The Will to Survive?

This somber, brilliantly written book attempts to fix the blame for the suicidal “contraction of the West” over the last fifty years upon Liberalism, chiefly in the United States. Therefore, it is at the same time a venture into the philosophy of history and an indictment of those responsible for the present disastrous plight of once triumphant Western civilization.

By this venture Burnham joins that group of Western thinkers—Vico, Gibbon, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee and most recently Ernest Cuneo (Science and History) —who have attempted to ascertain why once flourishing nations and civilizations gradually or suddenly begin to “contract.” Only, in Burnham’s case, the object studied is not the downfall of some remote society but of that West of which the United States is today the acknowledged if uncertain leader. Burnham believes that the cause lies in the minds of those Liberals who, particularly since opposition to Hitler gave them a focal point about which to rally, have shaped Western, and chiefly American, policies.

EM

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Edgar Ansel Mowrer

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This somber, brilliantly written book attempts to fix the blame for the suicidal “contraction of the West” over the last fifty years upon Liberalism, chiefly in the United States. Therefore, it is at the same time a venture into the philosophy of history and an indictment of those responsible for the present disastrous plight of once triumphant Western civilization.

By this venture Burnham joins that group of Western thinkers—Vico, Gibbon, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee and most recently Ernest Cuneo (Science and History) —who have attempted to ascertain why once flourishing nations and civilizations gradually or suddenly begin to “contract.” Only, in Burnham’s case, the object studied is not the downfall of some remote society but of that West of which the United States is today the acknowledged if uncertain leader. Burnham believes that the cause lies in the minds of those Liberals who, particularly since opposition to Hitler gave them a focal point about which to rally, have shaped Western, and chiefly American, policies.