Left-wing media in both the UK and the US are on the verge of starting to look into the future of the West and are seeing Europe. Almost overnight the grand soft-despotic experiment of Europe, formerly so envied by the chattering progressive elites in both the UK and the US, seems tarnished and vulnerable. Will the euro survive? Will Europe survive? These are now open questions--and for the moment, the balance seems to weigh upon the negative.
We are not so sure about the immediate. But we are certain that if Europe does not repent and return to Christ and to Europe's Christian foundations, what we are witnessing at present will be a mere harbinger of what is to come--whether the fall and dismemberment and repentance of Europe be one year or fifteen years or fifty years hence. And a continental-wide return to Christ will not occur without a thorough repudiation of the soft-despotic welfare state and the terrible idolatry of the humanist Enlightenment upon which it has been built. The choices are few and they are increasingly stark.
Consider the following analysis in the pro-welfarist, soft-despotic championing New York Times.
Across Western Europe, the lifestyle superpower, the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis that threatens the euro has also undermined the sustainability of the European standard of social welfare, built by left-leaning governments since the end of World War II. Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.
Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union.
But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead. With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.
For decades, European governments have robbed Peter to pay Paul. Now, Peter has disappeared, and no-one is left to keep paying Paul. For a while, this was papered over by the European Community which basically put off the day of reckoning for a brief time. Richer, more frugal northern countries--well, actually, Germany--poured billions of euros into imprudent, partying Club-Med profligate countries--all for the sake of the European ideal. Now every nation, Germany included, looks like it is going down the tubes. Europe has become too boated not to fail.
But, hoping against hope, the elite Eurocrats cling on to the idea that Europe can be rescued. All it will take, apparently, is a bit of austerity, a mere trimming of the sails of the grand European ship of state. But welfarism must remain in place. Must. Europe cannot survive without welfarism. Consider these profoundly revealing words from Joschka Fischer:
More broadly, many across Europe say the Continent will have to adapt to fiscal and demographic change, because social peace depends on it. "Europe won't work without that," said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, referring to the state's protective role. "In Europe we have nationalism and racism in a politicized manner, and those parties would have exploited grievances if not for our welfare state," he said. "It ’s a matter of national security, of our democracy."Read those words again. The failing Roman Empire clung to power through the artifice of the Emperor distributing bread to the mobs in Rome, so they would not riot. Only by paying them off, according to Fischer, has Europe been able to hold back the nationalist and racist mobs that would otherwise be baying for blood. Without welfarism, there would be no social peace.
In the end, Rome could not sustain itself. It ran out of provinces to steal from and wealth to pillage and nations to conquer in order to feed its welfare habit. Europe will eventually go the same way--only more quickly, and hopefully with less bloodshed--because soft-despotism is, well, soft. It is a paper tiger. How will those nationalists and racists react when they have to ante up and start paying their own way? What will the unionists do? We think we know. As someone said, "We see our future, and it is a riot."
France will ultimately have to follow Sweden and Germany in raising the pension age, Fischer argues. "This will have to be harmonized, Europeanized, or it won't work. You can't have a pension at 67 here and 55 in Greece," Mr. Fischer said. The problems are even more acute in the "new democracies" of the euro zone (Greece, Portugal and Spain) that embraced European democratic ideals and that Europe embraced for political reasons in the postwar era, perhaps before their economies were ready. They have built lavish state systems on the back of the euro, but now must change."
Lavish state systems, funded by Germans. It must change if Europe is to survive--but we know it will likely not. The PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) entered the Euro-zone for what they could extract from it, not because of being committed to some great idealistic non-national empire. If they are made to stop extracting, the domestic outstretched hands are likely to prove too demanding. Leaving the euro and defaulting is far more likely. And we know what happens when the French entitled classes are thwarted. Germans lecturing Frenchmen about austerity will likely go down like a cup of cold vomit.
The only unknown is how long Germans will tolerate being pillaged, before they, too, riot. The current crop of politicians believe that Europe is more important to the German people than Germany is. They have willed themselves blind. Kate Connolly, writing from Berlin, describes the building volcano of frustration in Germany over being
a country that for years, to make up for its warmongering past, shouldered the burdens of the European project. For decades it funded the largest share of Europe's bulging budgets and grand schemes, putting its own interests second. But now it is tired, indebted and running out of cash, and wants other members to show that they are as dedicated to the project before it continues to allow them access to its ATM.
And every thoughtful American will be looking at what is unfolding now in Europe and will be seeing a pre-release trailer of the future of their own nation. Ditto for every thoughtful Australian and New Zealander.
On the other hand, never underestimate the power of idolatry to enslave the human heart. As Fischer reveals above, Europe is enslaved to soft-despotism as long as it hands out bread at the circus. We reckon German voters will capitulate and go along because their government long ago became their god. And their government, in its turn, worships the gods of Europe and the euro--the universal new Man.
Far more likely, then, is the long slow lingering decline of all failed socialist regimes. Within a generation we predict that there will be bread lines and empty shop shelves throughout Europe. The false religion of Europe has led its people to look to the state and intone, "Give us this day our daily bread." The Living God most often destroys such terrible idolatries by making devotees experience the vacuity of their faith.
Because the people of Europe have turned away from the Lord to whom they were covenanted in holy troth, because long ago they stopped looking to Him for their sustenance, instead placing their faith in human government, making government their god, it will likely end up that they will be made to hunger greatly--literally.
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