That's a different issue. I don't dispute that the future is often hard to forecast. The issue is whether people in the West feel their civilization has any distinct value.
The World Values Survey, an ongoing multinational survey of people in about 100 countries, surveys people about many things. One of them is "How proud are you of your nationality?", and I just retrieved the percentages answering "very" for some randomly selected countries from the West, the Islamic world and other places. Here are those percentages, from most to least:
1. Morocco 85.9
2. Pakistan 81.2
3. Mexico 79.1
4. Saudi Arabia 74.5
5. USA 72.4
6. Canada 67.1
7. Sweden 67
8. UK 48.9
9. France 39.9
10. Russia 31.6
11. Czech Rep. 26.6
12. Belgium 23.7
13. Japan 22.8
14. Germany 22.2
15. Holland 19.5
16. S. Korea 17.4
So the U.S. and Canada are, as in so many things, outliers in patriotism among Western nations. And Swedish pride may be due to the globally hyped "Swedish" model. And Germany could be explained by war guilt. But why is Holland so lacking in self-confidence, despite its being able to take pride in its reputation as the ultimately tolerant country? Why are the French, the British, the Belgians and the Czechs so much less proud than the Saudis, the Moroccans and the Pakistanis, despite arguably having much more to be proud about?
There is such a thing as too much patriotism, and it's not a sure thing that lack of pride in a civilization means you will quietly watch it die, but there appears to be something amiss in the West these days, a guilt that has some basis in reality but, in global terms, is vastly out of proportion to that reality.
The Nazis made nationalism and pride in one's country an evil concept in the eyes of many.
Nowadays if you see a rally with a lot of American flags, the lefty loonies will inevitably compare it with a Nuremberg Rally.
For a start how do you define patriotism, what was going on that persons mind.
Before the War, Britain was a pacifist nation, America an Isolaniontist, as soon as we had no choice we rallied to the cause.
Just because we don't want a war and would rather seek a peaceful resolution does not mean we wont fight if called upon.
That is the mistake despots make over and over again.
Before Argentina invaded the Falklands i would bet a survey in the UK would reveal most would not fight to keep it and would not even know where they were.
But the whole nation rallied when Argentina did.
Before the Second World war the Oxford debating society passed a resolution that the house would not fight and die for there country.
But fight they did.
New countries are always more patriotic than older countries, but that does not mean we wont fight if called upon.
In Europe we don't make a song and dance over everything.
And in Europe we don't have students objecting to Military recruitment, and we don't need to maintain vigils outside Army recruiting depots.