It's both. Caliphascism will be the immediate cause of the destruction of Europe, but it is (as you point out) an opportunistic disease. Just as people don't die from AIDS, they die from other diseases they could resist if they didn't have AIDS, Europe will fall to a plot it could have easily resisted if it were still healthy.

Oh god, how you all love to call down holy fire, rain of divine destruction and judgment of the gods upon all those dirty lowlifes and scum. The Anarchists, the Communists, the Nihilists, the Atheists, the Agnostics, the Negroes, the French, the Socialists, the un-Americans, the Amoralists, the Democrats, the Independents, the Pornographers, the people who actually put thought into the world around them, the ones who don't blindly accept and then shape their entire lives around what was shoved down their throats as children, the ones who think differently than you, the ones who have different values and cultures than you, the ones who think that lives are meant to be lived and shared with others and not spent writing a stupid little blog a couple times a day. Burn them! Burn the witches! For their sins and their differences they must be purged from our spiritual atmosphere before they corrupt more holy souls to their sacreligious ways. You claim to see the folly and destruction of others, but you cannot see your own. Let go of your arrogance for just on second, one second, only one, and realize that you AREN'T god. Western civilisation isn't under attack, it is on the attack. It continues its march everyday around the globe. Pulling cultures under the waters of its influence like an undertow does a surfer. Forgive me my vitriol, but rising bile does that.

You've got the tone and looniness down perfectly! You have a real gift as a satirist...

Why thank you. But your compliment only sidesteps the point of my sardonic tone. And for the record, if nothing follows an ellipsis, the sentence should trail off with four periods kinda like this....

Chuck, you are revealing more about yourself than you realize. That you answer an argument about "civilizational morale" and the sweetness of life (or lack of it) with crazy rant about burning people just tells me that you have no answer to what I was actually saying.

And your hysterical tone tels me that I hit you pretty close to home. You are presumably a secular leftish humanist type, and if my argument was wrong, you would just laugh and say, "Nonsense, People like me find life sweeter and more charming than ever in history. And we are inspired and excited by the new ideas, art-works and inventions that pour forth from our happy ranks."

You know that's the opposite of the truth, and that's why your reaction is so frenzied. And you feel threatened, because what people tend to fear most is having to give up their ideas. It seems like a kind of death.

You are trying to avoid admitting that your philosophy has failed; that the places where it has been the most thoroughly implemented, such as Western Europe, are characterized by demographic collapse, economic stagnation, timidity and a lack of new movements or inventions.

Changing ones ideas seems catastrophic, but really isn't. You might give serious consideration to coming over to the other side. For one thing, we seem to have more satisfying lives. At least it seems so to me, and I'm entitled to an opinion, since I live in SF, among more "amoralists, pornographers, socialists" etc. than you can shake a stick at.

I would leave it alone. But even the most devout nihilists continue to live and take action. I thank you for your opinion of me as a worthy convert to your side. But I have to leave it as thanks but no thanks. I have been there before and I don't wish to return.

You suppose that the reason for my bitterly derisive response to the post is due to my feeling insecure in my own secular humanism. You “hit me close to home” and that explains my hysteria? Consider if you will, that my “rant” was not so hysterical underneath the words. Follow the thoughts, not the words, for that is where the true story of satire is told.

Does it do us any good to argue. To clarify our points and ourselves. Would either of us change in the slightest. Just know that I am not the secular humanist you believe me to be. My primary point of contention is the ethnocentrism and the arrogance that hails a call to arms against those that think differently than you. You like to use such interesting phrases as "demographic suicide." Let me ask you, have you been to Europe, do you know many Europeans. If you meant the death of divisive nationalism, then you were correct. But if self-identification with one's homeland and culture was your intent, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.

By the way, if I were to convert, what would you recommend that I read. I suggest "Candide," "Don Quijote," and "Delusions of Immortality."

What is in a name?

If not a "secular humanist," then what?

I do know Europe. But demographics is the study of population statistics, and Europe's can be read by anybody. One stat that gives the flavor: By 2050 60% of Italians will not know what it is like to have a brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or neice.

Book? Perhaps Witness to Hope, a biography of John Paul II. (a long book, but the early parts, about his life under Naziism and Communism are the most pertinent.)

My post had no "call to arms against those that think different than I do." It IS a call to arms against certain ideas. The people who hold those ideas are mostly victims, not villains. It is they (I believe) who are being hurt and I only wish to help them out of what seems to be a trap. (Not that anyone is going to notice what I write. But it makes me feel better.)

Aha! There it is. The magical idea, and its been with us since civilization. "It IS a call to arms against certain ideas." That seems downright...silly...to me. That is where the contention lies, no. If some ideas are dangerous, incompatible with other ideas, and/or threatening to eachother, then are they to be fought against? Which ones should we fight against? You have heard this argument before I am sure. "The man on the other side of the fence thinks he is fighting for good and you for ill." I'm not trying to say that I wouldn't fight against some ideas because I truly believe in the apreferentiality of all things. But to my perception, when it comes to the moral dictation of people's lives and thoughts, if anything could be said to be wrong, that is.

In a morality of intention, you are as pure as they come. Who isn't? I know you are probably truly concerned for these people. I have been where you are. In a way, I am where you are. You wrote that you have more fulfilling lives in your beliefs. That may or may not be true, depending on the case. But if I once again believed in supernatural moral law, I would always have the feeling that I was being deceived. The best analogy I can come up with at the moment is the Matrix. It can be all kinds of pleasing and satisfying, but is it real?

There are things that I believe in. How could I not? I simply no longer feel the compulsion to reshape everyone's world view to my own. That would seem like the ultimate demographic collapse to me.

Nah, you don't believe in anythng. Not really. If you did you would not be pushing the preposterous idea that agruing in favor of ones beliefs is "moral dictation," or arrogance or some such.

If you live today, you breath in nihilism...it's the gas you breath."
--Flannery O'Connor

I like that quote. But even more I like your claim that I don't believe in anything, and at the same time note that I am pushing an idea. It is impossible to disbelieve everything. I defy anyone who "believes" (what a catch) themselves to be a true nihilist. It is by nature truly impossible to be a pure nihilist and exist at the same time. I'll let you ponder that one. To tell the truth I am a little put out by the fact that, at this late point in our conversation, you think that it is your argument that I so detest. What am I doing right now, the exact same thing you did when you posted. I don't mind you arguing against nihilism, in fact, I do the same on occasion. It's the claim that other people's views are not just wrong, but immoral (because I as you now know, doubt the framework of human morality), that irks me. If you really aren't afraid of different ideas, check out "Delusions of Immortality," it's far from political or liberal so don't worry. Just a good scholarly look at the history of world philosophies.