Oct. 29, 2025 7 AM PT
To the editor: Contributing author Josh Hammer is as soon as once more partaking in conservatives’ favourite pastime: waxing nostalgic for a time that by no means existed (“Louvre heist is just one way Europe is surrendering its culture,” Oct. 24). He thinks European society is being destroyed by outsiders altering the tradition? The irony is that those self same sentiments may have been expressed at any time within the final 2,500 years.
European historical past is the story of outsiders coming in and altering the tradition. The Celts, Macedonians, Romans, Huns, Ostrogoths, Moors, Vikings, Normans, Ottomans, Rus, and many others., all conquered lands and left everlasting alterations. The European tradition he admires wouldn’t exist with no fixed inflow of latest blood.
What’s most stunning is that any Jewish particular person would ever be pining for Europe’s good ol’ days. When would which were? Mid-century Germany? The France of the Dreyfus affair? The shtetls and ghettoes of Japanese Europe? The pogroms? The Spanish Inquisition?
Each Europe and America must develop and alter with the occasions. Accepting new concepts and other people is a part of that. To do in any other case is to show into some weird theme-park model of nationwide id.
Arnold Burke, Lake Forest
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To the editor: Hammer equates the decline of European private happiness ranges with a gravitational draw back from church and kids. How he would know the way many individuals are sad in a continent with a inhabitants of more than 700 million is kind of a trick.
As to his broad-brush assertion that European abandonment of church and faith are chargeable for society’s ills, he fails to say the Catholic Church’s decades-long history of overlaying up baby intercourse abuse allegations. Vatican-sponsored dioceses right here, there and all over the place have been found opting to guard predatory prelates as an alternative of harmless church-going victims. Related crimes and cover-ups have additionally been alleged in evangelical congregations. When individuals lose belief of their spiritual leaders and establishments, is it so stunning that they could contemplate doing one thing else on Sundays?
As for Europeans surrendering their respective, distinctive cultures, he attributes that to political and financial integration and what he calls “imposed mass immigration.” He fails to acknowledge Brexit, the rise of far-right extremist political events, elevated xenophobia and huge wealth disparities as contributing components. He conveniently overlooks what U.S. Basic Philip M. Breedlove, the previous supreme allied commander in Europe, stated in entrance of the Home Armed Companies Committee in 2016: “Collectively, Russia and the Assad regime are intentionally weaponizing migration in an try to overwhelm European buildings and break European resolve.”
Maybe Hammer would concede that war-mongering dictators killing kids and households has one thing to do with unhappiness and lack of religion.
James Kearns, Santa Monica
