EUROPEAN CONNECTION: Don't fence me in ... I'm religious and political?

Europe's first revolution | New Statesman
HT - Cranmer: MEPs: ‘The EU is of a secular and neutral nature’
We Are Losing Europe to Islam | Diana West : Townhall

America is going the way of Europe ... unbeknown to the majority of her citizens!

John Steinbeck's novella was titled - Of Mice and Men; but God said - of neither mice nor men ...

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.

But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

2 Peter 3:3-10

But first a metaphorical interlude ...

Farmer Jones was content with his life's work: his terraced fields were solid and easily maintained; his dual-source irrigation system was state of the art; his stock fine and deep in DNA; his bio-seed stores unrivaled; and his children and grandchildren legally provided for ... a century at least if the wisdom they were taught ruled their lives.

But his neighbor was not so content, nor so wise: when the 100 year flood came, it took his poorly built terraces, polluted his wells, killed his stock, saturated his seed stores, and took the house and barns as a final thought. On their way to removing the new county road, the waters and the flotsam and jetsam undermined Jones' terraces and took his farm too!

Though the global financial crisis is the easiest correlation here, the demise of Europe as a viable Western ally will cascade across the sea and destroy all that is not destroyed by the fiduciary failure of our financial community.

So how is it that I see America following Europe's lead in to oblivion?

First, Europe's new leaders believe they can correct "mistakes" of the past (Crusades, wars, poverty, inhumanity, etc.) by ignoring almost 1,500 years of Christian influence.

Papal mutterings about this perceived "apostasy" have been increasing in volume for some time now - but what really infuriated the Vatican was the presentation, back in 2003, of the first draft of the ill-fated European constitution.

In its preamble, the authors had indulged themselves in a spot of root-tracing. Europe's debt to ancient Greece and Rome was solemnly acknowledged. So, too, were the achievements of the Enlightenment. About the Christian roots of European civilisation, however, there was nothing.

The implication was obvious: everything between Marcus Aurelius and Voltaire was to be reckoned mere backwardness and superstition. [...]

Today's secular Europe may well pride itself on having arrived at a post-religious state of moral and intellectual superiority - but it is no less Christendom's heir for that.

In the USA it is a popular recreation, and Starbucks' moment, to wax on about our evil and religious past, while revealing a severe case of anti-religious ignorance marinated in an unhealthy canister of secular arrogance; in so doing the secular humanist, not seeing the baby in the dirty water, throws it out.

What they conveniently forget in their snobbery is the existence of such grand institutions as Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Loyola; the multiple and nationwide hospitals of the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, the benevolent work of the Amish, Mennonites, the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, and the senior care and retirement facilities of manifold others, etc. and etc.

All undeniable foundational and historically relevant religious entities.

Second, Europe's new leaders believe they can get away with the former if they "ring-fence" all religions and politics.

... the con viction [sic] that the religious and political spheres should be rigorously ring-fenced - and even more rigorously patrolled - has widespread support in Brussels. As one group of MEPs protested, in an official letter of complaint to the president of the European Parliament: "The EU is of a secular and neutral nature."

Almost daily, in America, someone (usually a politician but also an entertainer or academician), somewhere stands to condemn all things religious, throwing the baby, the water, and the clean out together.

A good example of this attitude of the left is the fairness doctrine (it's believed by some that this abomination will be reinstated in the event of an Obama victory); this is nothing more than cristophobia in drag.

Third, Europe's new leaders believe there are no absolutes and are willing to institute a broad set of absolutes to stop belief in them.

Pope Benedict asked last year: ‘Is it not surprising that today's Europe, while hoping to be seen as a community of values, more and more seems to contest that universal and absolute values exist?’

Yet he ought to have made it clear that the EU has developed its own universal and absolute articles of faith which are not neutral, but decidedly anti.

If a state seeks to be neutral in the effect of its policies then it requires a greater level of state intervention to ensure that inequalities are negated. [Cranmer]

A refreshing wind in all of this elitist duplicity and stupidity is Benedict XVI's adamant stand against the EU Parliament's efforts to bury their heads in the sand.

Most of our (America's) cultural war has been fought on this battlefield ... sanctity of human life, separation of church and state, Constitutional law and legislating from the bench, capital punishment, free speech, etc.

Cranmer is with Pope Benedict XVI in his opposition to the EU’s militant secularism.

One cannot be ‘neutral’ in matters of religion - pretending to broker between ‘equal’ faiths and impartial in arbitration between competing worldviews - for that neutrality presupposes a higher level of knowledge and constitutes itself an article of faith. There is no neutrality to be had because neutrality needs as much justification as any other position.

Secular humanism has progressively become more absolutist in its quest to silence conservatives and people of faith by ridiculing the belief in absolutes ... and the irony seems to be lost on them.

Fourth, multiculturalism has been the weapon of choice for Europe and the European Union ... a weapon incapable of aiding in a suicide ... for combating the Third Jihad.

With Wall Street convulsing, and the White House race intensifying, the question "Who lost Europe" is on no one's lips, let alone minds. Indeed, the question begs another: "Is Europe lost?"

The answer to the second question is, "No, not yet." And losing Europe, I would add, is by no means inevitable. But that doesn't mean the continent isn't currently hell-bent to accommodate the dictates of Islamic law, bit by increasingly larger bit. Such a course of accommodation, barring reversal, will only hasten Bernard Lewis' famous prediction that Europe will be Islamic by century's end. [Diana West]

The USA has been duped into a multicultural stupor by leftists and special interest groups; Islamic groups have used this stupor to their advantage. If America doesn't wake up, it will have more than an illegal immigration problem.

The west faces increasing tension with the Muslim world. [...]

As the first decade of the third Christian millennium draws to an increasingly troubled close, the verdict of historians on its significance can already be anticipated. Two themes will predominate. The first, exemplified by the present carnage in the financial markets, will be the quickening of the west's decline relative to China and India; the second, not entirely coincidentally, will be the tensions in the relationship between the west and the Muslim world.

A bleak picture indeed ... for a nation so self-absorbed and carnal that it might well face a day not too distant when it cannot defend itself. A nation's military security is intrinsically tied to its economic security ... and as we found when Russia invaded Georgia, we're lacking in both areas.

Christianity, Europe, Faith,
Geopolitics, History, Multiculturalism,
Muslims, Politics, Religion