Western Europeans should worry greatly. Last Friday’s attacks in Paris represent a new and bolder phase in Muslim extremists’ war on the West. The carnage in Paris wasn’t merely the result of  terrorism. It was a military operation carried out through planning and with precision by irregular combatants against soft targets. There were aspects of terror, to be sure, but conventional warfare it was. France’s president, François Hollande, is acknowledging it as such. Expect more such attacks around Europe, sooner rather than later.   

Weakness invites aggression. It’s a hoary fact. Western Europe’s elites – Merkel, Cameron, and Hollande, most recently, who have pushed “diversity” with a religious devotion – have opened the door wider to the unfolding Muslim extremists’ offensives.

Make no mistake. The attacks in Paris, while satisfying military aims (taking the fight to the enemy’s homeland), served to mock the diversity-embracing Europe that progressives so prize. 

Diversity is yet another utopian venture (Europeans have spawned many) that’s bound to fail. The pith of its claim: it’s everything and nothing. It’s nonjudgmental and liberating. It’s tolerant. Be what you want to be (so long as it isn’t conservative and traditional). Germane here, it makes plenty of room for the secularist (atheist) and Muslim, while marginalizing the Christian and Jew. Diversity isn’t, as Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, suggested, just one big happy romp in the park.    

Diversity, whatever its intent by some, has been seized by those (typically leftist) who use it to denigrate Western culture, virtues, and values. It’s anti and perverse and adversarial. It’s a viral infection killing its host. It emits the foul odor of nihilism.               

Muslim extremists see diversity not as enlightened, as adherents fancy, but as an unmooring from core beliefs that made the West superior. The West has lost faith in itself and all that made it great, Muslim extremists must believe. The West and Westernized societies invite predation with an eye toward eventual conquest by Muslims. No loss of sense of self and mission among Muslim extremists who are deeply rooted in their faith. For them, an enfeebling West makes for good pickings.   

Angela Merkel has proven to be no friend of the welfare and security of Germans or other Western Europeans who she claims to embrace through the E.U. communion. In light of the Paris attacks, Merkel (as of this writing) remains unbowed in her push to flood Europe with Syrian refugees. 

Opening Western Europe to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees (and many others mixed in) is an unambiguous signal to the Islamic State and other like-extremist entities that Western Europe is being laid bare. Merkel and her cohorts should be unceremoniously ousted from their offices. The charge: gross malfeasance, a betrayal of leadership’s primal duty to protect and defend.

But Merkel and her acolytes aren’t alone in stubbornly defending Western Europe’s diversity creed. The investment is heavy among Western Europe’s elite. This from London’s the Telegraph: 

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a pro-EU think-tank, warned that Islamic State wanted its attacks to bolster far-Right politicians like Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader who looks poised for a major victory in France’s regional polls this December.

“Islamic State want to get Marine Le Pen stronger. They want far-Right attacks on mosques and a warlike ambience in western countries, because the more Muslims are persecuted, the more Muslims will be motivated to pick up arms and fight in Western Europe.

Grant suffers from a deficiency of common sense. So, to follow Grant’s logic, the Islamic State wants leaders and governments in place across Europe that will purge extremist Muslim elements from their countries, seal borders, and wage relentless coordinated and counter warfare against the Islamic State and similar entities. The end goal: absolute victory over Muslim enemies. Strength, in other words, invites attack.    

Muslims picking up arms in Western Europe is a distinct possibility. In fact, it’s more so, given that Muslims in Europe prone to radicalism witnessed a successful dramatic combat operation carried out by Islamic State irregulars in Paris. Certainly Islamic State combatants have infiltrated Western Europe via migrant routes from Syria; a vanguard of sort to lead Muslims inclined to take up arms against their hosts. 

From a September 15 report from the Sunday Express:

The Syrian operative [interviewed for the article] claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations -- hidden amongst innocent refugees.

The ISIS smuggler, who is in his thirties and is described as having a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success.

"Just wait," he smiled.

It appears that the Sunday Express had quite a scoop. Nearly two months later, the Paris attacks occurred.     

Contrary to Charles Grant’s inference, strength deters aggression. History says so. But to be strong, Western Europe’s nations have to reject the diversity worldview that diminishes their civilization and invites their enemies in. Unless nations are strong within -- unless they have confidence and faith in themselves as a people and the values and virtues that elevated them -- they cannot long resist the aggressions of enemies from without.    

But wither Western Europe in the wake of the Paris attacks? 

Backlashes have set in against elites and governments throughout Europe. As anticipated, the media there is characterizing the protestors as “far-right.” Given the general leftward tilt among Western Europeans, anyone right-of-enter is apt to be branded as far-right. 

Nonetheless, thanks to the likes of Cameron and Merkel (and Hollande until after Friday’s attacks) -- to their inaction, ineptness, and outright dereliction of duty -- they’ve inflamed and emboldened the political fringes. Mark well: Europeans have a history of embracing hard and resolute men when establishment leaders fail in their duties to safeguard their nations. Most of these men weren’t Churchills. 

Beyond the backlashes, anti-immigrant pro-Western movements in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, et al, will gain many more adherents among the citizenry. Increasingly, the clashes will between the diversity/E.U. elites and their constituencies and the aforementioned movements intent on securing their nations and protecting their civilization. These clashes, in fact, must happen in order to decide Western Europe’s fate. Western Europe’s current trajectory is decline and eventual submission to new masters: the Muslims there and those who are steadily entering Europe.

Expect, too, clashes to rise between Muslims (an estimated 20 million in Western Europe) and the surging anti-immigrant pro-Western movements. Of course, not all Muslims in Western Europe want a caliphate there. But millions of Muslims are true to their faith and sympathetic to the extremist vision. If they perceive that the momentum is with their extremist brethren, those prone to militancy will go that way.

Weakness invites mockery and aggression, regardless what Western Europe’s diversity elite argue.