by Dan Flynn

The course of history is precarious. A defeat here, a mistake there, and the world is changed forever.

The Emperor Constantine's decision to become a Christian ensured that Christianity, and not some less enlightened creed, would govern Western Civilization. Charles Martel's heroic victory over the Mohammedan invaders at Tours prevented the supplanting of a culture that looked to Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem for its roots, in favor of one that looked to Mecca and Medina. Columbus' discovery of the Americas ensured Western Civilization a foothold in two previously unknown continents.

Had Constantine chosen Zoroastrianism, Martel laid down his arms, or Christopher Columbus been named Muhammad Akbar, our world would be a different place-a worse place.

Patrick Buchanan's Death of the West posits that we now face one of history's crossroads that leads in one direction to ruins and in the other to the preservation of our civilization. A key premise of his book is that the population decline in the West accompanied by the population boom in the rest of the world spells doom for Western Civilization. To curb the West's decline, Buchanan proposes a solution that bucks the advice that elites have been giving for years. Westerners need to start having large families again, and eschewing the one-child families that many professional couples favor.

"Today, in seventeen European countries, there are more burials than births, more coffins than cradles," Buchanan writes. "In 1960, people of European ancestry were one-fourth of the world's population; in 2000, they were one-sixth; in 2050, they will be one-tenth." All of Europe, except Muslim Albania, has birth rates that are below the level to sustain the current populations of these nations. By 2050, Italy's Italian population will drop from 57 million to 41 million, Russia's Russians from 147 million to 114 million, and Germany's Germans from 82 million to 59 million. It is only through immigration that these countries will escape a steep population decline. The West is dying because its people are dying out.

At the same time the West's population levels are imploding, the birth rates of Third World countries are exploding. The Indian subcontinent, Latin America, the Islamic World, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Far East are now in the midst of population booms that will soon transform Westerners into only a tiny fraction of humanity. What's more is that many of these regions are dominated by states that are not only aggressively anti-Western, but hostile to ethnically or religiously different neighbors as well. Pakistan's ongoing conflict with India is an example of the latter, while the war on the West by Islamic extremists is an example of the former.

Here in the United States, the West's anchor state, the signs of great cultural change are clear. Abortions have overtaken tonsillectomies as America's most common surgical procedure. Condoms are given out promiscuously. Homosexuality, the one behavior certain to curtail the generation of humanity, is given greater societal encouragement than at any time in history. Euthanasia, as the recent passage of the doctor-assisted suicide law in Oregon attests, is more tolerated today as well. Such practices, the Death of the West contends, are cultural suicide.

As dangerous as this internal rot, Buchanan maintains, are the massive waves of immigration invading Western culture. As foreign societies grow more populous, and our own society fails to replace its citizens who are dying off, both the supply of and demand for immigrants will grow. This cannot help but affect our culture, particularly when assimilationist solutions are abandoned for separatism.

While terrorism-such as the September 11th attacks-is one outcome of unimpeded immigration, cultural balkanization is another. "When the U.S. soccer team played Mexico in the Los Angeles Coliseum a few years back," Buchanan writes, "the 'Star-Spangled Banner' was hooted and jeered, an American flag was torn down, and the American team and its few fans were showered with water bombs, beer bottles, and garbage." The Death of the West points to towns criminalizing cooperation by their employees with U.S. immigration authorities, a refusal to learn English by recent immigrants, and separatist immigrant organizations like MEChA (whose slogan is: "For our race, everything. For those outside our race, nothing.") as evidence that assimilation no longer prevails. A nation that can't control its borders, the author reminds the reader, is no longer a nation.

Among America's native-born population, so-called multiculturalists lead an attack on our culture. The National History Standards, which failed to mention Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, or the Wright Brothers but made copious references to the Ku Klux Klan and "McCarthyism," is a prime example of this negativism. Columbus Day, on such campuses as UMass-Amherst and Stanford, has been replaced with something called Indigenous Peoples' Day. Classic American literature, such as Huckleberry Finn, is banned from schools as racist. Our Founding Fathers are labeled bigots and sexists, with a grade school in New Orleans even removing George Washington from its name. One could even look at how something as benign as the American flag or "God Bless America" has sparked controversies on campus and in the schoolhouse. What are the prospects for a nation that teaches its young people to hate its history, traditions, and government? The question answers itself.

"Are all nations equal?" Buchanan asks. "Why then are the refugees from all over the world fleeing to the West? Are all peoples equal? In America we have equal rights under the law. But the idea of the innate dignity of every human being and of equal justice under law is not a product of China, Japan, Africa, or Arabia. It came out of the West. Is chattel slavery evil? Yes, but which faith began to teach that, and what nation began the eradication of slavery? Was it not Christianity and the British nation?"

One culture, Buchanan seems to be saying, will be hegemonic. Why not ours?

The Death of the West boldly identifies what is to follow the Cold War as the major issue of our age. Just as the struggle of ideologies occupied center stage in the recently expired age, the struggle of civilizations will be the central issue of our time. In this new debate, ideology will be less meaningful, Buchanan argues. Conservatives will be pitted against other conservatives, and liberals against other liberals. We can debate the validity of Buchanan's argument that the numerical superiority of civilizations has a major impact on the power of those civilizations. His thesis that civilizational conflict is on the horizon, however, seems undeniable. With September 11, 2001 etched in the collective consciousness of America, many believe that it is already here.

The West, as its critics are wont to point out, isn't perfect. Former President Bill Clinton, in an ill-timed speech at Georgetown University after the 9-11 tragedy, recently identified the Crusades, the mistreatment of indigenous people, and slavery as three failures of the West. Less frequently discussed are the shortcomings of the world's other major civilizations. Multiculturalists would have us believe that other cultures are about eating Carne Assada while celebrating Chinese New Year on a sandy beach in South Africa. If only reality were that benign. A more accurate portrayal involves apostate death sentences in the Middle East, female genital mutilation in Africa, totalitarian rule in China, race-based slavery in Sudan, and dowry killings in India. It isn't luck that makes Western Civilization almost entirely democratic and free, and the rest of the world almost entirely authoritarian and not free. What makes us democratic and free is our culture, which has its roots in the religion of Christianity.

Westerners who seek the overthrow of the West ignore the unsettling possibilities that would occur if our civilization loses its influence. Ultimately, a decline of the West means a decline in freedom, democracy, prosperity, individual rights, and equality under the law.

"If the West expects a long life, it had best recapture the fighting faith of its youth," Buchanan counsels. "For it is in the nature of things that nations and religion rule or are ruled. Times of equality are temporary truces in an endless struggle."