That said, THE ECONOMIST is pretty dense with articles and, unlike US mags, light on advertisements. Its 'take' is definitely European. Its okay if you take it with a grain of salt and realize where its coming from, literally AND figuratively. It will keep you more informed about World Affairs better than any domestic rag. Subscription is expensive though.
From repeated Latin American and Asian currency blow ups, to directions of markets, to predictions of political shifts, there is hardly a major trend in our time that The Economist was not completely wrong headed about. They have a batting average on a par with J. K. Galbraith or their "co-relgionists" in the CIA.
Are you aware that they have a separate US edition, so you are not see an unvarnished EU point of view?
There was a time perhaps when we looked to The Economist as a source of good information. They have long since gone farther to the left, and they are nearly as suspect as Newsweek.
Americans have matured, or at least some of us have.
This article is, of course, sensationalist hogwash of the sort that pervades European media. It is all rhetoric full of straw men.
As other posters have pointed out:
There has never been a religious war in the USA. There are still "religious wars" - or at least battles in Europe - just witness the Balkans. Just what was that all about? But, as usual, we do not hear that mentioned. We often hear of the Euros grousing about "social unrest" in the USA. As far as I know, we have not made open war on one another for some one hundred and fourty years; there are still NATO troops in the Balkans. What is that that I hear out of the editorial staff of The Economist? "Well, that is not really Europe, don't you know? And besides, they are not in the EU. I mean, really, it is the Balkans, after all, they are not really Europeans. Say, how is that pipeline out of the Caspian going?"
All of which would be, of course, another clutch of straw men and complete evasions, and it is a quite common sentiment in the EU.
I am surprised that they do not just call them "Mud Races." We might have to wait, however, for another EU "treaty" before we get to that sort of language.
I would also point out that we, unlike the Dutch, do not have members of our legislature feel that they should have to go into hiding for fear of being kill my one of their Muslim "minorities."
(Not that I should be perturbed if select members of our "representatives" laid low for a time.)
2) If they are referring to "culture war," the only reason that they are not having one is the fact that the left won in the EU. The reason that we are still at it is that we have a free press and, at least for the moment, are a free people.
I suspects that some of the tub thumbing we are hearing here is a mixture of bewilderment, impatience and disgust with a working democracy. 3) The EU will face a major "religious war" as they Face their growing Muslim population, a fact I alluded to above.
4) Do not discount the possibility of a reemergence of Christianity in Europe. It did not seem to me that those white faces in Saint Peter's Square during the funeral of JP2 where mostly American.
What we must realize is that the cultural right in the EU has essentially gone underground. We will hear scarcely a peep out of them in the EU media machines. That does not mean that they are not out there.
It may turn out that, yet again, America is 20 year ahead of Europe, and the GOP and the Christian Right were as "progressive" a force in survival of Western Civilization as Reagan and the GOP's Cold Warriors and Ronnie Reagan was back in the 1980's; the one facing up to external dangers and the other facing internal ones.
As usual, the "citizens" of the EU not only inhabit a fictitious "Nation," the nation that they are always complaining about is a fictitious one was well.
It is like talking to a not too bright, fading beauty in the throes of menopause.
It's the one weekly magazine I read. Time and Newsweek are probably more leftist, on the whole, and have 1/10 of the coverage.