The United States is in decline and is taking the other Western (that is, NATO) nations down with it. If you want evidence for this, look around you.
A French sociologist and historical named Emmanuel Todd has written a provocative book, entitled The Defeat of the West, analyzing the reasons for the decline.
One reason he gives is the decline of Protestantism, historically the core of the identity of the USA and the most progressive parts of Europe. He gives additional reasons, but this is the most interesting one.
Todd has a track record that makes him worthy of attention. In 1976, when he was 26, he wrote The Final Fall: the Decomposition of the Soviet Union, predicting the fall of the USSR. In 2001, he wrote After the Empire: the Breakdown of American Order, predicting the failure of the U.S. bid for world power.
His latest book hasn’t yet been published in English, but I get his basic ideas from interviews and reviews. Here’s part of what he said in an interview with Le Figaro.
My assessment of the West’s defeat is based on three factors.
First, the industrial deficiency of the United States with the revelation of the fictitious nature of the American GDP. In my book, I deflate this GDP and show the deep-rooted causes of industrial decline: the inadequacy of engineering training and, more generally the decline of the level of education, which began in 1965 in the United States.
More profoundly, the disappearance of American Protestantism is the second factor in the fall of the West. My book is basically a sequel to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber. He rightly thought, on the eve of the 1914 war, that the rise of the West was at its heart that of the Protestant world – England, the United States, Germany unified by Prussia, Scandinavia.
France’s good fortune was to be geographically close to the leading pack. Protestantism had produced a high educational level, unprecedented in human history, universal literacy, because it required that every faithful be able to read the Holy Scriptures themselves. In addition, the fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God induced a work ethic, a strong individual and collective morality. … … Educational advances and the work ethic have produced a considerable economic and industrial advance.
Today, symmetrically, the recent collapse of Protestantism has triggered an intellectual decline, a disappearance of the work ethic and mass greed (official name: neoliberalism): ascendency turning into the fall of the West.
This analysis of the religious element does not denote any nostalgia or moralizing lament in me: it is a historical observation. Moreover, the racism associated with Protestantism is also disappearing and the United States had its first black president, Obama. We can only congratulate ourselves on this.