Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism

The book confirmed ideas expressed in to family and friends in the enclosed disertationTyranny is the Legacy of a Nation Without GodRodolf W. Velicky Education does not make an intellectual nor does an intellectual make truth. In the 1960's a cultural revolution, grounded in the philosophies of European Age of Enlightened thinking reached our Nation as the common knowledge of intellectuals; declaring that the world's Christian heritage is a manifestation of superstitious ignorance. Overnight, virtually everyone claiming the status of an educated modern suddenly became an intellectual with the freedom to create a vision of reality providing a permissive moral order defining truth as a variable, limited only by a political correctness, encouraged and legalized by political power. Prior to this intellectual revolution truth was simply a fact that conformed with reality. Under this new paradigm, truth becomes a versatile construct, developed for the convenience and advantage of political power. Modernism’s call to Multiculturalism, Religious Diversity and Moral Relativism rejects the law of cause and effect and the law of non-contradiction along with the nature of justice that every child know instinctively by the time he reaches the age of seven, when the Church would prepare him for Holy Communion with God. Violating these principals is much like trying to add one and one to make three. It is impossible unless the mind is conditioned in double-think to achieve a predisposed result. When motives are taken into consideration, this is the definition of lying and when governments participate in the promotion of such lies, you can bet your last dollar that the Common Man’s constitutional freedoms are the target. This is an example of “Creative Ignorance” that revealed the relationship[s] of contempt, held by pseudo-Intellectuals for the common man; his rights to self-governance and the grounding of these rights found in the faith, hope and love of God, as proclaimed and defended by the Catholic Church, consistently for two thousand years. Modern snobs, pretending to an intellectualism in support of ignorance are deserving of ridicule for allowing their passions to think for them, under the legal and public pressure of political correctness. Sexual license and crumbs from the table of political power come at the extremely high price of our democratic freedoms within this life and, more than likely, an eternal regret for a life lived selfishly. America’s Cultural Revolution is not and never has been a search for truth. Man is a social animal, dependent on each other for survival, however he dies as an individual and in justice should answer for how this life was lived. There always have been Culture Wars designed to organize a segment of the population to prey upon the rest of Mankind for pleasure and profit. This modern attempt is a brilliant manufactured excuse to deny the justice owed individually and collectively to Mankind, as grounded in the doctrines of the Catholic Church and hinted at in our Nation’s Declaration of Independence—allowing individuals and governments to Choose a world-view as if the universe were designed for one's personal pleasure and comfort. Modernism has provided a self-serving excuse for the pompous autonomous individual to feast at the table of political power under the security of public law and public approval. America’s Cultural Revolution is a creation of a dog-eat-dog world in which there is no one to trust or love but ones self—a world in which Culture functions as a vulture feeding on the carrion of Western Civilization; symbolized as a snake feeding on its own tail. My life experiences, examined through the simple common sense of a common man, revealed that intellectual genius has absolutely no relationship to mankind's hope for happiness. This mysterious thing called happiness is the driving force for human existence—everyone wants it, however, if its true nature is not recognized substitutes can result only in misery and unhappiness. Instinctively, every-man comprehends God-like attributes of divinity within himself, manifested as the gift of intellect and free-will. If this gift is to be appreciated properly it must be loved correctly: that is with a love for the Gift-Giver that must be shared with others with the same generosity it has been received. It follows if there is any reality to the spiritual concept of happiness it must be locked into the nature of love that can only be received if freely given away. The hope of being happy is unobtainable when love is turned inward by the self into the self. This insight is experienced as Common Sense and is an instinctive inheritance of the common man, passed on generation to generation through the traditions of the family structure where the concept of sacrificial love can be nurtured to become the foundation for happiness to the degree possible in this world. When the common man and these traditions are held in contempt, denigrated and mocked by a snobbish culture it turns this concept of love into hate and can only be grounded on the foundation of creative stupidity intended for a devious purpose. The consequences are so disastrous for human kind that every civilization throughout the history of the world that have pursued such philosophies have all come to an ignoble end. America's cultural revolution of the 1960's is not the product of any reasoned system of logic; it is a pseudo-religious belief, grounded on ancient Pantheism or Atheistic permissiveness; modernized with a facade of pseudo-science on a foundation of modern psychology, euphemisms and philosophical double-speak for which no one is willing or able to provide a reasonable explanation. The rules of logic, as developed in Platonic philosophy and used in Catholic Theology must be undermined to persuade the gullible that science has made the existence of God unnecessary for explaining ours. This is an intentional dumbing down of the culture by those with the talent, intent and opportunity to do so. The concept of happiness and God's unconditional love for mankind is inexplicable without His revelation of Himself as one God in three Persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is a deep mystery, examined with the same logic science uses to penetrate physical mysteries such as light simultaneously being a particle and wave; as strong, weak and gravitational forces are postulated to deal with mysteries of time, space and the singularity of the universe at its beginning. Subverting the rules of logic to deny the existence of God destroys the tools of reasoned thinking and the road to science. As I continue to reflect on the concept of Love I recall Jesus' command to, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect and Love one another as I Love you. These statements define an awesome relationship between God and Man; especially when it is realized that God is offering to share His divinity with us. In John 17; 21-22 Jesus says, I pray not only for them [the Apostles] but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they all may be one, as you Father, are in me and I in you, THAT THEY ALSO MAY BE IN US.... This relationship is grounded on God's ineffable Love for Man: a Love that is reflected in the relationship among three persons in God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So that Pope Benedict XVI can say with authority, God is Love and has Loved Mankind into existence. Modernism is the antithesis of sacrificial love. Whatever it wishes to call itself, that is, Liberalism, Socialism, Secular Humanism, Communism or Fascism, it is an artificial construct designed to use the inherent selfish gullibility of mankind to enhance and perpetuate political power. When the substance of modern thought is boiled down to its essence there is nothing left but the autonomous individual—a poorly educated common man, intentionally persuaded to visualize the self as the center of the universe in order to become willing participants in a modern version of ancient paganism. The modern autonomous individual becomes a convert to a Secular Civil Religion by simply denying the reality of evil and redefining vices as virtues, thereby transferring the moral authority of God to themselves under the control of political power. Votes are substituted for prayers with the hope for all good things confiscated and distributed through that power to the faithful. It is a false religion grounded on wishful thinking that reinvents ancient pantheism flavored with a dose of atheism to deify each pompous ego with the authority to define the meaning and purpose for ones personal existence. Modernism is a fantasy grounded on wishful thinking allowing the ego to worship The Self in a no holds barred competition with all other Selves—a recipe for anarchy and barbarism, a universal divisiveness of all against all, that is noticeably accelerating toward this logical end around the world and in our Nation. There is no Happiness, in this world or the next, for winners or losers driven by selfishness, envy and hate, through a world-view well described as a snake feeding on its own tail. Modernism has an extremely long history of failures and disasters for humanity. It began with the Renascence about five hundred years ago. It was followed by a Post-renascence era that gave us the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, World War I & II, Fascism, Communism, the Cold War and a cowardice that allows today's Islamic Terrorism. The common denominator among all these roads to Utopia is the belief among pseudo-Intellectuals that it is possible to make truth and with a good line of bulls... to restore the absolute power enjoyed by ruling classes throughout the ages. The fruits of these ideologies are and always have been a disaster for the common man and as always the intelligentsia have given him evermore clever ways to suffer evil, experienced as reality under the misnomer social justice. The autonomous individual promoting a world defined by Moral Relativism, Multiculturalism and Religious Diversity without an intellectual rationale for doing so is setting up the world for Political Tyranny. Digesting evil to justify personal lusts fosters a world of chaos that can only be controlled by economic coercion and physical force—a legacy of oppression defined as Tyranny.Rodolf W. VelickyApril 16, 2015111 Ridge Road, Factoryville, PA [email protected]

The premise of The Suicide of the West is that the West is in decline, and the decline is fueled by the rise of liberalism. Despite the strong title, most of the book is an attempt at an objective definition of liberalism. Only the beginning and end actually discuss why liberalism could potentially lead to the end of Western Civilization. Burnham doesn't believe liberalism is the cause, per se, of the decline of the West, but "that liberalism has come to be the verbal systematization of the process of Western contraction and withdrawal; that liberalism motivates and justifies the contraction and reconciles us to it." To me that sounds like a convoluted way of saying it is the cause, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.What exactly is this dangerous ideology capable of motivating the decline of Western Civilization? "Modern liberalism, which contrary to the traditional doctrine, holds that there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of man that makes it impossible for human society to achieve goals of peace, freedom, justice and well-being. Ideals that liberalism assumes to be desirable and to define "the good society." Liberalism is about optimism. Liberals believe that all men have equal civilizing potential. They hold that freedom of speech should extended to all, no matter how extreme their ideas, and that the vote of the people should always decide who is right. Liberalism believes in the potential of humankind to be raised to a state of world peace and harmony never before seen in history. Terrible and obviously suicidal, right? I didn't think so either.The question is, do I, or indeed, do liberals really believe this? With enough education, science, technological progress, good government etc. is it possible to take humans with all our foibles and create the perfect society? What about just ending hunger? Poverty? War? Oppression? The belief that any or all of those goals are realistically achievable is actually fairly modern according to Burnham. It became popular within the last 400 or 500 years, starting with Bacon and Descartes. Before them, and others like them, achieving the perfect society wasn't the goal or ideal of government. It simply wasn't considered possible given human nature and human history. People weren't waiting on science to create an earthly paradise, they were waiting on Jesus.If liberals believe that they should work on the noble goal of forming a perfect society, what do conservatives want? A conservative wants slow change. He prefers either to maintain the status quo or possibly even return to how things were in "the good ole' days." The basic idea is "if things work okay now, why risk the unknown potential negative implications associated with changing them? Instead, let's do everything we can to maintain what we have." Does that sound pessimistic to you? Depressing even? It does to me. Is it realistic though? Is it more rational than the liberal's constant tendency to reform? Maybe.If a perfect society is possible, why haven't we achieved it yet? A liberal's answer is fairly simple: people are still ignorant and we still have not created the necessary social institutions to remedy the ignorance. For someone like Burnham, this is the perfect chance to lay into the ideology and, at times, succeed in making it look pretty absurd.He does this by showing how liberalism explains away any crime committed by someone who is poor, a minority or in almost any other social situation, as a failure of society, rather than as a personal failure of the criminal. He shows that often the problems liberals are trying to solve are problems of people who have no desire to have their problems solved and how liberals, motivated by guilt, waste enormous resources trying to bring about worldwide equality.It's hard to argue that liberalism is ALL bad, and Burnham doesn't. He cautiously concedes that liberalism has led to some societal good. Still, despite the fact that many liberal ideals are laudable, most attempts to implement them are misguided. The human condition can be improved, but you can't always convince terrorists to resort to peaceful methods for achieving their goals by negotiating with them. You can't solve hunger by sending lots of money to Africa and alas, you'll never create a perfect society by having millions of voters with diverse motivations and interests participate in a democracy. To state the root of the problem, "the liberal assumes... that men, given a knowledge of the problem and freedom to choose, will opt for peace, justice and plenty. But the facts do not bear him out either for individuals or for societies. Individuals choose, very often, trouble, pain, injury, for themselves and for others." In other words, the problem of liberalism lies in human nature as defined by history.Most people desire life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the social conditions necessary to optimize those rights. The question then becomes, what is the best way to achieve these conditions? An ideologist will have a ready answer to almost any problem that arises. In the case of liberalism, the solution is almost always the opposite of "conserving" tradition or the status quo. Instead, a liberal's approach is to value hope over experience and to destroy or drastically reform existing foundations and build again. Occasionally this approach leads to desirable results but, as any software developer will tell you, starting over usually isn't the best way to fix a bug.The correct approach, Burnham would argue, is to look at each problem individually and without the lens of an ideology, liberal or otherwise. Something much easier said than done. He points out: "As a rule, a man, when his ideological lenses are shattered, is in haste to replace them with another set ground to a new prescription. The unfiltered world is not his dish of tea."A conservative prefers renewal to reform. He advocates an "equality of legal rights" rather than striving for equality of class or condition. He opts for individual improvement over collective, patriotism over internationalism, family and community over the "bloodless abstraction" of humanity and peace over strength as the "highest social value."Again, why is liberalism the root of the Suicide of the West? Because it values global equality over strength, global order over national order. It means that the West must stop expanding either through the spread of native ideas and truths that we hold to be inalienable as well as stopping all physical expansion such as colonialism or imperialism. Burnham argues that if we choose not to expand, we are choosing to contract. Liberalism doesn't deny this contraction, in fact it tries to reconcile us to it.Despite being written over 45 years ago, The Suicide of the West feels fresh and remains relevant. It definitely altered my way of viewing the world and it has really caused me to take a closer look at what I know and believe.

This book is so old, it doesn’t even mention sexuality (in relation to Liberalism’s peculiar views on the subject). It’s almost “pre 60s” in essence, and perhaps because of this, it does not mince its words and calls its subject matter, Liberalism, for what it is: the Suicide of the West.

It's almost unbelievable that this was written as far back as 1964 and yet remains relevant. Burnham has a first rate mind and writes in a style that is neither too heavy nor unduly light. I feel a little frustrated that I had not come across this book earlier. It really is necessary reading for anyone interested in politics or history.

Whilst certainly a critique of modern liberalism I felt it did not go far enough to justify its title. I would look to it to giving examples of where liberalism is leading us. Of course the book was written some time ago but making its case with examples which were then current would have been useful.

This book is over 50 years old and still has a powerful and current message. The liberalism that dominates Western ideology, has facilitated and rationalized the decline of Western power, and undermined the will of Western Civilization to survive. In a globalist,internationalist world of liberalism, there is no legitimacy in asserting the goodness and superiority of the West. Rather liberalism offers guilt and devaluation, self-effacement and self-abnegation as a face to the rest of the world. We attack our own history, people, traditions and culture from within . John Burnham saw the weakness of liberalism in the face of the communist menace(only a powerful non-liberal American President in the form of Ronald Regan stood up to finally defeat that “Evil Empire”). He would not be surprised at our liberal failure to fully recognize and oppose with concerted and focused will, the threatening and rising tide of totalitarianism embodied in Islamism and the new Chinese Imperialism. Unlike the West, these cultures have self-confidence, moral certainty and belief sufficient to die for. They are likely to survive and we, the liberal west, will likely not. Brian MacDonald Kingston Ontario

James Burnham's "Suicide of the West" has to be concidered among the best works about modern American Liberalism.Anyone who is familiar with the terminology will know that what Americans call "liberalism" is actually the exact opposite of classical liberalism, therefore the terms have to be separated.Since the book is from the mid-sixties and has only been republished, all his examples and references are of course from this time and age but nevertheless amazingly comparable to todays violations of "First Amendment" rights or free speech in general (for non-US citizens).This is just a sad example of one of the few smart and sensible people who knew early on where American liberalism and every other left-wing party with them were going and nothing has changed so far. Instead, thing are worse than ever for free speech across the globe; in that sense this is a rather sad book.