It was all supposed to be so liberating. But it wasn't, as Ms. Levy argues forcefully in "Female Chauvinist Pigs." It was merely the academic groundwork for what she calls "raunch culture," now so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. Young women wear shirts emblazoned with "Porn Star" across the chest. Teen stores sell "Cat in the Hat" thong underwear. Parents treat their daughters' friends to "cardio striptease" classes for birthday parties. This is liberation?

Much of the conflict is in two areas that, until now, have been nearly invisible to civilians: how the military hires its ministers and how they word their public prayers. Evangelical chaplains -- who are rising in numbers and clout amid a decline in Catholic priests and mainline Protestant ministers -- are challenging the status quo on both questions, causing even some evangelical commanders to worry about the impact on morale.

The policy differences are real. Attempts to understand them in political, strategic, and economic terms alone will ultimately fail, however, because such explanations do not reach deeply enough into the human texture of contemporary Europe. To put the matter directly: Europe, and especially western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale.

Indeed, nothing has been more central to the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and his followers than denunciations of democracy, legislatures, and "man-made law." The great crime of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden declared, is "ruling by laws other than those which Allah has revealed." and thereby making it "incumbent on [their] subjects, by Allah's command, to rebel."