IV. Editor, Thinker, Colleague

Jim Burnham was the big surprise for a young person coming to national review in the late Sixties. Bill Buckley and Bill Rusher were public figures, their television personas, at least, known to us for years. Frank Meyer, the Wizard of Woodstock, was a local legand. Priscilla was—Priscilla, a legendary figure in her own right and the keeper of the tablets, telling us her marvelous stories, bringing us into NR’s history.

But Burnham was a different matter. It was possible to have come to national review never having heard of him except as the author of the “Third World War” column (later “The Protracted Conflict”) in the magazine. Only gradually did the picture emerge, and then often through semi-casual asides, like “When I was a Trotskyist . . .” Browsing through the office library, we might pick up Suicide of the West, The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, or one of those powerful little books in their sub-fusc covers—The Struggle for the World, The Coming Defeat of Communism, Containment or Liberation? There was much excitement when one of us, looking through an Orwell collection upstairs, came across an essay on Burnham that unwittingly documented Orwell’s massive failure to comprehend serious irony. We learned that Burnham had been not merely a Trotskyist, but Trotsky’s leading ideologist in the United States; and that some time after he broke with Trotsky, he had joined “another organization” (the CIA, we whispered to each other). In this context of anti-Stalinism merging into anti-Communism, his explanation of why he did not join NR’s twentieth-anniversary trip to Russia rang chillingly true: Well, he said reflectively, they just might want to ask me a few questions, and I’d rather not be in a position where I might have to answer them.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

Jim Burnham was the big surprise for a young person coming to national review in the late Sixties. Bill Buckley and Bill Rusher were public figures, their television personas, at least, known to us for years. Frank Meyer, the Wizard of Woodstock, was a local legand. Priscilla was—Priscilla, a legendary figure in her own right and the keeper of the tablets, telling us her marvelous stories, bringing us into NR’s history.

But Burnham was a different matter. It was possible to have come to national review never having heard of him except as the author of the “Third World War” column (later “The Protracted Conflict”) in the magazine. Only gradually did the picture emerge, and then often through semi-casual asides, like “When I was a Trotskyist . . .” Browsing through the office library, we might pick up Suicide of the West, The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, or one of those powerful little books in their sub-fusc covers—The Struggle for the World, The Coming Defeat of Communism, Containment or Liberation? There was much excitement when one of us, looking through an Orwell collection upstairs, came across an essay on Burnham that unwittingly documented Orwell’s massive failure to comprehend serious irony. We learned that Burnham had been not merely a Trotskyist, but Trotsky’s leading ideologist in the United States; and that some time after he broke with Trotsky, he had joined “another organization” (the CIA, we whispered to each other). In this context of anti-Stalinism merging into anti-Communism, his explanation of why he did not join NR’s twentieth-anniversary trip to Russia rang chillingly true: Well, he said reflectively, they just might want to ask me a few questions, and I’d rather not be in a position where I might have to answer them.