Dakota Beacon

Western civilization slowly slips away, and citizens barely perceive what is happening. It is not as if our civilization were stolen from under our noses but rather, citizens have failed to guard the ramparts.

Culture does not reject nihilism on impulse. Nihilism grows in a cultural Petri dish infecting one generation then another and eventually spanning a civilization. Meanwhile, we conceal from ourselves the unpleasant awareness of our culture decline.

Oswald Spengler wrote “The Decline of the West” in two volumes. Volume I was published in 1918 and volume II in 1922. This work became highly influential in early 20th-century philosophy presenting a cyclical theory of civilizations and arguing that Western civilization was in its final phase of decline.

Spengler argued that civilizations are like living organisms: they are born, grow, mature, and eventually die. He believed each culture has a life cycle of roughly 1,000 years. He defined his terms. “Culture” was a spiritual, creative phase. “Civilization” was the materialistic, declining phase.

Spengler believed the West had entered its civilizational decline, marked by, among other things, the loss of creative vitality in art and philosophy; the dominance of technocracy and bureaucracy; a shift from culture to civilization, meaning the West had become sterile and mechanical. Of course, Spengler’s view is only one man’s view.

In my own lifetime the decline of the West became increasingly obvious. In date-sequence, authors focused their volumes on the same theme. In 1976 Francis A. Schaeffer wrote “How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Westen Thought and Culture” published by Fleming H. Revell. That was half a century ago.

Schaeffer’s thesis in “How Should We Then Live?” focused on Western civilization’s departure from absolute moral standards which were grounded in a biblical worldview. This shift led to cultural, philosophical, and societal fragmentation. Schaeffer argues that the way people view truth and reality shapes their culture, law, art, and ethics. He contrasts the Judeo-Christian worldview, which holds that truth is absolute and revealed by God, with humanism, which places man at the center and sees truth as relative.

Fifteen years later, in 1991, Basic Books published “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America” by James Davison Hunter. He saw the downward drift of Western civilization along with added data reinforcing the claim of the West’s decline.

Hunter’s book views American society as deeply conflicted between two opposing ideas -- traditionalism and progressivism. According to Hunter, Traditionalists upheld moral ideals rooted in religious and cultural norms while Progressivists embrace change, pluralism, and moral flexibility. These opposing views clashed across major institutions including education, law, politics, family, and the arts. Each side looked to dominate the cultural narrative. Hunter’s term “culture war” has since become a staple in understanding American political and social polarization.

In the end, this conflict became a secular power struggle.

Next in sequence was the book, “Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come” by John Daniel Davidson published by Regnery in 2024. Davidson paints a stark and provocative picture of America transitioning from a post-Christian culture into a pagan one. This shift ushers in an era of moral chaos, cruelty, and spiritual darkness.

Davidson offers the following arguments. Christianity once provided the moral and cultural foundation for American society, shaping its institutions, laws, and civil life. As Christianity declines, paganism asserts itself as a worldview marked by barbarism and the dominance of the strong over the weak. He warns that without a Christian moral order, civil liberties and self-government will collapse under the weight of nihilism and authoritarianism.

Our founders presupposed that self-government started from the inside out and that Christian belief spurred self-control. Without Christian internal self-control, the reasonable expectation was external control imposed by the old forms of government with which mankind was all too familiar. Herein lay the genesis of America’s new experiment in governing.

The point? People who are smarter than me have noted the signs of decline. Their observations came at different times and from different points of view. But come they did. As Davidson foresees, the result will be a society marked by oppression and violence. Such violence will be officially sanctioned and carry the force of law. What a person believes won’t really matter to the state. What matters is whether a person adheres to state-defined morality.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).