The Family in Europe

One often encounters the (not implausible) suggestion that, for all its merits, American-style market-capitalism has caused, or at least enabled, our slide into atomism and the Casey-style delusion that unencumbered, unsituated, unrooted, Promethean individuals are able, and even entitled, to define for themselves the mystery of the universe, etc., etc.  This piece, from a recent issue of America, suggests that things might not be much better among our purportedly more communitarian friends in Europe:

Today the European Union embodies a vision of political, social and economic solidarity that excludes the family and the church. European integration—something to be encouraged—is being driven by a socialist individualism in which the family, the fundamental unit of society and the cradle of moral personality, languishes.

Rick