Here’s one man’s opinion of what Burnham would be advocating today, which I agree with, having read a lot of Burnham back in the day and of him recently by his contemporaneous Conservative admirers, none of which contradicts this:
BLUF: "Burnham died in 1987, two years before the Berlin Wall came down. Judging by his analysis in The War We Are In, Burnham would not have declared an end to the Cold War in 1989-1991. Instead, he likely would have viewed the fall of the Soviet Union as a Western, but also a Chinese, victory. "Burnham would have noted that communism survived in China. Beijing’s chief rival within the communist movement was eliminated; the communist drive for global power, however, continued."
Why does it matter what Burnham and Kendall stood, and called, for, since they’re both dead and no one can speak for them, except as they speak for themselves through the written material they left behind? Because another generation is taking their writing as today’s political and legal theory, relevant to today’s issues, in creating an ideology of Trumpism, or, "National Conservatism." As Yoram Hazony certainly appears to have plagiarized from Willmoore Kendall and Leo Strauss, with the top two of these articles a "soft-soaping" of Burnham/Kendall and their “political theory” which informed their ideology, but an acknowledgement of their present ideological role.
With one final point to make which is that the “Legal Revolution” of either or both of deception in winning an election, or as Shinzo Abe planned, with the US colluding in that, a “constitutional coup d’etat,” through “constitutional reinterpretation" (see US Supreme Court), should be as much of or even greater concern to anyone actually concerned for this diminished “Constitutional Republic” than a particular war of the last 30 years (though not to include today’s, which Mike Pompeo was cheering on today on Fox, and saying, in essence, “Faster, please!, in line with his fellow NSS ideologists, Republicans and Democrats, like Blinken/Nuland.
But over the last 21 years, we’ve proved ourselves incapable of “keeping,” as Franklin warned us, our “Republic,” and not the least of those reasons why being the bi-partisan adoption of the NSS ideology as articulated so vigorously in its “Origin” in the 1950’s “Conservative Movement” ideology, with Burnham/Kendall particularly zealous in advocating despotic measure in defense of “cohesion,” and the denial of “rights” to minority factions as that obstructs cohesion within the country, which Kendall made into a fetish with his Rousseauistic “Majoritarianism.”
But here is an example of a planned constitutional coup through “reinterpretation,” which Alito and Thomas, both connected to Claremont in various ways, as are so many Trumpites: BLUF: "As Iraq disintegrates before the U.S. administration's eyes, it is ignoring news from Japan that is no less ominous. Without attracting much international attention, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting a constitutional coup: trying to repeal basic tenets of the constitution without obtaining the support of the Japanese people in a special referendum.” And only an ignoramus fails to see the current Supreme Court doing the same, with tactics of claiming as “precedents” from what the US colonists once revolted against, the British Empire, to even before the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when its despotism was unquestioned.
None of this is to “pick an argument” but simply an effort to “inform” folks of what these Conservatives actually said in their "own words,” and if that’s not compatible with keeping a Republic, which I don’t believe it is, well so be it. I have no illusions I can change the “consensus” in in Kendall’s words, and I know as we adopt Kendallism, I must just shut up. Being “for" the Republic, seems to have lost favor, given the enthusiasm I’ve seen for Trump and National Conservatism. Nor from the "left side,” which was willing to, and did, risk major war and even nuclear annihilation, for short term electoral gains with their “redirection” maneuvers in distracting the country away from seeing the Trump/Netanyahu nexus, and Trump’s encirclement of Russia and China, with their accusations that Trump was “colluding with Russia,” and "destroying NATO,” when in fact, he was twisting their arms to add even more military spending and weaponry to the gargantuan amount already arrayed against Russia and China, on behalf of the weapons manufacturers, and US planned aggression. As if Russia and China wouldn’t correctly see that military buildup, along with revocation of treaties, as preparation for offensive war against them. As another episode of “Peace Through Strength,” which almost got us wiped out during the Cold War. With the disposition of US SpecOps forces in Ukraine confirmation of our aggressive intent.
With all that for "context,”
BLUF: “All political societies,” and especially this “people of the United States,” are built “upon what political philosophers call a consensus,” he wrote. Societies change in slow, organic, and deliberative ways. “Freedom of thought and freedom of _expression_ there are and must be, but within limits set by the basic consensus.” Kendall firmly believed government should not undermine society by enforcing abstract rights that cut against the orthodoxy. . . . "American conservatives tell themselves many origin stories. Narratives are necessary to create a political identity. But political identities are also forged in war, and conflict is central to American conservatism. Kendall and Burnham contributed significantly to this intellectual architecture. They articulated and in some cases established conservative tropes, endowing them with a patina of intellectual sophistication. Key themes include that modern democratic trends cannot be trusted, liberal elites are attacking America, and conservatism is ultimately the antithesis of modern liberalism.
"Worldviews create action. Ultimately, the pathologizing of liberalism and antagonistic defining of conservatism leads to posturing and polarization.”
Does that have consequences? Ask this guy where it led him:
BLUF: "The source added, according to the complaint, that Nguyen had a Three Percenters flag in his garage and discussed a desire to kill liberals by blowing them up or doing the same to members of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
BLUF: "What McCarthyism was really about, Kendall said, was the ability of society to uphold “a hard core of shared beliefs” by excluding “ideas and opinions contrary” to its self-understanding. McCarthy, in his view, was defending the traditional American consensus not only against Communists in government, but also against liberals, who view America as “a society in which all questions are open questions, a society dedicated to the proposition that no truth in particular is true, a society, in Justice Jackson’s phrase, in which no one can speak properly of an orthodoxy — over against which any belief, however immoral, however extravagant, can be declared heretical and thus proscribed.” It was this clash of fundamentally opposed understandings of American democracy that propelled McCarthy to the center of politics and endowed the controversy over his public career with “genuine civil war potential.”
"From the earliest days of the Cold War, right-wing populists have distrusted the CIA and the broader intelligence community, believing that its allegiance to professionalism covered up a liberal bias. This hostility has flared up time and again, starting with the controversies around McCarthyism in the early 1950s, resurfacing during assessments of Soviet military capabilities in the 1970s, and appearing again in disputes over whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In each of these cases, the right organized to challenge the CIA’s claim of expertise and tried to replace the agency’s consensus with a much more politicized and ideological view of reality. . . . " Not making any credibility claims for this website: https://www.voltairenet.org/article30052.html, but the article itself is consistent with well documented history, with the editing issue probably due to translation from French to English. But if Sydney Hook was the first Neoconservative, then James Burnham was right there next to him.
Todd, you are absolutely wrong in implying that James Burnham is the father of the neoconservatives. I am very familiar with his writings,;and, in my judgment, he would be appalled at what the neocons are doing today and what they have done in the post-Reagan era of American politics. Unfortunately, they—along with their allies, the neoliberals—dominate the foreign policy agenda of both parties. Burnham was an anti-Communist, but not anti-Russian (as most of the neoconservatives are). He was a realist; and, once the Soviet Empire collapsed, he would not have countenanced the endless wars pushed by the neoconservatives. You have a superficial understanding of conservatism. The neoconservatives are not authentic conservatives, but are people of the Left who broke from the New Left and migrated into the Republican Party while remaining influential in the Democratic party. Victoria Nuland is a classic example. She was on Cheney’s staff prior to the Iraq war and is now directing the “regime change” agenda of the Biden Administration. Tom Pauken Sent from my iPad I appreciate the “back-handed” compliment :-)
But to be clear, I don’t mean to place all the “blame” on the CIA for what has become our “National Security Ideology,” and I understand well that the examples I’m pointing out whom I do blame as that “militaristic minded” element” changing our “culture,” along with their non-CIA collaborators, civilians and military, were not necessarily representative of CIA as a whole. But I also talk to other former officials who’ve served in high offices in State and DOD, or both, who don’t disagree with me that CIA has had a pernicious effect upon us. As I recall your own books represented something opposite, as I recall, which I’v e read and agreed with.
And I readily concede I am "tedious and go on too long,” but I don’t see anyone else doing any substantive analysis of “why” we are what we are and “how” we got here. And offering any “background” historically based information to those questions.
And I dearly welcome “better explanations” than what I can provide. But it takes some substantial reading to get that, in my opinion, and of the kind that doesn’t come with “conservative media platforms,” or out of Regnery Books.
I know, we both have a criticisms of Todd Pierce who can be tedious and goes on too long. Nonetheless You and I have talked a good bit about what is wrong with Europe, and what is wrong with the greens with their crazy War agenda. It is not because they are “green.“ They are not essentially “green“ at all In almost any respect – war loving, coal-burning hardliners. Pierce, at least here offers some historical and ideological genealogy to the very roots of the war party in Germany and the UK today. You or I may not agree with all of this fully—I don’t, too much emphasis on the CIA— but it is perhaps a clearer and fuller explanation of what you and I cannot fully understand in Europe, or why neoconservatism has essentially seized the European foreign policy and strategic mentality.
Better explanations are welcome. Sent from the all new AOL app for iOSOn Saturday, October 8, 2022, 11:48 AM, Todd Pierce via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote: Forgive me please if I cite to any names here to which there are “personal loyalties,” but as a political theorist/attorney, I’m an evidence- based person, and my preference is to hear/read “in their own words” those whom I see as contributing ideologically to the "Dark Times” we’re in. Furthermore, I’m writing strictly as a trained historian, and not as an advocate of any political position because whatever I would suggest, I believe it's too late now for reversing course as we’ve passed the “tipping point,” as we can see in our war-addicted country with all that comes with that “legally.” As Ernst Fraenkel recognized as well of his country in writing “The Dual State.” I try to provide as much as possible the various works I’ve been advised to look at on “Conservatism,” which has been valuable for even more "evidence." )
You can read here of how the CIA “culture” was informed and shaped from the very beginning by Nazi intelligence culture, and for un-redacted information, just buy the book that is the subject of the review:
In doing a search on Nazi Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, and James Burnham, a logical search given their similarities, as shared with the other CIA officers who would found the Conservative Movement under the National Review banner, this article came up:
Quote: " The odd, psychologically conflicted and politically divisive ideology referred to as neoconservatism can claim many godfathers. Irving Kristol (father of William Kristol), Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Bell, Norman Podhoretz and Sidney Hook come to mind. And there are many others. But in both theory and practice, the title of founding father for the neoconservative agenda of endless warfare that rules the thinking of America’s defense and foreign policies today might best be applied to James Burnham."
There is much to recommend this 4 part series of articles, but it contains a major error which is fully apparent in part 4, as well as above: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-final-stage-of-the-machiavellian-elites-takeover-of-america/
Quote: “Burnham was more than just at hand when it came to secretly implanting a fascist philosophy of extreme elitism into America’s Cold War orthodoxy. With “The Machiavellians,” Burnham had composed the manual that forged the old Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite. The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism, whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere."
Wrong! “The political offspring of that not so volatile union would not be called neoconservatism, as that term, in its present meaning, would not come into existence for another couple of decades. It would be called the “Conservative Movement.”
Here’s a bit more on Burnham’s “weltanschauung:”
"In Burnham’s Manichean thinking, the West was under siege. George Kennan’s Cold War policy of containment was no different than Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Détente with the Soviet Union amounted to surrender." and, "The CIA would come to view the entire program, beginning with the 1950 Berlin conference, to be a landmark in the Cold War, not just for solidifying the CIA’s control over the non-Communist left and the West’s “free” intellectuals, but for enabling the CIA to secretly disenfranchise Europeans and Americans from their own political culture in such a way they would never really know it.”
It should be self-evident that the same was intended for the American populace, under the charge of the Conservative Movement’s CIA handlers, as somewhat described in this attachment:
Which isn’t to say that given the context of post-WW II, there weren’t valid concerns of Soviet aggression and espionage. But the distinction to be made between the demonized Liberals who shared those concerns, and were attacked by Burnham, et al., as the even greater “threat” than were actual communists, and the “Conservatives” of this ultra-militaristic Conservative Movement, was that these “political theorists” of the Conservative Movement, once or still of the CIA at the time, demanded our own “Authoritarian State” come into existence. Or “National Security State (NSS), which they produced a “political theory” for, as the ideology of the NSS, to be propagated so successfully, that as Scoop Jackson Democrats, “Neoconservativism” would join its “Big Brother” in the 1970s, and increase the pro-war shrillness we hear today, from all “branches,” against all of Russia, China, and Iran, varying only by priority.
With the particularly clever scheme way back in the 1950s of substituting the so-called “Philadelphia Constitution” which was intended to stop in its tracks any talk of “rights,” particularly of the 1st Amendment (currently manifested as well in the “National Conservative Movement” founded by Israeli Settler Yoram Hazony and attracting the likes of Giorgia Meloni, the “non-fascist,” of the ideologically fascist descended Brothers of Italy,” though Hazony goes even further back than that in situating the legal precedents we should follow), with his “National Conservative” ideology clearly modeled after this “political theorist’s” ideology, as a comparison of each of their writings would confirm.
With the latter two of the attached files attacking the very idea of “free speech,” to include on these Orwellian grounds:
"I next contend that such a society as Mill prescribes will descend ineluctably into ever- deepening differences of opinion, into progres- sive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war. This is the phenomenon-we may call it the dispersal of opinion-to which Rousseau, our greatest modern theorist of the problem, recurred again and again in his writings. The all-questions-are-open-questions society cannot endeavor to arrest it, by giving preferred status to certain opinions and, at the margin, mobi- lizing itself internally for their defense; for by definition it places a premium upon dispersion by inviting irresponsible speculation and irre- sponsible utterance. (You reading this, Jim Bovard :-) As time passes, moreover, the extremes of opinion will-as they did in Weimar-grow further and further apart, so that (for the reason noted above) their bearers can less and less tolerate even the thought of one another, still less one another's presence in society. And again the ultimate loser is the pursuit of truth.”
That certainly is the case today, and the temptation is strong across the political spectrum, as it was in 1920’s Italy, and 1930’s Germany,” and 1950’s Spain, Dominican Republic, et al., meaning, someone like the author of this piece, with a CIA background perhaps, should be the “decider” of what we can say, and publish, and what we can’t?
How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for 'Unconventional Warfare'
"The Evil Spirits of the Modern Daily Press," a cartoon from Puck magazine in 1888. (Wikimedia)Editor’s note: This article is the third part of a four-part series on Truthdig called “Universal Empire” — an examination of the current stage of the neocon takeover of American policy that began after World War ll. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4. The odd, psychologically conflicted and politically divisive ideology referred to as neoconservatism can claim many godfathers. Irving Kristol (father of William Kristol), Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Bell, Norman Podhoretz and Sidney Hook come to mind. And there are many others. But in both theory and practice, the title of founding father for the neoconservative agenda of endless warfare that rules the thinking of America’s defense and foreign policies today might best be applied to James Burnham. His writings in the 1930s provided a refined Oxford intellectual’s gloss to the Socialist Workers Party, and as a close adviser to Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, he learned the tactics and strategies of infiltration and political subversion firsthand. Burnham reveled in his role as a “Trotskyist intellectual,” pulling dirty tricks on his political foes in competing Marxist movements by turning their loyalties and looting their best talent. Burnham renounced his allegiance to Trotsky and Marxism in all its forms in 1940, but he would take their tactics and strategies for infiltration and subversion with him and would turn their method of dialectical materialism against them. His 1941 book, “The Managerial Revolution,” would bring him fame and fortune and establish him as an astute, if not exactly accurate, political prophet chronicling the rise of a new class of technocratic elite. His next book, “The Machiavellians,” confirmed his movement away from Marxist idealism to a very cynical and often cruel realism with his belief in the inevitable failure of democracy and the rise of the oligarch. In 1943 he put it all to use in a memo for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the OSS) in which his Trotskyist anti-Stalinism would find its way into the agency’s thinking. And in his 1947 book, “The Struggle for the World,” Burnham expanded his confrontational/adversarial dialectic toward the Soviet Union into a permanent, apocalyptic policy of endless war.
By 1947 James Burnham’s transformation from Communist radical to New World Order American conservative was complete. His “Struggle for the World” had done a French Turn on Trotsky’s permanent Communist revolution and turned it into a permanent battle plan for a global American empire. All that was needed to complete Burnham’s dialectic was a permanent enemy, and that would require a sophisticated psychological campaign to keep the hatred of Russia alive for generations. The Rise of the Machiavellians In 1939 Sidney Hook, Burnham’s colleague at New York University and fellow Marxist philosopher, had helped to found an anti-Stalinist Committee for Cultural Freedom as part of a campaign against Moscow. During the war Hook, too, had abandoned Marxism and, like Burnham, somehow found himself in the warm embrace of the right wing of America’s intelligence community during and after World War II. Hook was viewed by the Communist Party as a traitor and “counter-revolutionary reptile” for his activities and by 1942 was informing on his fellow comrades to the FBI. Selling impoverished and dispossessed European elites on the virtues of American culture was essential to building America’s empire after the war, and Burnham’s early writings proved the inspiration from which a new counterculture of “freedom” would be built. As veterans of internecine Trotskyist warfare, both Burnham and Hook were practiced at the arts of infiltration and subversion, and with Burnham’s “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom” as their blueprint, they set out to color anything the Soviets did or said with dark intent. As Burnham articulated clearly in “The Machiavellians,” his version of freedom meant anything but intellectual freedom or those freedoms defined by America’s Constitution. What it really meant was conformity and submission. Burnham’s freedom only applied to those intellectuals (the Machiavellians) willing to tell people the hard truth about the unpopular political realities they faced. These were the realities that would usher in a brave new world of the managerial class, who would set about denying Americans the very democracy they thought they already owned. As Orwell observed about Burnham’s Machiavellian beliefs in his 1946 “Second Thoughts”: “Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to use the masses.” By 1949 the CIA was actively in the business of defrauding the masses by secretly supporting the so-called non-Communist left and behaving as if it was just a spontaneous outgrowth of a free society. By turning the left to the service of its expanding empire, the CIA was applying a French Turn of its own by picking the best and the brightest, and the creation of the National Security Act of 1947 institutionalized it. Assisted by Britain’s Information Research Department (the IRD), the CIA recruited key former Soviet disinformation agents trained before the war who had managed non-Communist front groups for Moscow and put them to work. As Frances Stoner Saunders writes in her book “The Cultural Cold War,” “these former propagandists for the Soviets were recycled, bleached of the stain of Communism, embraced by government strategists who saw in their conversion an irresistible opportunity to sabotage the Soviet propaganda machine which they had once oiled.” By its own admission, the CIA’s strategy of promoting the non-Communist left would become the theoretical foundation of the agency’s political operations against Communism for over the next two decades. But the no-holds-barred cultural war against Soviet Communism began in earnest in March 1949 when a group of 800 prominent literary and artistic figures gathered at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a Soviet-sponsored “Cultural and Scientific” conference that would sue for peace. Both Sidney Hook and James Burnham were already actively involved in enlisting recruits to counter the efforts of Moscow’s Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) to influence Western opinion. But the Waldorf conference gave them an opportunity for dirty tricks they could only have prayed for. Demonstrators organized by a right-wing coalition of Catholic groups and the American Legion heckled the guests as they arrived. Catholic nuns knelt in prayer for the souls of the Communist atheists in attendance. Gathered upstairs in a 10-floor bridal suite, a gang of ex-Trotskyists and Communists led by Hook intercepted the conference’s mail, doctored official press releases and published pamphlets challenging speakers to admit their Communist past. In the end the entire conference became a twisted theater of the absurd, and Hook and Burnham would use it to sell Frank Wisner at the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination on taking the show on the road. The Congress for Cultural Freedom: By Hook or by Crook Drawing on the untapped power of the Fourth International, the coming-out party came on June 26, 1950, at the Titania Palace in occupied Berlin. Named for Hook’s 1939 concept for a cultural committee, The Congress for Cultural Freedom’s 14-point “Freedom Manifesto” was to identify the West with freedom. And since everything about the West was said to be free, free, free, then it went without saying that everything about the Soviet Union wasn’t.Organized by Burnham and Hook, the American delegation represented a who’s who of America’s postwar intellectuals. Tickets to Berlin were paid for by Wisner’s Office of Policy Coordination through front organizations and the Department of State, which helped arrange travel, expenses and publicity. According to CIA historian Michael Warner, the conference sponsors considered it money well spent, with one Defense Department representative calling it “unconventional warfare at its best.” Burnham functioned as a critical connection between Wisner’s office and the intelligentsia moving from the extreme left to the extreme right with ease. Burnham found the congress to be a place to inveigh not just against Communism but against the non-communist left as well and left many wondering whether his views weren’t as dangerous to liberal democracy as Communism. According to Frances Stoner Saunders, members of the British delegation found the rhetoric coming out of the congress to be a deeply troubling sign of things to come. “Hugh Trevor-Roper was appalled by the provocative tone. … There was a speech by Franz Borkenau which was very violent and indeed almost hysterical. He spoke in German and I regret to say that as I listened and I heard the baying voices of approval from the huge audiences, I felt, well, these are the same people who seven years ago were probably baying in the same way to similar German denunciations of Communism coming from Dr. Goebbels in the Sports Palast. And I felt, well, what sort of people are we identifying with? That was the greatest shock to me. There was a moment during the Congress when I felt that we were being invited to summon up Beelzebub in order to defeat Stalin.” The Congress for Cultural Freedom didn’t need Beelzebub. It already had him in the form of Burnham, Hook and Wisner, and by 1952, the party was just getting started. Burnham worked overtime for Wisner legitimizing the congress as a platform for the Machiavellians alongside ex-Communists and even Nazis, including SS Gen. Reinhard Gehlen and his German army intelligence unit, which had been brought into the CIA after the war intact. E. Howard Hunt, Watergate “plumber” and famous CIA dirty trickster, remembered Burnham in his memoirs: “Burnham was a consultant to OPC on virtually every subject of interest to our organization. … He had extensive contacts in Europe and, by virtue of his Trotskyite background, was something of an authority on domestic and foreign Communist parties and front organizations.” In 1953 Burnham was called upon again by Wisner to reach beyond Communism to help overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Tehran, Iran, apparently because Wisner thought the plan needed “a touch of Machiavelli.” But Burnham’s greatest contribution as a Machiavellian was yet to come. His book, “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom,” would become the CIA’s manual for displacing Western culture with an alternative doctrine for endless conflict in a world of oligarchs. In the end, it opened the gates to an Inferno from which there would be no return. Part 4 of “Universal Empire” will be published Thursday and look beyond Soviet Communism into the creation of the sophisticated doctrinal campaign that led to the final stage of the Machiavellian elites’ takeover of America. Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante’s Vision of Hell Part 2: How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books Part 4: The Final Stage of the Machiavellian Elites’ Takeover of America Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story,” “Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire” and “The Voice.” Visit their websites at invisiblehistory.com and grailwerk.com.
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