If you go back to pre-WW I Euro-American and Christian society, you find an immensely vibrant, self-confident society that had developed the most humane systems of government in the world's history; had the greatest, most productive economic systems, all primarily capitalistic; and was making tremendous, unheard of, technical, scientific, and medical advances everywhere. Then some damn fools came along and set that whole society afire and indulged in a four year long, unspeakable blood bath that surpassed all prior wars in its total frightfulness and pointlessness. That, in turn, profoundly demoralized the Western intellectual class, enabling communism in all its forms, including progressivism, to gain a powerful hold on society and the intellectual class, a hold it has never lost. Indeed, WW I was and remains the pre-eminent catastrophe of Western Civilization.
I think we would have been better off if Britain stayed out of WWI, even if it meant the Kaiser won. Think of all the bad stuff that wouldn’t have happened: No Hitler, no Bolsheviks, just to name a few.
Good comments on this topic. In terms of Western Civilization, the number of its ills today is almost countless. As far as when it began, I think you have to trace the roots of the decline back to the French Enlightenment and the development of rationalism. That in turn infected the intellectual and ruling elite throughout Europe and then trickled down to the lower classes. While many of the emerging middle class was working hard and attempting to enjoy the fruits of their intellectual and manual labors as enshrined in the Protestant work ethic which is so vilified today, the rich elites of Europe, especially the landed gentry in England, lived a debauched lifestyle and still do for that matter. America was slower along this line of moral decay thanks to the “Great Awakenings” that occurred between the early 18th century and the late 19th century throughout this land; but the liberal progressives have been working night and day to accelerate the process of decay over the past 100 years here in our primary and secondary schools, in our colleges and universities and via the liberal media and movie industries. Nature abhors a vacuum, moral or otherwise, so as Christianity is rejected by the West, Islam is invading. History does not repeat itself exactly, it cannot; but the rise of ISIS and associated Islamic extremist groups seems very similar to the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire from about 376 to 800 AD as well as the Islamic conquests in Europe stopped only by Charles Martel and the Franks at the Battle of Tours. If there is not a return to Judeo-Christian values and beliefs in the West then Islam will conquer since their faith, as horribly misplaced and evil as it is, will prove to be stronger, and it is all a matter of the strength of ones beliefs, not scientific or technical superiority, that will be the determining factor in the end in this clash of civilizations. Even now we have the scientific and technical capabilities to repel them decisively; but not the strength of will to do so.