Review of "Suicide of the West" by James Burnham

I was all set to review this book and then a new UR post came out.  Burnham's book is, in some ways, a UR-lite and I can't but compare and contrast.  Burnham begins the book by noting the decline of the West – by this he means that, at the time he wrote, the territory on the map controlled by the West was shrinking.  He ends the book by arguing that liberalism is the ideology of justifying this decline.  In his view liberalism is a coping mechanism to make the West feel better about its loss.

I was not particularly persuaded by this analysis, since I think the timing doesn't work.  Liberalism was around well before the West started declining.  As UR puts it:

Whatever you make of the left-right axis, you have to admit that there exists some force which has been pulling the Anglo-American political system leftward for at least the last three centuries. Whatever this unfathomable stellar emanation may be, it has gotten us from the Stuarts to Barack Obama. Personally, I would like a refund. But that's just me.

Nevertheless, Burnham's book is great.  One can ignore (part of) the beginning and the end and just focus on the middle.  In the middle, Burnham analyzes the ideology, or religion (as UR puts it and I doubt Burnham would disagree) of liberalism.

Here's Burnham:

In sum, then: liberalism rather broadly designated–ranging from somewhat dubious blends to the fine pure bonded 100-proof–is today, and from some time in the 1930's has been the prevailing American public doctrine, or ideology.

Here's Moldbug:

Except for a few unimportant institutions of non-mainstream religious affiliation, we simply do not see multiple, divergent, competing schools of thought within the American university system. The whole vast archipelago, though evenly speckled with a salting of contrarians, displays no factional structure whatsoever. It seems almost perfectly synchronized.

There are two explanations for this synchronization. One, Harvard and Stanford are synchronized because they both arrive at the same truth. I am willing to concede this for, say, chemistry. When it comes to, say, African-American studies, I am not quite so sure. Are you? Surely it is arguable that the latter is a legitimate area of inquiry. But surely it is arguable that it is not. So how is it, exactly, that Harvard, Stanford, and everyone else gets the same answer?

I'm afraid the only logical alternative, however awful and unimaginable, is the conclusion that Harvard and Stanford are synchronized because both are remoras attached, in some unthinkable way, to some great, invisible predator of the deep – perhaps even Cthulhu himself.

Certainly, the synchronization is not coordinated by any human hierarchical authority. (Yes, there are accreditation agencies, but a Harvard or a Stanford could easily fight them.) The system may be Orwellian, but it has no Goebbels. It produces Gleichschaltung without a Gestapo. It has a Party line without a Party. A neat trick. We of the Sith would certainly like to understand it. . . .

Moreover, if we broaden our focus from the university system to the entire system of "education," from grade schools to journalism, we see this effect again and again. What, exactly, is the "mainstream media?" If we accept the ecclesiastical metaphor, the newspaper is a perfect analogue of the church proper. It is simply the latest transmission technology for your worm's daily or weekly security update. And here again, a coordinated message – without any central agency. . . .

This is easy to explain: in post-1945 America, the source of all new ideas is the university. Ideas check out of the university, but they hardly ever check in. Thence, they flow outward to the other arms of the educational system as a whole: the mainstream media and the public schools. Eventually they become our old friend, "public opinion." This process is slow, happening on a generational scale, and thus the 45-year lag.

Thus whatever coordinates the university system coordinates the state, through the transmission device of "public opinion." Naturally, since this is 100% effective, the state does not have to wait for the transmission to complete. It can act in advance of a complete response, as in this case the Supreme Court did in 1967, and synchronize directly with the universities.

This relationship, whose widespread practice in the United States dates to 1933, is known as public policy. Essentially, for everything your government does, there is a university department full of professors who can, and do, tell it what to do. Civil servants and Congressional staffers follow the technical lead of the universities. The residual democratic branch of Washington, the White House, can sometimes push back feebly, but only with great difficulty.

Burnham's goal is to explain what liberalism is.  To do this, he lists 19 elements of the liberal doctrine.  They are as follows:

1. Human nature is change-able "with an infinite potential for progressive development."  Human nature is not an obstacle to perfection.
2. Humans are rational, and truth can be discovered by reason and science only.
3. Ignorance and bad social institutions are guilty of preventing progress.
4. Every social problem has a solution (historical optimism).
5. There should be no deference to established institutions and traditions.
6. Universal education is necessary to "get rid of ignorance."
7. Reforms can get rid of bad institutions.
8. Society is responsible for "social evils" (see points 3, 6 and 7).  Thus, punishments are bad and re-education is necessary.
9. Education as "universal dialogue" – academic freedom (later Burnham qualifies this with reference to barring anything that "offends" someone).
10. Politics is also a universal dialogue.
11. We cannot know objective truth, so everyone must be able to hold and express their opinions (see exception in 9).
12. Government should rest as directly as possible on the will of the people (though Moldbug shows that liberalism controls "the will of the people" so that this point becomes "Government should be controlled, with a time delay, by liberal opinion-makers").
13. All humans are the same with respect to "political capacity" and therefore the ideal state will include everyone in a world government (support UN).
14. "Men are of equal right" and all existing inequalities must be corrected to equalize "the conditions of nurture, schooling, residence, employment, recreation and income."
15. "Social hierarchies . . . are bad."
16. "Sub-groups of humanity . . . do not differ in civilizing potential."
17. Secularism is the goal of political and social life.
18. Free discussion and negotiation are the best way to settle disputes (i.e. pacifism).
19. Government should guarantee that everyone has enough "food, shelter, clothing and education, and security against unemployment, illness and the problems of old age."

It is surprising that guilt does not make the list, because Burnham devotes several chapters to analyzing liberal guilt.  The guilt forces the liberal to do something, about which more below.

One of the major points that I take from Burnham is that liberalism is an ideology.  To that end, despite its claims, it is "practically shock-proof."  Burnham shows that point 1 is necessary to justify all of liberalism's beliefs and that point 1 is demonstrably not true.  That evidence does not seem to dissuade liberals.  Their ideology (Burnham), their religion (Moldbug) is impervious to this new evidence.  In Burnham's telling, they literally cannot see it.  Perhaps they use the power of the state to "clean up" a blighted area.  The result of course is that what was once confined to a specific area is now spread throughout a city.  The problem has not been "solved" but liberals will point to the cleaned up area and claim success.  The unintended consequences will never be seen, the possibility that there will always be people unable to support themselves and these people must end up somewhere will never cross their mind.

Burnham's discussion of the transformation of liberalism over time into a statist ideology is also important.  Liberalism of old valued valued liberty and freedom.  For modern liberals, these values are superceded by (social) justice which is forced upon us by the state, the will of the people.  Further, how could liberalism be critical of the state "that they are themselves running."

Both Burnham and Moldbug comment on liberalism's "selective indignation."  Moldbug comments on the treatment of Pinochet versus that of Castro.  Burnham notes the indignation over the treatment of blacks in Southern schools in the US, but the absence of indignation regarding the treatment of Christians in Communist countries.  This brings us to another point which they both use the phrase pas d'ennemis a gauche, pas d'amis a droit.  Liberalism only has enemies to the right and in fact needs an enemy to the right.  Moldbug has repeatedly commented that the Republican Party serves this purpose for liberalism in the US.  The Republicans lose constantly, even when they win, they don't stop the leftward drift of the country.  Yet they serve to create enemies for liberals, who need enemies.  Burnham comments on McCarthyism – which he believes is a creation of the left, since McCarthy had no chance of actually succeeding at anything.  But, the left needed him, "so necessary for liberalism is the enemy on the Right that when he does not exist, liberalism must invent him."  Burnham goes further "without the enemy to the right, liberalism does not exist."  Finally, both authors comment on what Moldbug calls The Cathedral.  Their comments in this respect are quite similar, though Moldbug has perhaps a more concrete discussion of how The Cathedral functions.

Moldbug and Burnham do differ in many points.  I think Moldbug's view of liberalism is superior, since it takes into account the longer time horizon of liberalism.  I am attracted to both writers because the topic of liberalism needs to be studied in this way.  Burnham comments repeatedly on the lack of primary sources dealing with what exactly liberalism is.  This absence is inexcusable for the major ideology/religion of our time.  Moldbug's longer-dated analysis makes clear that any counter to liberalism must be reactionary.  It must go way back in time, since liberalism has defeated all more modern attempts against it.  Though I do not know if Moldbug has taken Burnham's point about ideology to heart.  The liberal will not be dissuaded by evidence that proves him wrong any more than a Christian will be dissuaded from believing in God if given contradictory evidence.  All evidence is seen through the lens of ideology and will "easily" be explained away.