What Decadence Looks Like

Check out this opinion piece appearing in, of all places, The New York Times. Ross Douthat points out that it says something significant about our culture when Comedy Central, in response to Muslim threats, refuses to permit any reference to Muhammad on an episode of the notoriously profane "South Park."

My favorite excerpt from the article:

Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

The only portion of the article I disagree with is Douthat's dismissal of the Islamic threats as a "marginal fringe" that poses little threat to our civilization. A significant and growing portion of Muslims worldwide sympathize with this "marginal fringe," which controls numerous governments around the world including one on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. The very existence of the West as we know it is at stake, and it is increasingly obvious that neither our leaders nor our culture are up to the task of fighting for it.