The current, dying state of Europe is our warning that the world must be saved from Progressivism. That starts at home. That starts with the election of 2014. By killing the human spirit, Progressivism reduces societies braced by vibrant and sustaining cultures into dystopias of brain-washed, homogeneous diversity reminiscent of the one in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem. By choosing enforced equality and homogenized diversity over competence and tradition as fundamental organizing principals, Progressivism dooms any society where it is practiced. The outward symptoms of this society’s miserable existence and unlamented failure are a declining birth-rate and economic stagnation as its ultimate death-knell.

To help explain why, I reiterate a great fundamental point made by Brett Stevens of Amerika.org. There are two fundamental principles around which a nation state can organize its society.

Managerial. In this, people share no values except wanting to make money and not get murdered. As a result, a strong government is needed to impose values through penalties, bribes, and propagandistic education starting at a young age.
Organic. In this civilization-type, society is organized around shared values, beliefs, customs, language, heritage and tradition. There is less of a need for police and no need for propaganda; the culture is inherent to and arising from the people.

The Progressives in America are in permanent rapture over the European Model of the Managerial Society. The European Model trades individual freedom for institutional security and human potential for enforced equality. As The Police once sang: “Our Comfortable existence is reduced to a shallow, meaningless party.” Charles Murray elaborates more completely.

The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable. Families are not vital because the day-to-day tasks of raising children and being a good spouse are so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the family does them. Communities are not vital because it’s so much fun to respond to our neighbors’ needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the community does them. Once that imperative has been met—family and community really do have the action—then an elaborate web of social norms, expectations, rewards, and punishments evolves over time that supports families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates.

So what if the community disintegrates? I mean you can still make that booty call on the Obama Phone. Two things make this ultimately fail. One, the welfare state that relieves us all of our responsibilities costs money. Two, people who aren’t allowed to keep much of their money don’t go all out to work harder and provide. In this sense, Europe has become America’s canary in the coal mine.

Several years ago Germany and the Netherlands were exemplars as opposed to the much-disdained PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). But German growth rates have plummeted, going negative in the last quarter, along with France and Italy. More stagnation is likely as energy costs surge and key export markets, notably in Russia and China, begin to contract. Today, the “sick man” of Europe is not any one country, or collection of countries; the “sick man of Europe” is Europe.

In echo of Napoleon Bonaparte marching to Paris in 1804 nationalistic statists will increasingly gain power to end the stupidity of The Paris Commune. Marine Le Pen looks increasingly likely to force the Pan-Europa socialists out of power in France. Sure, she scares the Karl Rove Republicans and sensible Burghers. Yet compared to Sarkozy’s crony corruption and Hollande’s incompetent managerial Progressivism, she’s a godsend to people who like being able to work on their own terms and feed their families by the sweat of their own brow. If Le Pen’s National Front and Great Britain’s UKIP scare you and seem immoderate, it’s because you’ve inured yourself against the possibility of electoral victory by The Golden Dawn, The True Finns or that Italian Funny-Man Beppe Grillo. Progressivism left undefeated will lead to a collapse of civil society that will empower the rise of Neo-Facism.

We smell the first rotten whiffs of such ignorance in a recent interview with America’s trendy, go-to whack-job Ron Paul. He seems to like the various secessionist movements in the United States.

“It’s something that I think is going to grow, because the failure of the federal government is going to get much worse,” he said. “When the bankruptcy evolves, and maybe some of these pension funds are confiscated, and the wars never end, and bankruptcy comes forth, people [will say], ‘Hey, we’re getting a bad deal from this. Why don’t we leave?’ ” He added: “I think it’s inevitable people wanting to leave will be there, and the numbers will grow.”

Mr. Paul posits a solution that once made Antietam Creek run red with blood. He is instinctively drawn to the cra-cra as a moth is fascinated by the lambent glow of a guttering candle. However incorrect his solution; he does diagnose the problem. America cannot and morally should not survive as a Managerial State under the undead Lich-hand of Progressivism. We must be free of this evil. We will be free of this evil. We will do so rationally, or we can go !RONPAUL! and wind up dead in a gutter somewhere.

The rational solution involves the Traditional Conservative grabbing the GOP by the scruff of its Post-modern, Globalist neck and returning it to its proper station as the party of decent values. America can have a decent, rational leadership that appreciates the solid, condign wisdom of wearing that flag pin on our lapel with a proper spirit. It can go further near to Hell under The Diversity Matronhood of Hillary Clinton or another of her ilk. We then have the visceral, desperate Neo-Reaction of a traditional culture in throes of Post-modern exsanguination. Then we elect our own version of Marine Le Pen or The Golden Dawn and yea verily become the evil we destroyed in The Second World War. The current, dying state of Europe is our warning that the world must be saved from Progressivism. That starts at home. That starts with the election of 2014.