Over Here! Over Here!

Allan Bloom has found the source of all our woe, and it is the Evil Empire—the German Empire, that is. In his account, Nietzsche, Freud, and the rest are Guderians of the intellect, sweeping at the head of their panzers across the helpless prairies, leaving in their wake a Thousand-Year Reich of the mind.

But when defenses fall so fast, you wonder how strong they were in the first place. Could it be that the krauts had help? That there was so little effective resistance because Americans already thought the way the Germans did long before anyone in this country had read Also Sprach Zarathustra? Could it be that America nourishes a homegrown philosophy of self-absorption that goes unnoticed because of its superficial resemblance to two other traditions of individualism—Whig politics and Protestant religion—though it is far more radical than either, and ultimately subversive of both?

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

Featured Tags

Allan Bloom has found the source of all our woe, and it is the Evil Empire—the German Empire, that is. In his account, Nietzsche, Freud, and the rest are Guderians of the intellect, sweeping at the head of their panzers across the helpless prairies, leaving in their wake a Thousand-Year Reich of the mind.

But when defenses fall so fast, you wonder how strong they were in the first place. Could it be that the krauts had help? That there was so little effective resistance because Americans already thought the way the Germans did long before anyone in this country had read Also Sprach Zarathustra? Could it be that America nourishes a homegrown philosophy of self-absorption that goes unnoticed because of its superficial resemblance to two other traditions of individualism—Whig politics and Protestant religion—though it is far more radical than either, and ultimately subversive of both?