Decline & Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide

by Bruce S. Thornton

Once a colossus dominating the globe, Europe today is a doddering convalescent. Sluggish economic growth, high unemployment, an addiction to expensive social welfare entitlements, a dwindling birth-rate among native Europeans, and most important, an increasing Islamic immigrant population chronically underemployed yet demographically prolific--all point to a future in which Europe will be transformed beyond recognition, a shrinking museum culture riddled with ever-expanding Islamist enclaves. Decline and Fall tells the story of this decline by focusing on the larger cultural dysfunctions behind the statistics. The abandonment of the Christian tradition that created the West's most cherished ideals--a radical secularism evident in Europe's indifference to God and church--created a vacuum of belief into which many pseudo-religions have poured. Scientism, fascism, communism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, sheer hedonism-- all have attempted and failed, sometimes bloodily, to provide Europeans with an alternative to Christianity that can show them what is worth living and dying for. Meanwhile a resurgent Islam, feeding off the economic and cultural marginalization of European Muslims, knows all too well not just what is worth dying for, but what is worth killing for. Crippled by fashionable self-loathing and fantasies of multicultural inclusiveness, Europeans have met this threat with capitulation instead of strength, appeasement and apologies instead of the demand that immigrants assimilate. As Decline and Fall shows, Europe's solution to these ills--a larger and more powerful European Union--simply exacerbates the problems, for the EU cannot address the absence of a unifying belief that can spur Europe even to defend itself, let alone to recover its lost grandeur. As these problems worsen, Europe will face an unappetizing choice between two somber destinies: a violent nationalistic or nativist reaction, or, more likely, a long descent into cultural senescence and slow-motion suicide.

Genres: Islam

300 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2007

About the author

Bruce S. Thornton grew up on a cattle ranch in Fresno County, California. He received his B.A. in Latin from UCLA in 1975, and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature: Greek, Latin, and English, from UCLA in 1983.

Thornton is currently Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University in Fresno, California. He is the author of eight books and numerous essays and reviews on Greek culture and civilization and their influence on Western civilization. He also has written on contemporary political and educational issues, as well as lecturing at venues such as the Smithsonian Institute, Hoover Institution and the Air Force Academy, as well as numerous colleges and universities.

He was a 2009-2011 Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he currently is a research fellow.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is summary and synthesis of American right-wing criticism of the EU program and perceived European perfidy on the international stage viz. the war in Iraq, etc. Thornton, whose background is in Classics, builds a case against the continued viability of liberal values in Europe based primarily on the work of three other writers: Dr. Theodore Dalrymple (the magazine City Journal), Bat Ye'or ("Islam and Dhimmitude", "Eurabia"), and Robert Kagan ("Of Paradise and Power"). The essential argument of the book is that Europe as the cradle of liberal democracy is on a slow-motion suicide path due to birth rates below replacement value, massive Muslim immigration, the inability o assimilate immigrants, Utopian and multicultural political philosophies, and a sclerotic economic system burdened with too much regulation.

The fundamental problem with the book is the lack of detail. It is a very short book, basically a long-ish journal article. The book is well argued from a rhetorical perspective, but the lack of detail ultimately undermines confidence in the author's conclusions. One simple example is his equation of free markets with Christian doctrine. He talks of Christianity in general rather than Protestantism specifically (see Max Weber, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism").

One cleaver rhetorical device Thornton uses is to compare Europeans with the Eloi from H.G. Wells' "Time Machine". Traveling into the future man's evolution took two branches: frail hedonistic Eloi and brutish predatory Morlocks. He equates Europeans with the Eloi and Muslims as the Morlocks preying on them. Especially since H.G. Wells was a prominent socialist and some of his ideas have become blueprints for the EU enterprise. In a sense he spun H.G. Wells on his head.

[Andrew Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the author seems to cherry-pick facts and rely heavily on anecdotes, this book gives you plenty to think about.

[Smitty1e · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, cautionary volume. Three essays and a post-script.
They are all well written, scholarly and negative about the prospects for Europe, if one couldn't tell that from the cover.
The author seems to feel that Europe's departure from its moral roots is a major cause of the current strife.
Current events in Kosovo make this a timely read.
My German wife thought the book overstated the case in some of its cultural points, at least in the case of her homeland.