Maybe this great story really is finished. Perhaps the Western ideals which offered individual liberty, mass prosperity and self-determination to unprecedented numbers of people have reached the end – or, at least, the beginning of the end.

Certainly there are grounds for believing this. Lost in a miasma of bizarre self-loathing, confused about the meaning of important words like “liberal” and “tolerant”, and locked into an economic downward spiral which seems inexorable, the most influential Western nations look close to structural collapse. Faced with enemies and global competitors who regard our political culture, with its veneration of the individual, as decadent or actually sinful, the West seems trapped in neurotic self-doubt.

Is it simply purblind arrogance to believe that this could not be the case? After all, history has its lessons. Apparently invincible civilisations, however great their leadership had once been and even when their cultural achievements were so magnificent that they survive to this day, have declined and fallen. So why not ours, and why not now?

There is a credible case for saying that this failure of confidence is more debilitating even than the terrible events of the twentieth century which created horrific state crimes but which, in the end, produced almost universal agreement on the value of human conscience and rational judgment. The global accords that were instituted after the world wars – and applied even more widely after the end of the Cold War – were testimony to the general acceptance of what the 18th century called “natural rights”.

There was even considerable agreement about what those guaranteed rights and freedoms were and how they were to be enforced, whether or not they were encoded in a written constitution. What ideological disputes remained were about what those words meant: did the economic security that communism offered constitute true liberty because it freed people from capitalist exploitation? Or were individuals only genuinely free if they could own property and engage in free market competition?

It scarcely seems to have occurred to anyone that the most basic principles of this philosophy might be rejected in favour of a totalitarianism so profound that it prohibited moral choice and the idea of legitimate disagreement. We are facing a challenge now, from a (very small) faction within our own society, for which liberalism and tolerance cannot be an answer because liberalism and tolerance are themselves the enemy. How do nations whose political and social systems are based on the principle of inclusion and equality deal with a minority which explicitly rejects those principles?

This is the liberal dilemma: because we advocate tolerance, must we also tolerate openly professed intolerance? And if we do tolerate it, do we permit it to prevail only within its own community, or should it be allowed to influence the attitudes and language of the nation (and its public media) at large?

This is a live debate at the moment. Much of the discussion of migration is now revolving around the question of whether incomers must be seen to accept our national values (of liberalism and tolerance) rather than establish their separate cultural enclaves. Should we, in other words, be tolerant of illiberal doctrines being perpetuated in our midst?

This is the logical conundrum which might bring down the Western value system. Seeing the force of it in our streets has been genuinely shocking, especially as we have no answer to its challenge that does not involve apparently breaking our own rules about freedom to protest and express contrary opinions.

So is that it? Have we arrived at the final undoing of all hubristic cultures: a combination of philosophical complacency, appalling economic mismanagement and moral turpitude? There is no reason to think we are immune from historical inevitability. It is certainly plausible that this paralysis of political will – which just happens to coincide with a financial fiasco – could be the last chapter.

But wait a minute. Isn’t there some other pattern that runs directly counter to this? It is precisely those Western countries – those nations now said to be destined for economic ruin and political collapse – which are being inundated by hopeful migrants in such numbers that the figures are unsustainable. Literally millions of people are risking everything – even their lives – to cross the borders of Britain, Europe and North America.

They seem completely undeterred by the despair in which the politics of those countries are hopelessly mired: Britain’s convictionless vacuity, Europe’s alarming populism and the corrupting of America’s institutions. Nor do they appear to worry about the coming recessions that are destined to overtake what were the West’s most dynamic economies.

And it is not just the destitute and hopelessly downtrodden who come: the criminal gangs who profit from this determination to make the dangerous journey are charging a good deal for their favours. And so far as we know, there isn’t a comparable industry helping great numbers of people to enter the Islamic theocracies of the Middle East. There is no popular global rush to join the new Dark Age which Islamist extremism expounds. Afghanistan under the Taliban and Iran under the mullahs are clearly not regarded as desirable destinations even by most Muslims.

The truth is that Western political organisation which promotes individual freedom and private prosperity is the way most of the people of the world want to live. So attractive is the notion of an open society, which offers at least the possibility of self-fulfillment and progress, that countless numbers risk their lives to reach it.

In fact, they want to come here in such numbers that even with the best will in the world we are finding it almost impossible to cope. Having lived with genuine oppression and inhumanity, they know what those things actually look like and where they reside. Do they see the true value of what we have and take for granted? You bet they do. And if we can just get a grip – even at five minutes to midnight – we will save it not just for ourselves but for the world too.