Is Western civilization crumbling before our very eyes?
When I look around me, it is so obvious that Western civilization is rotting from within. Standards in public life and standards in private are in decline. As far as I can discern, there is little doubt that this is so. How people behave, how people speak, how people dress, family life, the declining influence of religion, standards in education, in fact, standards in most walks of life seem to have taken a beating.

I am old enough to be able to remember different times. It is not so long ago that there were standards worthy of being emulated by the masses. For example, in the United Kingdom, BBC English was the gold standard in language: people who wanted to be socially mobile aspired to being able to speak like radio and television announcers. Then there were the grammar schools which all children who wished to be educated well would aspire to enter.

Children, except in exceptional circumstances, were raised in a conventional family: there was a mother and father to correct and discipline the children. Mothers did their duty, and endeavoured to raise their children correctly, very often to very high standards of behaviour, achievement, and dress. Moreover, mothers would take pride in keeping a good table for their husbands, children, extended family, and visitors.

A formal and an informal education were given to children. That means to say that they received an education in the school and in the home. Further, children from good homes would be encouraged to go to church on Sundays, and if not to church proper, then certainly to Sunday school, where they learnt the fundamentals of their faith, and where the proper way to behave, already taught in the home, would be reinforced.

In short, children were given direction, and solid moral values.

In school, they were put through the rigours of a proper education: they were pushed to achieve. Pushed by their teachers and pushed by their parents. Their achievements were measured by rigorous tests and examinations, which not all children passed. A child passed an exam only when he was good enough to do so. Children who didn't measure up, failed; and there was no easy way out, either. There was none of the current ‘feel good factor’, the ‘touchy-feely’, everybody-has-got-to-pass nonsense. If a child had not come up to standard, he failed, and that was the end of it. Of course, he would be given the chance to re-sit the examination – often the following year.

The family, even the extended family, would see to it that children dressed appropriately for the occasion. This went for the less well off, too. No excuses were made for the poor in this regard. They just had to try and keep up, somehow.

In public life, standards were generally much higher, too. Prime ministers led by example. They took the decisions they felt were right for the nation. They were not governed by opinion polls, and they generally didn’t pander to this lobby group or that. In addition, they didn’t shy away from the tough decisions they felt were necessary to maintain public order. They legislated on behalf of the people in order to maintain high standards of civilized life. The crime rate was low, and when people misbehaved, they would be sanctioned by the system, and they were punished accordingly.

Money, profit, and economic growth, though very important, were not the be all and end all of life. There were other considerations. People were less materialistic than they are today: they were prepared to make do with less. As a result, mothers, for the most part, stayed at home to raise their children, realizing that nobody else could raise them as well, and realizing too that it was their duty to raise them. Furthermore, because women stayed at home, there was an adequate supply of newborn babies to ensure the survival of the nation. British governments, at least, didn’t look to immigrants to fill the gap (the post-War period was an exception). If more children were needed, then the father would benefit from increased tax benefits to encourage more procreation.

In general, the system worked well; though, as standards tended to be rigid, they could be a little stifling at times. But there was order in society; and people knew where they fitted in. Generally, people were not lonely, because there was always the family to fall back on.

With the Sixties, things started to change dramatically. With the Sixties came the ‘anything goes’ ‘culture’ (if one dare call it that), and Western civilization started to decline. Then came ‘the Pill’, which made for a sexual revolution. Women could go to bed with men before wedlock with impunity. They could make sure they wouldn’t become pregnant. With this change, the morality of the nation went into freefall.

If we compare then with now, if we look at the situation critically, if we are indeed old enough to remember, then it is an indisputable fact that things have not improved in terms of education, values, morality, or in terms of politics. Things are indeed going downhill. The tragedy is that our leaders today do not have the courage to tell people the way things ‘should be’. Of course, we are living in a period of moral relativism; so many would argue that who is to say what ‘should be’ anyway?

Even the Church of England is wary of saying what ‘should be' today. The Church elders have long since given up on moralizing to the people. The ‘Good News’ is not theirs to teach, it seems. They would prefer to engage in politics. They would prefer to demonstrate to show their disapproval of this government policy or that one. The fact that the churches are emptying at an alarming rate seems to evade them completely.

Church elders also seem to be oblivious to the fact that Islam is ready and willing and waiting to fill the vacuum that the failing Christian churches of Europe are creating by their lack of certitude in the superior teachings of Christ.

The fact of the matter is that we are living through very dangerous times. The times are not dangerous only because people are being threatened by terrorist bombs by the jihadis, but they are dangerous times for us also because we have allowed our standards to drop, because we have become unsure of ourselves and what we stand for, and because we have allowed foreigners with vastly different ideas and values to enter our countries in their millions. Interestingly, and disturbingly for us, these immigrants are very sure of what they believe in, they are very sure of their destiny, and very sure of their moral rectitude.

In the States, there is the almost unsolvable problem of illegal Mexicans there. Some estimate their numbers at up to twenty million! Some estimate their numbers far lower. But the fact is that nobody knows how many there are in the country. Further, Islam is growing apace in the States. The future of the ‘Land of the Free’ lies very much in the balance. Yet there appears to be no will to do anything about the problem.

Here in the United Kingdom, we have a similar problem with illegal immigrants, too. In the case of the UK, most of them are Muslims. This problem, because it is not being addressed, will clearly change the nature of the United Kingdom in the years to come, and it will certainly change its politics, too. Already we have heard calls from the small but vociferous Muslim community for the UK government to become more anti-American and more anti-Israel, and more pro-Islam and pro-Arab. And this with present numbers!

In view of the Muslims’ propensity to procreate quickly and in great numbers, it doesn’t take a PhD in mathematics to do the calculations: The indigenous population, moderate as it has always been, will in years to come be outnumbered by the extremist voice of the ‘new breed of Englishman’ – Muslim and of Asian descent as he will most surely be.

It would appear that it is now only a question of time before the West, as we know the West to be, will be a civilization of the past. If Islam comes to influence the politics of our nations, which if present trends continue it most surely will, then rest assured that lax moral values will be cleaned up forthwith. Our way of dressing will change, as will our way of speaking (will Arabic become our lingua franca?), our way of behaving, our politics, our thinking, even our economics. Oh, and don’t forget the meting out of barbaric punishments for relatively minor offences. Punishments will no longer fit the crime. Freedom and democracy will become concepts of the past. We shall have entered into the Islamic era – an era which will be characterized by ‘dark age’ thinking; indeed, we shall have entered the ‘new dark age’ that I wrote of in my book.

These changes, of course, are not inevitable; but if we wish to save the West, then we have much thinking to do, much bellyaching, and many policies will have to be reversed.

I suggest that we start today. There is no time to waste.

©Mark Alexander