The dangerous moral vaccuum in which we live

HOW about this? "Helen passed illegal substances on to Telemachus and Menelaus and, if she lived today, would have been nicked faster than you can say, 'Let's see what's in your amphora, sunshine'." Alex Boot writes with scintillating wit and panache and with authority - not as the scribes. He's very good on pop stars posing as socialist idealists too: "They belch their anti-capitalist invective all the way to the capitalist bank."

Boot argues that the West has been lost to those who can't think straight, if at all, who believe in nothing and live self-indulgent lives following the most trashy sub-cultural pursuits. Where we once had a civilised society and religious commitment, we now have only a relentless chase after a mindless, animalistic notion of "happiness" - minds numbed with drugs and brains almost cracking apart under the ubiquitous barrage of pop music. Where we used to have a living community and great institutions to defend real political liberties, we now have narcissism, philistinism, nihilism and the cult of the individual. We are the hollow men, headpieces filled with straw.

He says: "The central conflict of our time is cultural, and traditional society and culture have been under attack for 300 years. There is an inexorable decline in all forms of art and all walks of life." The West used to be adventurous, confident, a world of brilliant architectural, artistic and musical creativity - the great cathedrals, Bach, Mozart, Rembrandt - and this cultural excellence was fundamentally spiritual. Boot agrees with T S Eliot when he says: "Such achievements as you can boast in the way of polite society will hardly survive the faith to which they owe their significance".

We brag about our "progress" and use "medieval" only to mean something dark, brutal and primitive. But it is modern times which have seen the greatest conflicts, terrors and genocides: two world wars, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, Stalin's massacre of 40 million and Mao's massacre of untold millions more. Not only do we fall far short of the great achievements of the past, we actively despise our historic greatness, dismiss the masterpieces of creative art and music as examples of "elitism".

Instead we prefer to settle down indolently, indulgently and idiotically in thrall to worthless celebs, Big Brother and all manner of voyeuristic pornography - the modern equivalent of the circuses which accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire.

What's the answer? Passive resistance. Refuse to take part in the dumbed down tawdriness of modern life and then perhaps, "Sometime, somewhere there will be found a charred score sheet with the notes of a Bach fugue still legible, a half-burned collection of still readable Shakespeare sonnets, a torn but restorable Rembrandt canvas and, one hopes, the Bible".

He ends marvellously: "We can set, as best we can, an example of a life of honour, beauty and charity. And we can pray".

You don't have to agree with all Alexander Boot's provocative and controversial judgements. Many will feel like throwing the book at the wall before they reach page four. But it's one hell of a read. Passionate. Erudite. Witty. And absolutely committed to the humane task of rejecting the bad in favour of something better. While there are people who can write like this, I feel the West is not lost yet, quite.