The Retreat from Religion in a Decadent Culture

Australians do not normally think of themselves as decadent; bawdy and vulgar perhaps, but vigorous, young and free (whatever the word change in the anthem). Not even New Zealand is regarded as decadent.

So a book describing the Western world as decadent, written by one of the best columnists, unusually a conservative, from the New York Times, the mouthpiece of classical secular liberalism, is a provocation in different ways to different groups of people.

My age is immediately evident from the fact that my first history classes were in 1949 in Grade Three, about the foundations of the Roman Empire. I remember hearing of the Via Appia and Via Aurelia, both still busy thoroughfares today, and of the cackling geese which woke up the Roman soldiers in the citadel on Capitol Hill (probably around 390 BC) to fight off the Gauls who were ransacking Rome. It was after this that the Roman city walls were first built.

For these reasons and Hollywood’s contributions, the concept of…