Is what’s happening in Europe concerning to America?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #284 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Europe is in trouble. First in France, now in Belgium, Greece, the UK, Spain, Italy and other countries, students, activists, leftists, Marxists, agitators, labor unions, and simply thugs have taken to the streets by the thousands not in peaceful protests but destructive riots fighting police, burning schools and other buildings, looting, and waving flags—not national flags but Palestinian flags. Major news media describe this as student unrest regarding better education. It does not take much research or review to determine far more serious issues and organizations are involved than this, and the social turmoil is not going away anytime soon. Some pundits have wondered aloud about civil war.
Many people have been sounding warning bells for some time—actually, some have been issuing caveats since at least the 1990s and certainly since the 2010s.
But political elites, EU bureaucrats, leftists, globalists, and other sophisticates have paid no heed, and they’ve pursued their course with little input from the citizenry.
WWII devastated not only the landscape but the economies of European nations, especially, of course, Germany. Their economies were stymied for lack of workers due to the war and due in subsequent decades to an unsustainable low fertility rate that continues to this hour. Then, someone had the great idea of simply bringing in immigrants to become workers in European factories.
Within a decade or so, European leaders also embraced the misguided philosophy of multiculturalism – the idea that no culture is better than another – and then began inviting, importing, and welcoming immigrants, largely unvetted because to do much review is to violate the multicultural religion and become “racist” xenophobes. So, with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel saying, “We can do this,” countries threw open their borders to first a few, then many, then unstoppable and often illegal waves of migrants mostly from lands formerly “colonized” back in another era.
The European leaders’ policy was called a “guest program” because they assumed immigrants would work for a time and then go home. That never happened.
Migrants stayed and began having more babies than generational Europeans.
Then European leaders assumed immigrants would integrate and assimilate, become loyal German or French or Belgium or Swedish, work hard and produce goods and services for the marketplace and produce a happily ever after for all. That never happened.
European leaders thought immigrants would quickly get jobs and earn their way. While some certainly did this and live peaceful, productive lives, the majority of immigrants in most countries proved to be “economic migrants.” They were not really refugees from a troubled country, now seeking a short-term hand-up. They were looking for a handout. They were people whose religious inclinations gave them an entitlement mentality expecting the foolish, irrationally generous welfare social democracies of Europe to pay their way. So now what? France, for one, is broke.
One key element European leaders missed, in what some have called an ignorant and others have called an arrogant, secular mindset, is the importance and relevance of religion. The post WWII Europeans secular mindset is characterized by a deep decline in traditional religious practice and institutional belonging, accelerated by trauma, modernization, and a shift toward individual freedom, i.e., materialism, humanism. “Christianity, which had long been the spiritual and moral cornerstone of Europe and much of the Western sphere, began a steady decline—both in influence and practice.”
Discarding Christianity comes at a cost—societal cohesion, spiritual fulfillment, and moral clarity remain elusive in an increasingly fragmented and polarized world. Without Christianity as a unifying force, Western societies became more pluralistic but also more fragmented. Secular liberalism, while promoting personal freedom, often struggles to provide the existential meaning that religion once offered. The void left by Christianity enabled the growth of radical ideologies. The transition from moral absolutes to liberal relativism eroded clear definitions of right and wrong.
With this secular mindset, European leaders failed to account for the religious views and values of waves of immigrants.These immigrants brought with them their religious values, their politics, their cultural practices and norms, and as importantly, their inbred, deep-seated animosity toward the West and the very countries that became their hosts.
Fast forward a couple of decades or more and now there are second and third generation children of migrants, youth born in Europe, who surveys and other research indicate are often more hostile to their host country than their parents. What happened to assimilation? What happened to happily ever after?
So now, in 2026, there are somewhere between 44-50 million immigrants in Europe. If these populations assimilate, then perhaps there is or will be no problem. But if they do not, as trends and recent events in Europe suggest, then predictions regarding Europe’s future range from not pretty to alarming.
Europe has sometimes served as America's early warning system: social and ideological changes that appear there first eventually cross the Atlantic. The open question is whether America will notice and act.
In virtually all European countries with significant immigrant populations terrorist incidents, violence, and crime have climbed significantly higher. The social freedoms of women in European communities have changed markedly in response to public harassment by immigrant men. Threats to the safety of women, including an enormous increase in rapes and trafficking perpetrated by immigrants.
European nation integration policies have been largely unsuccessful. The sheer number of unvetted immigrants flooding the continent threatens the financial viability of the socialist welfare states eager to “buy them off,” which only results in dependency and perceptions of the nation as weak. And this perception of weakness may not be incorrect, for Western European complacency, fear, or a lack of resolve are clearly in evidence.
What should Americans learn? One, we are in a brave new world in which mass migration is being weaponized as a tool of subversion. Then violent protests are encouraged by foreign governments.
Being smart about immigration is not ipso facto racism. Nor is it irrational or isolationist. Nor is it evidence of a lack of caring – America has been and still is the most generous country in the world. Wise immigration policy is simply good stewardship, to which some European countries are now, finally, awakening.
Citizen and government pushback against civilizational erasure is now happening, for example, in Italy, led by conservative Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, and believe or not, at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, where the European Parliament recently passed a major migration reform package by a vote of 418 to 218, establishing stricter rules for deporting undocumented third-country nationals.
We do not know if it is “too late” to turn the tsunami we’re now witnessing in Europe. But it is categorically not too late to take steps in the US to do our best to prevent similar social fragmentation here.
What do we do?
1) Teach civics and American history in high schools, 2) Continue to deport illegal immigrants, 3) Suspend birth tourism, 4) Identify and deport individuals acting on radicalized ideology that threatens to undermine American freedoms. This is not a violation of the First Amendment.
President Dwight Eisenhower once wisely said, “To begin with: all of us—citizens, jurists, officials—must remember that the Bill of Rights contains no grant of privilege for a group of people to destroy the Bill of Rights. A group—like the Communist conspiracy—dedicated to the ultimate destruction of all civil liberties cannot be allowed to claim civil liberties as its privileged sanctuary from which to carry on subversion of the Government.”
God bless America.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2026
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.