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There has never been a successful and long-lasting atheistic civilization \u2014 and there never will be \u2014 is the opinion of many astute observers. And it\u2019s also apparently the belief of radio giant Michael Savage, as he issued a dire warning on his Wednesday show.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless Christianity receives a new enthusiasm that sweeps the Western world, and Christianity itself rises up against the forces against it,\u201d he said, \u201cthe entire West will collapse in your lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Savage, author of numerous best-selling books and host of the award-winning Savage Nation radio program, has long warned that the West is imperiled by “savages” from without and is being savaged by militant secularists within. Now, addressing the crux of the matter, Savage is adamant that the death of Christian belief portends the death of the West, as he said:<\/p>\n
I can almost prove it. I can almost feel it. It\u2019s palpable to me.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m not the only who sees it or feels it. Anyone I know with a certain intelligence level above a minimal amount, sees what\u2019s going on in Europe, and they say that we\u2019re not far behind.<\/p>\n
Presumably, Savage was referring to secular Europe\u2019s acceptance of waves of unassimilable Muslim migrants \u2014 which include some jihadists \u2014 the Islamization of the continent, and the rapid moral decay bedeviling the entire West.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s plain to many that the erosion of the West\u2019s foundational faith is synonymous with the erosion of her foundation. Our second president, John Adams, issued a warning to this effect, saying in 1798, \u201cOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.\u201d Note that the West could still rightly be called \u201cChristendom\u201d at the time, and the founders generally meant \u201cChristian\u201d when using the term \u201creligious.\u201d Thus, Adams clearly didn\u2019t view Christianity as so many do today \u2014 as something to be kept \u201cseparate\u201d at all costs lest it become an impediment to our constitutional government \u2014 but as a prerequisite for it.<\/p>\n
Why? Well, British statesman Edmund Burke wrote in 1791, \u201cMen are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.\u201d And George Washington addressed the origin of moral chains five years later when saying, \u201cLet us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.\u201d<\/p>\n
While I won\u2019t delve deeply into the link between religion and morality here (I did so in this piece<\/a><\/span>), I will quote one of the many thinkers who did recognize it, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. As he wrote<\/a><\/span> in his 1880 work The Brothers Karamazov, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”\u00a0And this isn\u2019t hard to understand: Without acceptance of the eternal, unchanging, divine author of right and wrong, all moral questions (and, in particular, answers) are met with the cynical \u201cSays who?! Those are your values; don\u2019t impose them on me!\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, this explains how a once healthy civilization can collapse into self-imposed tyranny. A mature and moral adult who knows the \u201crules of life\u201d can safely negotiate the world just as a mature driver acquainted with the rules of the road can safely navigate the highways and byways. But a small, uncivilized child must be watched \u2014 and often controlled \u2014 by mother or father or nanny. \u00a0The overgrown uncivilized child called a barbarian must be subject to the same, except the watchers in his case will be the cops and criminal-justice system. And as it is for individuals so it is for groups, even country-size ones. Only, their nanny is the nanny state.<\/p>\n As for a collapse inviting foreign domination, morality also plays a huge role. After all, an invading force would rather contend with a drug-addled, effete population given to dissolute living than a land of disciplined Spartans. Yet it\u2019s easier still for the conquerors if their target is so out of touch with reality (and immoral living does reflect and encourage this, as it\u2019s a rejection and usually a denial of moral reality) that it\u2019s oblivious to danger.<\/p>\n Enter the modern West. To paraphrase Belgian playwright \u00c9mile Cammaerts, \u201cWhen people cease believing in God, it\u2019s not that they start to believe in nothing. It\u2019s that they\u2019ll believe in anything.\u201d And what do we believe in today?<\/p>\n When the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Bret Stephens wrote<\/a><\/span> last year that the \u201cdeath of Europe is in sight,\u201d he opined that its people stand \u201cfor shallow things, shallowly. Europeans [only] believe in human rights, tolerance, openness, peace, progress, the environment, pleasure.\u201d Yet it\u2019s worse than that.<\/p>\n There is only Truth, and then innumerable lies; disconnected from the former, a people inevitably falls victim to the latter, and we\u2019re embracing lies only the insane could believe. Pseudo-elite dogma currently is that a boy must be considered a girl if he claims he is so \u201cdeep down,\u201d even though the claim is made based on nothing but feelings. Moreover, we\u2019re to be considered bigots for not participating in his delusion or for denying him access to the bathrooms of his choice. Then there\u2019s that obsession with using Big Brother to coerce Christian businessmen into servicing faux weddings, which occurs while the Left makes not a peep when Muslim businessmen refuse to be party to them<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n And treason is the norm. A former aide to ex-British prime minister Tony Blair admitted<\/a> <\/span>that massive Third World immigration into the United Kingdom was orchestrated by the Labour Party in order \u201cto rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”<\/p>\n Swedish Social Democrat politician Mona Sahlin reveled in the Islamization of her nation, saying<\/a><\/span> in 2001 \u201cThe Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.\u201d Former UK \u201cequality minister\u201d Trevor Phillips \u2014 who helped popularize the debate-stifling term \u201cIslamophobia\u201d \u2014 just admitted<\/a> <\/span>that he \u201cgot almost everything wrong\u201d\u00a0on Muslim immigration in a 1996 report, saying he \u201cshould have known better\u201d than to think Muslims would integrate. Now he sings a different politically correct tune, stating that it\u2019s \u201cdisrespectful\u201d to expect Muslims to assimilate. And all the while, more patriotic Europeans are punished under \u201chate speech\u201d law for criticizing homosexuality or Islam.<\/p>\n Of course, there are fewer and fewer Europeans to punish all the time, as fertility rates among all Western peoples are below replacement level. So as religiosity increases most everywhere but the West, sneering, proudly secular Westerners are turning themselves into a dead-end \u201cspecies.\u201d And none of these problems would be occurring were we still robustly Christian.<\/p>\n Savage also mentions the Crusades and \u201cwhat happened that saved Christianity,\u201d as he put it. He was referring to how these events were defensive campaigns designed to protect the West from Muslim invasion<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> And note: The Crusades were proposed and preached by the leader of Europe\u2019s Christians, Pope Urban II.<\/p>\n Of course, this doesn\u2019t mean we must send soldiers to the Holy Land, only that we must become a holier land. We must strive to be today\u2019s Crusaders \u2014 meaning \u201cthose who are marked with a cross\u201d \u2014 as we once again infuse that symbol into our minds and hearts.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright 2016 The New American<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Photo of Michael Savage: AP Images<\/p>\n There has never been a successful and long-lasting atheistic civilization \u2014 and there never will be \u2014 is the opinion of many astute observers. And it\u2019s also apparently the belief of radio giant Michael Savage, as he issued a dire warning on his Wednesday show. \u201cUnless Christianity receives a new enthusiasm that sweeps the Western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":14910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinion","8":"wp-image-borders","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1b5da345e17385c65c2d8cf1e82dcf80_XL-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bgnN-3DO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14000"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22614,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14000\/revisions\/22614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image_pdf\"](\"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" "\\"View")
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