With what consequences? Not the smallest is the disappearance of a population base requisite to funding future retirees' benefits. We know something of this in America due to the Social Security debate. The case is much harder in Europe, though, than in America. That can mean bring on the immigrants: Start them paying into the system! But Europe has long been doing this. It has meant, in practice, the creation of a very large population of European Muslims -- 4 percent of Britain's population, 10 percent of France's. It would be one thing if these were happy immigrants assimilating themselves happily into the larger society. As the Wall Street Journal notes this week, the larger reality is the self-distancing of European Muslims from their neighbors. In France, as in England, "the signs of fundamentalist Islam are on the rise," and jihadist preachers address themselves to what one expert calls Muslims "unmoored from their traditional beliefs and ripe for recruitment."
The bishop of London, Richard Chartres, preaching at St. Paul's Cathedral the day after Bloody Thursday, recoiled from attacking Islam as a religion. He probed more deeply. He saw "a spiritual vacuum" into which "false religion" had intruded itself -- a religion, heedless of God, "awesomely powerful and destructive." The strayed or departed Christians of Europe -- of Britain -- might on such a reading reproach themselves for creating an opening for the murderous radicals of Islam to reach through and plant their explosives.
The evil purposes of murderous bombers are just the present problem. Evil itself is the original and enduring problem -- one that, as Europe for centuries maintained and preached, reflects humanity's willing breach of its relationship with God.
Is it back, now, at last, to first principles for Europe? Is there, indeed, a shred of a choice?