Europas två kulturkrig

George Weigel, katolsk samtidsanalytiker, skriver en text i Commentary Magazine som bara måste läsas. Den handlar om Europas två kulturkrig. Det ena är kriget mot familjen och allt som andas tradition och kristendom. Det andra kriget handlar om konflikten med den växande skaran islamister som lever i mer eller mindre isolerade enklaver i Europa. I båda krigen spelar tolkningen av ordet tolerans liksom den demografiska utvecklingen en stor roll. Weigel skriver:

The aggressors in Culture War A are radical secularists, motivated by what the legal scholar Joseph Weiler has dubbed ”Christophobia.” They aim to eliminate the vestiges of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture from a post-Christian European Union by demanding same-sex marriage in the name of equality, by restricting free speech in the name of civility, and by abrogating core aspects of religious freedom in the name of tolerance. The aggressors in Culture War B are radical and jihadist Muslims who detest the West, who are determined to impose Islamic taboos on Western societies by violent protest and other forms of coercion if necessary, and who see such operations as the first stage toward the Islamification of Europe””or, in the case of what they often refer to as al-Andalus, the restoration of the right order of things, temporarily reversed in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella.

The question Europe must face, but which much of Europe seems reluctant to face, is whether the aggressors in Culture War A have not made it exceptionally difficult for the forces of true tolerance and authentic civil society to prevail in Culture War B.

Han skriver om hur ordet tolerans har kommit att uppfattas:

[The postmodern Europe] can only conceive of ”your truth” and ”my truth” while determinedly rejecting any idea of ”the truth,” it can only conceive of tolerance as indifference to differences””an indifference to be enforced by coercive state power, if necessary. The idea of tolerance as engaging differences within the bond of civility (as Richard John Neuhaus once put it) is itself regarded as, well, intolerant. Those who would defend the true tolerance of orderly public argument about contending truth claims (which include religious and moral convictions) risk being driven, and in many cases are driven, from the European public square by being branded as ”bigots.”

Europas födelsetal är mycket låga:

At the beginning of the 21st century, the world is still chock-full of natural resources. Europe, however, is running out of the most crucial resource””people.

The overall picture is sobering enough. Not a single EU member has a replacement-level fertility rate, i.e., the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population. Moreover, eleven EU countries””including Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, and all three Baltic states””display “negative natural increase” (i.e., more annual deaths than births), a clear step down into a demographic death-spiral. …

Over the next quarter-century, the number of workers in Europe will decline by 7 percent while the number of over-sixty-fives will increase by 50 percent, trends that will create intolerable fiscal difficulties for the welfare state across the continent. … Demography is destiny, and Europe’s demographics of decline””which are unparalleled in human history absent wars, plagues, and natural catastrophes””are creating enormous and unavoidable problems.

De låga födelsetalen är kopplingen mellan de båda kulturkrigen. Kriget mot familjen har fört med sig att allt färre skaffar barn. Följden har blivit allt lägre födelsetal och minskande inhemska befolkningar. Detta vacuum har fyllts på av massiv invandring från den muslimska världen. Här finns risken att ett identitetslöst Europa förlorar sig själv.

Weigels artikel är 10 sidor lång och ovanstående citat gör den inte rättvisa. Bättre då att läsa den i sin helhet.