Europe is plagued by a number of existential crises. Yet they are all self-inflicted—and by a dominant, therapeutic culture that embraced utopian but lethal bromides.

These suicidal wounds are now nearing the end-stage. Indeed, they are destroying the very civilization that was soon envisioned to be heaven on earth.

The global warming hysterics could not just entertain gradual transformations away from dependencies on traditional fuels and power generation.

Instead, elites have demanded catastrophic and near-instant “net zero” mandates. That radicalism entailed transitioning to unreliable and costly solar and wind energy. Fuel and electricity prices then soared.

The green socialist elite cared little that shutdowns of nuclear, coal, natural gas, and oil power generation would cripple industry, reduce living standards, and impoverish Europe.

Germany, the once economic powerhouse of Europe, became a shell of its former self. The same efforts accelerated under the Obama and Biden administrations in the U.S.

Both administrations sought to slash new fossil fuel production and use, without regard to the costs, dangers to the economy, or deleterious effects on the middle class and poor.

Second, for the last half-century, affluent Westerners embraced the idea that there were no normative lifestyles. Often, they claimed nuclear families with 2-3 children were parochial and passé.

Children supposedly inhibited the lifestyles and aspirations of women. Larger families, we were told, unfairly burdened upscale professionals with unneeded costs and offered biased and injurious models to gays, the transgendered, and single, childless men and women.

The result is that the fertility rate plummeted in the West, particularly in Europe (1.4) and the United States (1.6), to unsustainable levels.

Academia, the media, government, and foundations promoted these ideas of “empowerment”—despite the historical evidence that societies that cannot reproduce themselves age, ossify, and finally implode.

The third horseman of the Western apocalypse was unrestricted and illegal immigration.

Again, the elites discarded a century of research and common sense that immigration into modern Western societies is only beneficial if it is legal, measured, diverse, meritocratic, and met with robust efforts of the host to integrate, acculturate, and assimilate foreigners.

The arrogant West scoffed at all that.

Instead, it destroyed borders. It welcomed in millions of impoverished and unaudited illegal aliens, many of them with little desire or ability to adopt the values of their hosts.

What followed were unsustainable social welfare entitlements, rising crime, social chaos, and growing internal strife.

The last horseman was a new tribalism, euphemistically dubbed diversity/equity/inclusion.

An elite Western class envisioned an entire set of reparatory actions for growing nonwhite populations to atone for purported prior, and sometimes ancient, sins of slavery, racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

No matter that all of these pathologies are commonplace worldwide, only in the self-critical West was slavery first outlawed, and tribalism curtailed.

Indeed, nonwhite immigrants knew precisely why fellow non-Westerners flocked to Western nations in the millions. Only there do meritocracy, consensual government, and self-criticism ensure more prosperity, freedom, and security than in their own tribal, often sexist, religiously and ethnically chauvinistic, and statist societies.

Human nature dictates that once racial fixations for any reason normalize exemptions and advantages, then tribalism and civil strife inevitably resurface.

Self-perpetuating myths of everlasting victimhood are necessary to ensure permanent special preferences. The Western idea of the Enlightenment, that we are individuals, not tribes and collectives, free to question the world about us, is shattered.

Instead, we descend into precivilizational tribalism, predicated on our superficial appearances.

There is some hope only because the four horsemen of our apocalypse were welcomed into the West by a minority of naïve, secular, and privileged Westerners. They believed as demigods that their wealth and freedom were irreversible birthrights, that utopia was near, and that they would be exempt from any consequences of their failure.

As a remedy, the West needs to stop apologizing for its 2,500-year history and take pride in its unique European and Judeo-Christian tradition that is innately inclusive.

It does not have to be perfect to be good—only far better than the alternatives, as mass illegal immigration attests.

The West needs to resist top-down radical green bromides and assess their cost-to-benefit damage to most citizens.

Larger, multi-generational, and two-parent families are not strange but the historical lifeblood of robust civilizations.

If foreigners wish to move legally to the West, they should be reminded why they do so and thus integrate and assimilate to the hosts’ values—or stay home.

Finally, Americans especially need to speak out against anyone of any race or tribe who stereotypes and spouts hatred of others outside their tribe.

And feigned victimhood will end only when the invented victimizers say, “Sorry, enough is enough.”