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R. H. S. CROSSMAN
peasement only a few years ago. Across the Atlantic,
things
do not
seem to us to be moving quite so fast. But the crab-like slide
to
the
left begun by Mr. Eisenhower was certainly carried forward at a some–
what increased pace by Mr. Kennedy and then continued by Mr. John–
son. With the Test Ban Treaty signed, and Africa liberated, "we are
all liberals now."
All, that is, except Mr. Goldwater, his ideologue Mr. Burnham,
and a segment of unknown dimensions sliced out of the American
electorate which is still frozen in the postures of cold war, and darkly
suspicious that the press, the intellectuals and the liberal politicians
are once again betraying them. It is this fury and suspicion which
gives bite to Mr. Burnham's polemic. The opinion-makers are anxious
to forget their anti-Communist past: he is there to recall it. In the
thaw, he comes like an iceman to remind them that winter may not,
after all, be far behind.
Suicide of the West
is a powerful enough document to confirm
Mr. Kennan's worst fears. Liberalism, as Mr. Burnham is careful to
emphasize, should not be regarded as the
cause
of the contraction of
the frontiers of Western civilization, which he notes as the most
striking characteristic of post-war history. But what liberal ideology
has
provided, he argues, is a body of ideas which by justifying this decline
has actually accelerated its pace. And here he notes the contrast
between Communist and liberal ideology. Whereas Communism is the
overt opponent of the West, liberalism is the enemy within the gates,
corroding the free people's will to resist totalitarian attack, and per–
suading them to regard the destruction of their own civilization as a
victory for human progress.
Far the best chapters in
Suicide of the West
are those in which
Mr. Burnham makes explicit the half-truths, sophisms and illusions
implicit in a great deal of sloppy liberal thinking. As a test of the
degree to which our thinking is permeated with this kind of "do-good"
liberalism, he lists thirty-nine questions for each of us to answer; and
later, in an even more effective chapter, sets out nineteen "self-evident"
liberal truths and challenges their validity with nineteen challenging
counter-assertions. This is a virtuoso performance, though I must leave
it to the reader to decide whether the technique should be described
as socratic or sophistic.
Mr. Burnham has an easy task in demonstrating that there is a
great deal more historical evidence for the Christian doctrine of original
sin, than for the secular liberal assumptions about Progress which-at
least until the rise of
Hitle~induced
progressive people to believe we