In just fifteen pages of "Suicide of the West," Burnham's already proven a major thesis: that the West has lost the will to survive

Published 1964, so written before the Civil Rights Act. Always crazy to read people forecasting these processes so (relatively) early in the game

Really looking forward to the extrapolation of the passage that follows: that liberalism is the rationalization of this process of suicide

Probably best captured by "the conservative case for X," e.g. "the conservative case for chopping your son's nuts off"

lol. Basically, for liberalism, "the science is settled" on everything, and if you resist "the science" of the consensus, you are, as it turns out, the only group liberalism is justified in wielding force against

Feel familiar?

Modern progressivism managed to integrate these two views, but by asserting that Original Sin only applies to "racism," "whiteness," white *people*

Since progressivism requires the elimination of Original Sin to continue unimpeded, its core logic makes its intentions very clear

"Professor Sidney Hook has squeezed the entire definition of liberalism into a single unintentionally ironic phrase: 'faith in intelligence.'"

Rationalists BTFO'd

Since society is perfectible through reason, and we're still so far away from being perfect, then everything from the past, that got us to this point, needs to be burned down and replaced with the new.

Progressive obsession with education stems from the fact that the only thing holding us back from our Promised Land is ignorance, which can—and must—be cured in every single individual

...oddly, though, while progressivism believes that everyone is just the product of their circumstances, and thus blameless for their misdeeds, it is only forgiving to *certain classes* of these victims of circumstance, while being actively hostile to others

(Also lol)

The next part is pretty interesting, because it's an analysis of the reasons why liberalism is possessed by the notion of free speech, open dialogue, discourse, etc.

But that's... obviously no longer the case today. Why?

It's not hard to argue that progressivism got all it wanted out of liberalism, many components of liberalism would only be holding it back at this point, and so it is actively discarding them, leaving it free to continue the consolidation of its power process.

Check this out. The same urge that leads modern liberalism to remove power from local sources and centralize it under the federal government...

...leads it to also desire to remove power from *national* sources, and centralize it under *global* rule and authority.

(Comically, the professor's argument—that liberalism can only exist under worldwide liberalism—is the exact same argument the Soviets made for communism!)

Oh my god. If you're noticing a certain Borg-like "assimilate or die" mindset to Reason-driven liberalism, here's a contemporary of Burnham's summing it up the best I've ever seen:

This is one of my favorite parts so far. Liberals look at a thing like Skid Row, and since society has clearly wronged the poor souls that live there, they designate it a "problem," for which there must be a "solution"

But since liberal solutions are ideological, and almost always contrary to nature, the attempt doesn't solve the "problem," but only displaces it—and makes life worse for both the former residents of Skid Row, and all the other residents of the city

The illiberal argument Burnham is making here is that some portion of people will always be, to be blunt, noncontributing low-lives

If this is a "problem," it's an intractable one, that can't be educated or engineered away. It can only be mediated

The best mediation was already invented: Skid Row. A localized place where these types could be sequestered from polite society

And *also* provided an environment with standards suited to them, allowing them a better quality of life than the homeless camps that replaced Skid Row

And if you've read working-class literature from before the abolition of Skid Row (like Fante, Bukowski, Steinbeck), you can see this isn't just some abstract argument

Skid Row was grim: but I'd much rather live in Skid Row, than the tents

Burnham, summarizing all of the assumptions baked into liberal ideology, and its resulting social solutions:

"When the fact is tragic, his ideology offers him refuge from fact."

Burnham moves on to journalists. Five people die in a Peruvian strike. No other information is known, but syndicated reporter Ralph McGill "fulfilled his liberal duty to enlighten us" as to the truth: "feudal conditions obtain in Chiclayo"

Burnham, skeptical, digs up the facts:

There's a couple pages in between that makes the case even more strongly—Burnham speaks to people who've lived in Peru, insist Chiclayo has relatively strong working conditions for S. America

Report same rumors of communist agitation that are later presented by Martin

Identifying that a story sounds like BS, discovering that the reporter actually knows nothing and is shoehorning the flimsiest facts into his progressive morality play that he reports as national news, then tracking down the real truth:

Burnham is an OG frogposter