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Suicide of the West: An essay on the meaning and destiny of liberalism

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Burnham wrote this book in 1964, and was at that time concerned about the 'contraction' of the West and its values. In that sense, this book is somewhat dated, since more of the opposite has happened. However, what makes this book a classic is his analysis of the liberal mind. In fact, this book is what helped me to understand the confused mind-set that is characteristic of leftists. Burnham is obviously very influenced by Michael Oakeshott (author of the classic _Rationalism in Politics_); he agrees with Oakeshott's belief that two of the main characteristics of leftists are the belief in 'reason' to solve all problems and to refashion society, and its collary, the denigration of tradition. Since 'rightists' see the limitations of reason, and understand the importance of thousands of years of evolved tradition in supporting society, they of course then logically become the main enemy of leftists. Rightists usually see leftists not as evil, but merely goofy; leftists on the other hand see rightists not merely as mistaken, but as evil. This is the book that clued me in as to why these beliefs are held. For anyone interested in politcal science, this is a must-read book.

This book was written in 1964 but is as relevant (if not more so) today than it was when first published. Since that time, modern liberalism has moved further leftward and worldwide Communist revolutionary impulses have only marginally declined, notwithstanding the collapse of the Soviet Union. Red China is becoming the new Red menace and Russia is in the midst of potentially dangerous changes.

The very premise of this book has played out on the world scene since its writing. The liberal approach towards Communism (i.e. appeasement) in the 1970s had weakened the Western resolve to contain Communism just as Burnham predicted it would. On the other hand, the 1980s demonstrated the efficacy of the opposite approach, namely mustering the will and resources to rollback Communism. And the 1990s served to remind us all once again how ill-equipped liberalism is in containing Communism as the Red Dragon raised its ugly head and the Bear grew restless.

Burnham spends the first two-thirds of the book describing the liberal worldview in intellectual and moral terms. He begins by first outlining the major tenets of liberalism and shows from whence they arose. He then demonstrates how some of these tenets are intellectually weak due to their internal inconsistency, mutual incompatibility, and failures in application.

Burnham then shifts to the moral/psychological aspect of liberalism, specifically the role of values in liberal ideology; and the priority that liberals give to those values. He also explains the sentiments that drive the commitment to liberalism and explains how, in many cases, those sentiments are inconsistent with the intellectual tenets of liberalism. He also describes the powerful role guilt plays in the liberal impulse towards egalitarianism.

Especially enlightening is Burnham's contrasting of the modern liberal with the classical liberal of the 19th century. He makes the comparison by showing that many of the intellectual tenets of modern liberalism are absent from the 19th century laissez-faire version. He also describes how and why values have been inverted - namely that the modern liberal now esteems peace/security above freedom/liberty.

With the intellectual/psychological analysis of liberalism complete, Burnham then proceeds to evaluate the threat of Communism to Western Civilization. His explanation of Communism's inherent demand to achieve world dominance is superb. There is no mistaking the fact that co-existence with capitalism is simply not an option for the Communist.

But because modern liberalism shares similar egalitarian impulses with Communism, it is intellectually and morally weakened before the Red menace. In short, it is difficult to oppose Communism from the Left. There simply is too much in common to come out in direct opposition to its ideology. This is not to say that liberals support Communist tactics, although they have been among the Kremlin's chief apologists at various times (e.g. 1930s, 1960s).

Because liberals share many egalitarian goals with Communism, they become "useful idiots" for the world revolutionaries, whose interest it is to create instability in non-Communist countries. For example, it is now known (vis-à-vis post-Cold War Archives) that the Soviet Union incited and exploited much of the American civil unrest (1930s, 1960s) that liberal ideologues created in their pursuit of egalitarianism. In essence, because of an overlap in their common goals, the Communists found the modern liberal to be a useful tool for hastening the world revolution of the proletariat.

However, unlike its explicit goals, liberal sentiments are actually quite disjoint from the Communist. In fact, the differences in sentiments are what permit Communists to use liberals to further their revolutionary goals. For example, the liberal's quest for peace is not the same as the Communist's. The Communist sees peace as the calm arising out of a world free of capitalism. It does not mean peace achieved by nation's agreeing to mutual co-existence. But the Communist finds the liberal's pursuit of "peace" useful in order to weaken the security of non-Communist nations.

So willingly or unwittingly, modern liberals, especially from the West, are essentially useless when it comes to halting the Communist quest to dominate and eventually overthrow non-communist systems. Their perspective prevents them from confronting the non-rational ideological menace with the only principle it understands -- force.

Only a hard-line stance (as Ronald Reagan promoted) and proactive measures will put a check on an ideology that has world domination as its ultimate goal. This lesson has been demonstrated once as a result of the Cold War outcome. And one can only hope and pray that the lesson will not be forgotten. Because if it is, the West will indeed commit suicide and be delivered into the hands of International Communism.

James Burnham's useful little volume, originally published in 1964, is not so much a book about the impending death of Western civilization as it is a treatise against liberalism and the sins of liberals.

Burnham justifies the book's title by tying liberal domination to what he recognizes as the mortal peril in which Western civilization finds itself, but he is reserved enough to state in the end that liberals and liberalism are not the cause of the decline of Western civilization but the cause of the West's suicidal reconciliation to its decline and of its failure to take restorative measures.

And Burnham takes a balanced historical approach which is incompatible with that of the polemicist. He discusses the history of liberalism, starting with the early days, during which liberalism indeed represented advocacy of human liberty and ending with the post-New Deal era, in which liberalism has come to mean liberty for liberals only and servitude for everyone else.

The ugly double standards that liberals practice when distinguishing "us" from "them" are elaborated on, as is the liberal enshrinement of all allies on the left, including Communist dictators, no matter how dangerous or offensive, and demonization of all opponents on the right, no matter how inefficacious. Political correctness and affirmative action are exposed here, even though these phrases have not yet become part of the American lexicon.

For while the themes are familiar, this book was written in an era that seems quite removed from that which we live in now - in the shadow of JFK's death and prior to Khrushchev's ouster and to the Tonkin Resolution which expanded America's role in Vietnam. It was also written at a time when the unsuccessful Goldwater presidential campaign, which would spawn Ronald Reagan's successful one, had not yet taken shape.

The book therefore provides valuable historical perspective at the dawn of some of liberalism`s most significant influences, as well as the ascendancy of conservatism as an impotent political force.

Burnham doesn't score 100% on the "crystal ball" test. His pessimism about the virtual invulnerability of communism and the need for American resolve to defeat it rings naïve today. Since the end of World War II and the invention of the Bomb, Americans were probably always too fat, dumb and happy to be willing to die in large numbers to prevail over the Soviets, ever preferring to believe that freedom is free. But Soviet communism turned out to have enough of its own fatal defects so as to render unnecessary the need for American resolve.

Nevertheless, in other respects, Burnham demonstrates impressive forethought in writing this volume. His conclusion that contemporary liberalism, by nature, is incapable of governing or of using timely military force in appropriate amounts very much anticipates the Clinton and Carter administrations, even if Burnham can't quite anticipate the Clinton War Room or scandal-driven military strikes or any of the extraordinary acts of destruction that liberals would actually turn out to be willing to commit in order to acquire and maintain power for its own sake.

As Burnham is writing, some of the worst evils of liberalism haven't yet taken shape. The liberals, especially RFK, haven't yet performed their cynical "about face" maneuver on Vietnam; They haven't yet completely poisoned American civilization with obscene, mindless, standard-less, witless, indulgent entertainment and pop-culture therapy, masquerading as empowerment, self-fulfillment, and individualist expression. They haven't yet made infanticide a constitutional right. They haven't yet led female and homosexual minions to war against the traditional heterosexual male ethos, nor have they secured their political future by unleashing on America's borders countless numbers of undocumented aliens to assault American civilization in the name of "multiculturalism".

Yet Burnham's relentless analysis lays bare the intellectual bankruptcy and moral shortcomings of even the 1964 class of liberals. And the examples that he provides of liberal intellectuals savaging human lives in order to score ideological points anticipate the even more destructive childlike New Class of liberals that will arise later in his decade and rule into the 21st century.

But Burnham ultimately fails in the same way that other conservatives have been failing since his time. He does not call for the eradication of liberalism. Instead, he argues that a liberal spirit of innovation is desirable to enact needed social reforms and that conservatives are needed to govern them. Unfortunately, this is a slippery slope that conservatives tend to fall into quite often - giving up the ghost of past battles by venerating liberal reforms and politicos that they rightfully assailed a generation earlier.

Witness the way in which America's most prominent conservative now tries to put a "compassionate" female-friendly multicultural face on conservatism - the better with which to "conserve" the evils already wrought.

"We don't want to repeal Title IX," conservatives plead regarding a wicked law whose name and face belong on a "Wanted" poster. "Title IX is GOOD! We only want it enforced in accordance with its ORIGINAL INTENT." Oh my God!

Such actions cause conservatives to slide into hollows designed by liberal troglodytes, such as the late Herbert Block. "Half a step, half a step," a mocking Herblock once had Dwight Eisenhower plead Father Time in one cartoon. "You keep marching too fast."

And if the only function of conservatives is not to combat liberal reforms but only to manage or trim them, conservatism scarcely seems worth the trouble and expense of maintenance, and the Herblocks of the world are indeed entitled to a laugh at conservatives' expense, ridiculing them for always being a half step behind.

Nine years after National Review`s inception in 1955, Burnham has already tragically moved away from the publication's stated purpose of standing athwart history yelling "Stop", and he sets the stage for others to move even further away. Neither he nor they understand that conservatism and its advocates will not be worth a damn until they obtain the will and the wherewithal to put Father Time in a headlock and march him firmly BACKWARD.

This well written, extremely thoughtful book was first published in 1964 at a time few thought Liberalism to be a threat to our civilization and, indeed, the Western World.The brilliantly intellectual author wrote from a state of reality and recognized and characterized what has become a significant destructive force to our culture almost 50 years before the currrent obvious crisis is forcing awareness on more and more people. The book reads like it was written today, but amazingly was written in 1964. It is an amazing study of the liberal mind, it's lack of ability for rational thought, an amazing ability to "know" all answers, based on their catechism--without the inconvenience of making the effort of informing themselves of the facts or issues. An in depth psychological study of the anarchic mind and where it is leading us.

I read this book in 1979. It is a classic. Mr. Burham's observations on liberalism have helped me to understand the liberal mindset through the intervening years. Some chapters will not help the modern reader, as events have overtaken them, but the analysis of the liberal mistake is still valid. Mankind will not be made perfect by laws or governments. The world is not imperfect because we have failed to write and enforce our laws correctly. No system of carrots and sticks designed by man or government will replace the dictum: teach them correct principles. Read also Michael Oakeshott on civil association.

A classic work that is illuminating at least as much for its analysis of modern ideology as for its thesis (which has become relevant again in the face of the rise of militant Islam).

The main flaw in this work is the inadequately explained thirty-nine-point litmus test for liberalism near the end of the second chapter. Too many readers tend to reflexively assume that Burnham is presenting it as a measure of where one falls on a left-right spectrum, and so they misunderstand it. The list is best understood as a set of principles which, while not necessarily exclusive to liberalism, are so central to modern (circa 1965) American liberalism that disagreement with more than a few of them would call into question one's pedigree as a bona fide liberal. A measure of one's conservative (or libertarian) pedigree would require an entirely different list.

One of the best attacks on liberalism I've ever read, though Burnham makes the misleading argument that liberalism is a symptom of our dying civilization rather than its primary cause. But even if you believe this, there is no denying that liberalism is a malignant symptom that has rapidly sped up the self-destruction of the West. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the most significant political transformation of 20th century--the shrinking size, power and influence of the West. To truly understand the political dynamics of this shift in power, I would also recommend reading Samuel Francis' book James Burnham: Thinkers of Our Time