Mark Steyn has hammered this home repeatedly about Europe, and it’s happening here to some extent as well. Demographics matter. When native populations stop having kids, and immigrant populations keep having large families and don’t assimilate (Muslims in Europe, for example, or some Mexicans here), sooner or later you won’t recognize the country.
}:-)4
Europe’s abandonment of Christianity is the result of a profound pessimism. The generation after the war aimed to rebuild Europe alone the old lines, to restore the old Europe as it was before 1914, except without the bellicosity and with more social justice. As a result, the people got to work and from the huge mounds of bricks reconstructed their cities. One has to admire especially the Germans, and their great energy, their willingness to skimp and save, and their willingness to work as hard at restoring their homes as they displayed in war.
But already by the late ‘70s, the novelist Guenter Grass observed that the German people were no longer reproducing themselves. Not only had they failed to replaced the 6 millioin who had died during the war, but that the population was shrinking. During the war they had got used to the idea of foreign workers brought in to replace the men in uniform. Now the Gaestarbiters from Italy and of course Turkey were making up for the shortage of German workers. And the new generation of Germans more and more disdained “that”sort of work and left it up to the Italians and the Turks. The new generation was less energetic than the old and preferred to enjoy the prosperity that appeared in the ‘70s. And of course the social benefits that came from a government that could leave the defence of their country to the Americans. In any case, their country no longer had any large purpose than providing for the comfort of its population. They themselves had to purpose to serve, except their private ones, which less and less included children. What we see, therefore, is something we see in all nations beyond their best days, whether it be Venice or Holland in the 18th century. The most basic of all institutions, the family, began to decay. Then of course the Church.