Knots of Our Own Tying

Some years ago I spent an evening in Bombay with a dozen or so Indian politicians, businessmen and journalists. One of them, who had been pro-Soviet in the general conversation, spoke to me apart just before the party broke up. Actually (he said in substance) I much prefer Western civilization to Communism. But I believe the West is on the way out, and what has convinced me of this is the Western attitude toward the atom bomb. Atom bombs are a logical, inevitable product of the inner history of Western civilization. Instead of accepting its nuclear achievement with rejoicing and pride, the West has shrunk away from it in guilt and fear. In this response the West is repudiating itself.

In reflecting on the Vietnam war I have recalled this commentary. The point my philosophic Indian was making is not limited to atom bombs. These were only the most recent expression of the West’s spectacular “harnessing of the forces of nature” by application of a science risen out of the deepest roots of Western civilization. And he was saying that a loss of confidence in science and technology, an unwillingness to use the products of scientific technology on behalf of its own purposes, signified a decay of the West’s will to survive.

JB

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James Burnham

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Some years ago I spent an evening in Bombay with a dozen or so Indian politicians, businessmen and journalists. One of them, who had been pro-Soviet in the general conversation, spoke to me apart just before the party broke up. Actually (he said in substance) I much prefer Western civilization to Communism. But I believe the West is on the way out, and what has convinced me of this is the Western attitude toward the atom bomb. Atom bombs are a logical, inevitable product of the inner history of Western civilization. Instead of accepting its nuclear achievement with rejoicing and pride, the West has shrunk away from it in guilt and fear. In this response the West is repudiating itself.

In reflecting on the Vietnam war I have recalled this commentary. The point my philosophic Indian was making is not limited to atom bombs. These were only the most recent expression of the West’s spectacular “harnessing of the forces of nature” by application of a science risen out of the deepest roots of Western civilization. And he was saying that a loss of confidence in science and technology, an unwillingness to use the products of scientific technology on behalf of its own purposes, signified a decay of the West’s will to survive.