Worth repeating

Gerhard Niemeyer's review of Burnham:

Liberals feel guilty at the thought of any condition of

wretchedness, anywhere. For this kind of guilt

there can, of course, be no forgiveness. The Liberal

seeks relief by trying to “do something

about any and every social problem,” a feverish

and interminable compulsive activity in which

not the correctness of the program but rather

“good intentions” are counted. The Liberal’s twisted

and irrational sense of guilt has a fatal political

effect: It disarms him morally before those

whom he regards as less well off than himself.

This vulnerability, and his peculiar sense of guilt,

so often breeds in the Liberal a generalized

hatred of Western civilization and his own country.

Written in 1964.

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