The greatest liberal achievement

The most significant achievement of liberalism…is its ability to handle the problem of guilt for large numbers of people without costing undue personal inconvenience.”

James Burnham

The Suicide of the West

A review of that book from another conservative philosopher:

Ideology as a Fate

Suicide of the West, by James Burnham.

New York: John Day, 1964. 312 pp.

$5.95.

Reviewed by GERHART NIEMEYER

Modern Age, September 1964, p. 320

I MUST MAKE a terrible confession: most books

about the contemporary scene bore me to tears.

This book, however, I could not put down once

I had started. I read it on a plane ride, from

cover to cover, not even interrupting my lunch.

The reason is not only that the book reads so

well, but that it says so much. It is a portrait of

Liberalism’s dreamworld, by way of an explanation

of what has been happening to the West, and

to this country, in the course of our lifetime.

Appropriately, Burnham begins by identifying

the Liberals. No meaningful answer could have

been obtained had he started by asking “what

is Liberalism?” and proceeded to “define” it in

some intuitive way. A convincing list of Liberal

personalities, publications, and institutions provides

a sharp focus: whatever they say, write,

teach, and do, must be taken as Liberalism. Empirically

rather than speculatively, Burnham

finds that Liberals beIieve in the utter plasticity

of human nature, in the avoidability of evil

through education and change of institutions, in

a happy historical future. Liberals assume that

politics consists of “problems” to which one can

find “solutions,” that all “truths” are relative,

that distinctions between men are politically irrelevant,

that social hierarchies are always bad,

that the government is obligated to guarantee to

everyone food, shelter, clothing, education, security

against unemployment, disease, and want.

A list of these and other Liberal tenets, nineteen

in all, is highlighted by contrasting them with

alternate modes of thinking, not necessarily conservative,

though. For Burnham rightly insists

that Conservatism, unlike Liberalism, is not an

ideology and cannot be systematized along parallels

to Liberal ideas.

The highlight of the book, for me, is Burnham’s

elucidation of what ideological thinking

is. Having read this, Burnham’s readers will

never again insist that there should be an “American

ideology” because there is a Communist

one; nor will they think of calling Christianity

an “ideology.” Ideological thinking, as the term

has been used for over a hundred years, is

based, not on the perception of reality, but rather

on some preconceived position to which reality

is then adjusted. It is, therefore, factproof.

“A convinced believer in the anti-Semitic ideology

tells me that the Bolshevik revolution is a

Jewish plot. I point out to him that the revolution

was led to its first major victory by a non-

Jew, Lenin. He then explains that Lenin was the

pawn of Trotsky, Radek, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and

other Jews . . . I remind him that Lenin’s

successor as leader of the revolution, the nonJew

Stalin, killed off all those Jews . . . He then informs

me that the seeming Soviet anti-Semitism

is only a fraud invented by the Jewish press, and

that Stalin and Khrushchev are really Jews whose

names have been changed. . . There

is no possible argument, observation, or experiment

that could disprove a firm ideological belief.

. . .”

This is, of course, not an example of

Liberal ideological thinking, but Burnham shows

in quotation after quotation how the same imperviousness

to reality as it is characterizes Liberals.

Theirs is what Robert Musil has called a

“Second Reality,” a self-constructed dreamworld,

which one is determined to accept as if it really

existed. Between those immersed in a Second

Reality and those who can still see what is and

how it is, there can be no dialogue.

A superb chapter is that on the Liberal guilt.

On the assumption that education and change of

institutions can take care of all evil, Liberals feel

guilty at the thought of any condition of

wretchedness, anywhere. For this kind of guilt

there can, of course, be no forgiveness. The Liberal

seeks relief by trying to “do something

about any and every social problem,” a feverish

and interminable compulsive activity in which

not the correctness of the program but rather

“good intentions” are counted. The Liberal’s twisted

and irrational sense of guilt has a fatal political

effect: It disarms him morally before those

whom he regards as less well off than himself.

This vulnerability, and his peculiar sense of guilt,

so often breeds in the Liberal a generalized

hatred of Western civilization and his own country.

Here also is the origin of the Liberals’ determined

preference to seek the enemy only on the

Right. “Pas d‘ennemi a gauche!”

There are ideologues, as, e.g., the Communists

and the Nazis, who know how to handle power

with consummate skill. Not so the Liberals, says

Burnham. He is right, although he could have

added that once Liberals decide on force, they

tend to go to extremes, as in the case of unconditional

surrender. Liberals are “better out of power

than in power.” With Liberals in the government,

the area of the West has contracted, year

after year, position after position, not from any

lack of physical strength but from internal, i.e.,

spiritual and intellectual, causes. Liberalism, says

Burnham, motivates and justifies the contraction,

and reconciles us to it. Liberals tell us that “the

occupation of Cuba by Russian troops is not entirely

a bad thing” (Rovere) or that the enemy’s

aggressiveness will wane as he grows stronger.

In this sense Burnham calls Liberalism the “ideology

of Western suicide.”

All of Burnham’s books have been parts of an

endeavor to understand what is happening to our

civilization. At times there has been a trace of

Spenglerian “destiny” in his concepts. More and

more, however, he has been moving toward a

deepening humane understanding of experiences

and responsibilities. This book strikes me as his

greatest, in that respect. The Liberal syndrome is

examined with care and precision, never with hate

or arrogance.

The reader often is moved to feel

the excitement of self-discovery and the urge to

move on along the path Burnham opens. The book

is so stimulating that I had a desire to write

page after page in an effort further to deepen

the insight. I would have liked to comment on

the Positivism which governs our intelligentsia

in and out of the Academy, on the Comtean sense

of history which makes progress appear as a

continuing fight against religion and metaphysics,

on the ritual worship of mankind in lieu of a

deity, on the Liberal ethics of action apart from

any sense of constitution (either the constitution

of being, or the constitution of national political

existence, or the economic constitution), etc. The

discovery of intellectual rot in those who govern

us is no cheerful message. Hope, however, springs

from the realization that in things of the soul the

unflinching acknowledgment of the truth is the

first step towards health.