James Burnham: Suicide of the West

An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism  

Regnery, 1985 (1964)    

Amazon.com

Front Flap of 1975 ed.:

This is the book that dissects modern liberalism as no book ever has. James Burnham shows us that strange amalgam of self-righteousness, guilt, good intention, fuzzy logic, arrogance, double standard, selective indignation and selective compassion that produces the mind and psychology of the liberal.

Burnham’s insights search out the agonies of liberalism:

– Why liberalism is the ideology of suicide.

– The common ancestors of liberalism and Communism.

– Why liberals sneer at patriotism.

– Very precisely: how liberalism lies at the root of race riots, murderous taxes, national surrender and the crime explosion – and why liberals are helpless to do anything about their own follies.

– Why liberalism clashes with Christianity.

– The inner drives that impel liberals to war on the Right – while giving the Left an ever-so-gentle tap on the wrist, at worst.

Back Cover of 1975 ed.:

“James Burnham has written a book about liberalism for which the world has been aching. it is worth more to the West than the year’s gross national product, more than all our planes and bombs – with all of these, we have still been losing out in the world. But this book is not only a pathologist’s report. It gives the key for the recovery of the West…It requires superb powers of synthesis to take hold of such diverse phenomena as these and dozens of others and demonstrate how they all relate to a particular and identifiable social philosophy or world view. Moreover, the demonstration of their interrelatedness is not made by legerdemain. Mr Burnham does not pull any cute tricks, for the benefit of making quickie debaters’ points. He has done a job which is the ultimate tax on the intellectual talents of an individual who addresses himself to strategic organization: he has delved into myriad disorderly data and come up with a synthesis. Moreover, one which will appeal to the reader (twenty thousand of them already, according to the publisher, and only three weeks after publication) as a work of cogency and plausibility, and of such timeliness as to add up to revelation.”  William F. Buckley

From Back Flap of 1975 ed.:

“If any book may rouse the friends of order, justice and freedom to intelligent action against the grim enemies of civilization, Mr Burnham has given us just such an instrument.”  Russell Kirk

“I hope a great many people will read it, particularly those who will disagree with it vociferously. They’ll never be quite so smug again.”  John Dos Passos

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JOB’s Comment:

One of the best books on liberalism.