The week’s book is How Democracies Perish by Jean-Francois Revel.
Written during the end of the cold war, it still has a prophet ring to it:
“But constant self-condemnation, often with little or no foundation, is a source of weakness and inferiority . . .assuming it is always wrong, whatever the truth may be, is discouraging and paralyzing. Not only do democracies today blame themselves for sins they have not committed, but they have formed the habit of judging themselves by ideals so inaccessible that the defendants are automatically guilty. It follows that a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does and thinks will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself when its existence is threatened. Drilling into a civilization that it deserves defending only if it can incarnate absolute justice is tantamount to urging that it let itself die or be enslaved.”
Although it deals with the struggle with communism, replace it with the quest of the left for a one world government and many of the things he deals with remains true.
It is tempting to say that he was pessimistic about the West succeeding against the Soviet Union, it would be easy to say he was wrong, yet our society inches closers to the totalitarian and impoverished world he saw on the horizon, it just took a different path.
