Suicide of the West

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Summary: One of the 25 most important conservative books
Review: Burnham began his career in political activism as a Trotskyite communist and became a very committed anti-communist. Like Buckley, Burnham, in the sixties and seventies particularly, provided intellectual fortification for the conservative movement.

        First published in the early sixties, Suicide of the West is a withering indictment of liberalism. Far from serving as a bulwark against communism, liberalism, Burnham shows, is the ideology of Western suicide, communism in its preliminary stage. Though Soviet communism has collapsed, liberalism remains, and as long as it does, Suicide of the West should be read by conservatives.

Rating:
Summary: reformed trotskyite lambasts socialism
Review: I can't give this book the review it deserves. Truth is I read it 11 years ago and would mangle it if i tried to get specific. But it is absolutely a must-read for people who are vaguely certain that there is something wrong with the dominant trends in 20th century western social thought, but can't elucidate their thoughts. I read this book quite by accident the year after i finished college, and the memory of the thrill i felt is still with me. Suicide of the West will challenge and provoke, excite and inspire. It will send you to the library: you'll read 10 more books because of it. Read this book.

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Summary: Modern Liberalism Cannot Protect the West Against Communism
Review: 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.