Continental Drift

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574417060138906916.html

[The Wall Street Journal] 21 Sep 2009--Europe has intractable problems with many immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, and, of course, many immigrants have intractable problems with Europe. In "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe," Christopher Caldwell ponders the current state of a continent where the aging indigenous population is gradually being supplanted by young newcomers. Today's immigrants might be considered hostile to European values, except that Europe itself increasingly has only a foggy sense of what those values might be.

"When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines," Mr. Caldwell writes, "it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter." The book is not a polemic; it is at once nuanced and blunt, serious and witty, while also avoiding what Mr. Caldwell calls "the preemptive groveling that characterizes most writing about matters touching on ethnicity." He does not advocate positions but instead offers reflections on a mix of trends, misunderstandings and self-delusions.

He also ruminates on far more than the increasing radicalization of generations of Muslim immigrants. Just as Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790) predicted a dire fate for the mass insurrection then aborning, Mr. Caldwell looks with alarm at Europe's continuing rejection of itself. Without a rejection of the religion and culture that sustained Europe for centuries, he says, the immigration troubles might never have occurred, or at least would not have been so severe: His verdict is suicide rather than murder.

The author notes that even the prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who is an atheist, has acknowledged that "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."