaided human “reason,” and that kind of “leadership” always produces confusion and ultimate disaster. What we are witnessing in Europe today is a continent wandering aimlessly without divine guidance, with no idea where to go or how to get there.
When men abandon God, the only thing left is tyranny—an oppressive, despotic government. “If men are not governed by God,” William Penn wrote, “they must be governed by tyrants.” European politicians thought they could solve the world’s problems minus divine direction. And actually, many of them have been thinking that way for the past 100 years or so. Such was the philosophy of Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, and other murderous repressive regimes. The sad thing is, when Eastern Europe finally was able to break free from atheistic despotism, they hadn’t learned the lesson that they must turn back to the God and traditions that had made them strong in the first place. They followed politicians who had/have no more light within them than Hitler or Lenin had. Hence, Europe 2025.
The Leftists are still in control in Europe, and they hate the populism of America now, they fear Donald Trump as much as the Leftists in America do. What we, in America, need to learn, and oh, how we need to learn it: if we give our country over to godless Leftism as Europe has done, then America will end up in the same condition that Europe is now in. Or worse. Are we going to learn or not?
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