“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,”

[barryqwalsh]

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” wrote James Burnham in his 1964 “Suicide of the West.

”

Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization.

Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe.

Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands.


Islam’s Conquest of Europe

 

[ScienceRocks]

This is just idiocy,,,NOT liberalism!

Liberalism respects education, science and maintaining the infrastructure in your own nation. Idiocy seeks to destroy such and can not be liberalism.

 

[edthecynic]

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

Henry Ward Beecher

 

[JakeStarkey]

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide" is a statement that rejects western history.

 

[Correll]

This is just idiocy,,,NOT liberalism!

Liberalism respects education, science and maintaining the infrastructure in your own nation. Idiocy seeks to destroy such and can not be liberalism.

Liberalism destroys education to defend Teachers Unions and diversity.

Science? US manned space flight ended under Obama.

YOu can't maintain the infrastructure when two thirds of your budget goes to entitlements.

Your faith is misplaced.

 

[Correll]

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide" is a statement that rejects western history.

From the excellent article.

"This is but the beginning of what is to come, if Europe does not pull up the drawbridge.

For the scores of thousands of Syrians in the Balkans, Hungary, Austria and Germany are only the first wave. Behind them in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan are 4 million refugees from the Syrian civil war. Seeing the success of the first wave, they are now on the move.

Behind them are 2 million Alawites and 2 million Christians who will be fleeing Syria when the Bashar Assad regime falls to ISIS and the al-Qaeda terrorists who already occupy half of that blood-soaked land.

Now the Iraqis, who live in a country the prospects for whose reunification and peace are receding, have begun to move. Also among the thousands pouring into Europe from Turkey are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Afghans. When the Americans leave Afghanistan and the Taliban take their revenge, more Afghans will be fleeing west.

Africa has a billion people, a number that will double by 2050, and double again to 4 billion by 2100. Are those billions of Africans going to endure lives of poverty under ruthless, incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical regimes, if Europe’s door remains wide open?

What is coming is not difficult to predict.

Europe is going to run out of altruism long before it runs out of refugees. For as The New York Times reported Monday, there is no end in sight to the coming Third World and Islamic migrations to Europe."






"The scores of thousands of migrants bursting into Europe and the hundreds of thousands and millions coming after them are going to force Europeans to address an existential question.

Who are we? Are we unique and separate peoples of a particular race and tribe, history and faith, language and culture, identifiable to all the world and worth preserving at the price of our lives?

Are we Germans, Russians, Poles, Italians, Spanish and French first?

Or are we simply Europeans, people who live on the world’s smallest continent and share a belief in the equality of all peoples and cultures, and in secularism and social democracy?

Liberal Man almost alone excepted, every species of animal life reacts or recoils when another species intrudes upon its turf.

Thus, in the end, Burnham was probably right.

Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide."

 

[danielpalos]

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” wrote James Burnham in his 1964 “Suicide of the West.

”

Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization.

Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe.

Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands.


Islam’s Conquest of Europe

yes, in the US, we have a wonderful Social contract and supreme law of the land as that form of Socialism over truer forms of Capitalism where the capitalists with the most gold make the most rules.

 

[nat4900]

Here are a few other of Burnham's predictions which he made in 1941:

• 1 Germany is bound to win the war
• 2 Germany and Japan are bound to survive as great states and to remain the nuclei of power in their respective areas
• 3 Germany will not attack the USSR until after the defeat of Britain
• 4 The USSR (in WWII) is bound to be defeated

You judge !!!!!

 

[Correll]

Here are a few other of Burnham's predictions which he made in 1941:

• 1 Germany is bound to win the war
• 2 Germany and Japan are bound to survive as great states and to remain the nuclei of power in their respective areas
• 3 Germany will not attack the USSR until after the defeat of Britain
• 4 The USSR (in WWII) is bound to be defeated

You judge !!!!!

He certainly can NOT be used as such an Authority as to be used an an Appeal to Authority Logical Fallacy.

Which even if he was, would still be a Logical Fallacy.

We will have to consider his argument based on it's merits.

The bits I cut from the column above do that pretty well. DO you have a comment on them?

 

[JakeStarkey]

James Burnham is a far more complex, complicated, and complex individual that Correll realizes. The title in the OP, taken by itself, does not reflect the essential Burnham. But congrats to Correll on a good start.

"Burnham’s books do have interesting and important insights—especially The Managerial Revolution, Congress and the American Tradition, and Suicide of the West—but the Cold Warrior Burnham constantly undermined the conservative Burnham (if conservative is the right word). He embraced empire, constant frontier wars, managerialist determinism, and the warfare state, while complaining occasionally about Caesarism, the decline of Congress and other intermediate institutions, the growth of federal bureaucracy, and the loss of traditional liberties. This circle could not be squared. Burnham seldom considered that anything other than big impersonal historical forces might be causing the things he bewailed, that actual human agentsmight be driving some of the seeming inexorabilities. As a result, his rather willful disregard of economic theory and his battles against “doctrinaires” such as Frank Meyer look like symptoms of a larger failure of vision."

James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life

 

[Correll]

James Burnham is a far more complex, complicated, and complex individual that Correll realizes. The title in the OP, taken by itself, does not reflect the essential Burnham. But congrats to Correll on a good start.

"Burnham’s books do have interesting and important insights—especially The Managerial Revolution, Congress and the American Tradition, and Suicide of the West—but the Cold Warrior Burnham constantly undermined the conservative Burnham (if conservative is the right word). He embraced empire, constant frontier wars, managerialist determinism, and the warfare state, while complaining occasionally about Caesarism, the decline of Congress and other intermediate institutions, the growth of federal bureaucracy, and the loss of traditional liberties. This circle could not be squared. Burnham seldom considered that anything other than big impersonal historical forces might be causing the things he bewailed, that actual human agentsmight be driving some of the seeming inexorabilities. As a result, his rather willful disregard of economic theory and his battles against “doctrinaires” such as Frank Meyer look like symptoms of a larger failure of vision."

James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life

Interesting link.

The issue of balancing traditional liberties and Empire is a tough one.

For anyone coming out of WWII, and dealing with Stalin, the 50s and 60s must have been a time to encourage apocalyptic thinking.

The idea of a "soft landing" for the SOviet Union and an almost bloodless ending to the COld War would have seemed a pipe dream.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

White liberals hate their own culture, and always side with outside cultures.

 

[imawhosure]

Here are a few other of Burnham's predictions which he made in 1941:

• 1 Germany is bound to win the war
• 2 Germany and Japan are bound to survive as great states and to remain the nuclei of power in their respective areas
• 3 Germany will not attack the USSR until after the defeat of Britain
• 4 The USSR (in WWII) is bound to be defeated

You judge !!!!!

1. They did, Hitler lost it for them.

2. They did, who is stronger in Europe than Germany?

3. Was it written before FDR decided to do lend lease? For if it was, his statement was highly accurate for the facts given.

4. Look at number 3!!!!!!

I do not know this philosopher, and have never read his musings; but I do know IF these statements were made BEFORE America entered the war, it was a highly accurate outcome of what should have been.

 

[imawhosure]

I believe we as thinking individuals, should all look at the definition of "liberalism." The question for all of us should be.........."is modern day liberalism the classic example as defined, or rather has it gone off somewhere in the weeds?"

EXAMPLE: Lefties like to claim that ALL republicans are conservatives. That is false! Many Republicans are big government advocates. In fact, GW would have been considered a liberal on social policies and spending policies. In contrast; JFK would have been considered a conservative on foreign policy, and economic policy.

Point is; neither party ideologue wants to admit that any President from the opposing party was any good. We all want to point to the BAD if we are on the opposing side, instead of the good, and vice-versa.

I want to ask Republicans this question, and just think, don't answer (and I am a conservative).................take away Monica Lewinsky, and tell me something wrong with the Clinton Presidency as far as economics? Yes, I know, he was forced into a lot of it by Newt, but if the President gets the grief when things go wrong while in office, he also gets the glory.

What we all need do is not LIE to ourselves, or post lies to convince everyone else of falsehoods. Have you seen on another thread how they SPIN to trash Reagan? THAT is a bunch of far lefties trying to convince people how terrible it was, he was, and how America was awful.

We are better than that! But one thing we have to do, is define what a liberal is today! A 1960 or 70 liberal, has nothing in common......or very little, with a 2015 liberal. Quit letting them define you, and define them..........and show it with definitions of who/whom they really are. Do that, and they are post toastys!

 

[SAYIT]

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

Henry Ward Beecher

If you are not liberal at age 25 you have no heart.
If you are still liberal at age 35 you have no brain.

SAYIT

 

[edthecynic]

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

Henry Ward Beecher

If you are not liberal at age 25 you have no heart.
If you are still liberal at age 35 you have no brain.

SAYIT

Plagiarized by SAYIT, you mean.

 

[Mac1958]

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” wrote James Burnham in his 1964 “Suicide of the West.

”

I think there are many on the Left who look around at the rest of the world and feel guilty for our relative prosperity and social order. Not just Lefties here, but in European countries as well. So, to assuage that guilt, they're willing to dilute that relative prosperity and social order to some degree by opening the floodgates.

They HAVE to know that the dilution is taking place, there is no way they're blind to it. So perhaps they feel this is the price we must pay for our success: Decay. And I assume that they feel this decay can be somehow mitigated.

It's their pattern: Rather than push people to rise and improve their own conditions, they're more than willing to lower standards and bring those who have done better down.
.