Leaps of faith...

A friend sent me a link to this NYT Magazine piece on Muslims in Europe, An Islamic Alienation by David Reiff.

I found it an interesting effort, but a futile one. The author seems to be too much a part of the world of leftish multiculturalism to stand outside and effectively criticize.

This is his concluding paragraph...

...Figuring out how to prevent Europe's multicultural reality from becoming a war of all against all is the challenge that confronts the Continent. It makes all of Europe's other problems, from the economy to the euro to the sclerosis of social democracy, seem trivial by comparison. Unfortunately, unlike those challenges, this one is existential and urgent and has no obvious answer.

Wrong. All these problems are really the same problem. Europe has lost its faith. Its Christian faith, its Jewish faith, its faith in its own civilization, and in the future. Immigrants don't assimilate because there's now nothing to assimilate to. Their economies are stagnant because the missing entrepreneurial spirit is a kind of faith, a faith that is willing to sacrifice present comforts to build dream-like futures. Its democracies are sclerotic because real leadership is a form of faith, a willingness to take perilous paths of change or reform without knowing exactly how things will turn out. Europe's multiculturalism is a fig leaf to hide its lack of belief in anything. Its pacifism is a lie to cover the unwillingness to fight for anything.

Our leaders, and I in my small way as a voter and blogger, can send our troops into battle because we can see, can feel the future, and because we can cherish it and know that it can be good. And we can do that because we believe in what we are ourselves, and in our past, and can imagine future generations sharing what we have. We read of Washington and his men on their desperate march to the attack at Trenton, and they are us. Our faith is unbroken. We still believe that we can fight evil, and accomplish miracles. At least enough of us still do to elect leaders who are willing to call on us to take leaps of faith...