Hot Wars Destroy Bodies, Cold Wars Are Waged for Immortal Souls

Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse | 1974 | Erik von Keuhnelt-Leddihn

[Askel5]

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The Soviets needed the democratic restoration of 1945 very much indeed.

We know about a leading American general who, after World War II, met a a Soviet leader. We quote:

Circumstances had brought the two together on a number of occasions and the American had noticed an attitude of considerable friendliness on the part of the Russian. One day he commented on his attitude.

The Soviet leader made no reply for the moment, then he drew his chair closer to the table and from a matchbox he took four matches which he placed methodically on the table, each match about an inch from the next and parallel to it. Then he said, "Now this first match is what you call 'Capitalism'; the second is what you call 'Democracy'; the third is what you call 'Socialism'; and the fourth is what you call 'Communism'."

He paused a moment, and then, looking up at the American, said: "Now I like youir country because it is moving straight down the line from capitalism through the others to communism." ²⁰⁸

The distinguished American, according to our information, was nobody else but General MacArthur.

Today, world conflict moves on several levels. The time of the old-fashioned cabinet wars is over, war has become total, partly because technology gave us staggering means of destruction, partly because, due to the withering away of religion, totalitarian ideologies capable of mobilizing the masses and fanaticizing pragmatists, have filled this void.

Hot wars destroy bodies, cold wars are waged for immortal souls. Still, what strikes one today, more than ever, are the words of Rivarol, ²⁰⁹ one of the most brilliant spirits of old France:

Politics is like the Sphinx: It devours all those who cannot solve its riddles.

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And here we come to another point. I am dead certain that at the turn of the century, historians will try to find out the answer to two crucial historic questions:

1. What caused the United States to withdraw its armies immediately after the armistice form all parts of the world? Was the clamor "Let's send the boys home" somewhat organized?

2. What prevented the United States – as sole atomic power between the years of 1945 and 1948 – from using its deadly monopoly to "ease" the Soviets out of their ill-gotten gains? A war never would have been necessary. The mere threat would have been sufficient. Panic on an unprecedented scale would have been the immediate result.

Of course the answer is tragically simple: A "democracy" rests on the "fermentation" of the people. It merely hits back if attacked and is more perplexed by victory than by the task of defending itself (which belongs to the military hierarchy and not to amateurish politicians).

The Armistice [141] was not only conditioned by the preliminary arrangements and agreement concluded at Teheran and Yalta but also by military moves determined by these talks. It is perhaps true that Vienna could not have been occupied by the Western Allies in the last stages of the war, but why, then, had it been savagely bombed on the anniversary of the Anchluss -- and act of revenge facilitating the Russian conquest?[142]

Neither Prague nor Berlin, two European key cities, need have been left to the Red army. They were given to the Soviets, staunch Nazi collaborators between 1939 and 1941, on a platter. The Americans and the British stopped at the Elbe [143] and later even surrendered all of Thuringia to the Soviets while Berlin could easily have fallen into American hands. [144]

The same is true of Prague: The Americans under General Patton had advanced as far as Pilsen when they were ordered back.[145] Clearly, all important places in Eastern and Central Europe according to leftist ideas were to be handed over to the Soviets leaving to the Western world a mere toehold on the Continent. The craziest arrangements were those concerning Berlin and Vienna. In these two cities, the Western Powers were to control mere sectors and no stipulations were made as to the accesses leading to them.[146]

Mr. Roosevelt is said to have been opposed to discussing these details because he thought that only a complete show of confidence and trust would soften the Soviet regime and would create an atmosphere of "fellowship" and "goodwill." Soon, the Americans were "undeceived" and the airlift had to be organized at great cost in money and even human lives.

The worst result of the Potsdam meeting were the stipulations concerning the mass transfer of the German population from east of the Oder-Neisse Line, [147] from Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. No less than 13 to 14 million people had to be removed under enormous hardships and this created tensions, hatred, demands and counterdemands from which even a de-Sovietized Europe could hardly recover. These brutal transfers, accompanied by atrocities and spoliations continued all through the winter of 1945-1946 and ended only in 1947.

Poles from Eastern Poland were dumped into East Germany, a process by which people from underpopulated areas were "massaged" into overpopulated ones – the height of perversity. Yet no legal title over Eastern Germany as given to the Poles. [148] Vast tracts of land remained uncultivated (as in Bohemia-Moravia) and on the trek from East to West millions of people perished. [149]

What were the Western Allies to do with the part of Germany they were given for occupation? It is interesting to note that the western army leaders went into a huddle to discuss what they should do if there should be any resistance or sabotage. They decided they would take hostages and shoot them – perhaps the only thing they could "reasonably" do, but the Germans had been vilified for having acted the same way in the same predicament.[150].

As to the political order and cultural institution, the American left (thanks to its preoccupation with foreign affairs) had a field day in West Germany.

Professor Wilhelm Röpke, an outstanding German neoliberal, exiled in Constantinople and later in Geneva, had written a memorandum about the necessity of a monarchical restoration which, by the way, we find in the program of practically all of the heroes of the Twentieth of July. Nobody in his right mind and with any sense of history planned to revise parliamentary democracy, already obsolete by 1919 and tragically terminated by 1933.

Yet the American left naturally thought about a Constitutional development which would give the forces of the left a frame for a free development. Had not the English demanded the democratic republic as the ideal form of government, conducive to the victory of Marxism? [151]

Above all, the Soviet Union had a true "vested interest" in the establishment of democracy in preference to forms of government in which parties could not develop freely, gain victories and take over the government.

What the leftist establishment did in Germany is most notable. In many parts of the country, in Bavaria, for instance, it put into power Social Democrats (i.e., Socialist) governments which had by no means the backing of the majority of the population. The prevailing idea in the civilian sector of the occupation authorities was that "Clericals" were reactionary, backward and "Fascist," but that Marxians were "progressive."

Dorothy Thompson had already told us that what Germany needed was not less, but "more socialism" (though not exactly "national socialism"). [153] Now the Germans got it at the expense of the American capitalist system duly milked to provide for socialism and socialization all over Europe from Land's End to the Iron Curtain.

There was a special bias against German nobility, many of whose members had courageously opposed Hitler, but here folklore and leftism against combined against genuine American interests. [154]

The famous Fragebogen, the questionnaire prescribed by the American authorities, that had to be filled out by all those Germans who wanted to do anything more than just work in a factory or in the fields, contained questions which in their content or their wording revealed the whole leftist bias and betrayed the sure little hand of Marx. (One of the questions aped the Nuremberg Racial Purity Laws: "Did any of your or your wife's four grandparents have a title of nobility?") [ 155]

For a time, the American leftists in the military administration could work hand in glove with the British occupation, directed by the Labour government in London which was also determined to create a leftist Germany – a "national socialist" Germany under the rather demagogical Social Democrat Schumacher, but minus racism.

One of the early victims of this combine was Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who immediately after liberation had become Lord Mary (Oberburgermeister) of Cologne. One nice day he was ejected by the British from his office under the (written) pretext "that he lacked the qualifications to run a city as large as Cologne." This egregious piece of nonsense der Alte kept as his most cherished souvenir.[156]

"Reeducation" also ran into a few snares. Luckily the leftist plans never came to fruition but what they would have been like one can guess form the "Zook Report" published in parts by the New York Times (October 16, 1946). Dr. George F. Zook, head of a mission of nine men and women (among them a Catholic priest!) sent to Germany by the State and War Departments , declared that the goal of democracy is a "democratic man."

This commission found the main ills of Germany to be "discipline in the family" and the high-school college, which begins at the age of 10. "The survival of democracy would warrant an invasion of the German home," the report suggested.

It referred to the "stern German parental authority" that produced Freudian ambivalence, or a clash of tenderness and hostility in children, undermining individual self-reliance, if not also self-respect, while women were confined to cooking, children and churchgoing, thus converting "worthy enough functions into antidemocratic sterilities."

The report went on to say that to "shun the majority rule principle was to play into the hands of a Hitlerian 'superman'." Ninety percent of the Germans went to vocational schools and "this separation of children at an early age was an important factor in developing the superiority complex of the privileged class and the subservience of the trade class which has led Germany to totalitarianism and war."

A most amusing light is thrown on this report by the fact that the Nazi movement had been basically a youth movement against the older generation, that the Nazis wanted to radically revamp the educational system to eliminate the classically educated elites, that they had tried with all means at their disposal to undermine parental authority. In other words, most of the propositions of the Zook Report were entirely in keeping with Nazi ideas, and Nazism was represented in retrospect was a conservative and patriarchal movement: Hitler appeared to the signatories as some sort of Patriarcha and not at all as Big Brother whom he actually represented. [157]

The Zook Report and the various efforts to "democratize" German education in an intellectual sense were partly of a temporary nature.[ 158] As soon as West Germany recovered some sovereignty, most of the various leftist experiments were given up. As we all know, a "reinfection" took place in the mid-1960s when the New Left, the student revolt and hippieism invaded Germany via the Free University of West Berlin and the University of Frankfurt where the various aspects of this particular disease were abetted by part of the German press and a number of intellectuals with a distinctly American background. [159]

No wonder, because there was a field in which the American occupation authorities were able to achieve a permanent victory for leftism: in the "Fifth Estate".

After 1945 the license for the publication of a newspaper and books had to be obtained from the occupying powers and here was an opening wedge for the leftist returnees and for their friends. Later it became extremely costly to start a new paper. The conservative forces, viewed with great suspicion by the leftist establishment, thus were the Johnnies-come-lately and to this day from a journalistic point of view, they have not overcome this handicap.

It is important, however, to remember that the left in Europe was soon to turn anti-American and that the anti-American propaganda profited from the support it had been given earlier by the very country it was later to attack.

It is difficult to enumerate the calamities enacted in the years immediately following the Armistice. There were serious diplomatic mistakes such as the pressure exercised upon Switzerland to surrender the German assets to the Allies (whereas the Swiss had not even been approached by the Nazis to surrender emigrant savings and investments).

There were the Nuremberg Trials which definitely ought to have been handled by the Germans themselves [ 160] and which were totally mismanaged. The notion of "legal precedent" is Anglo-Saxon:[161] Even American generals were horrified by the trial (thinking of their difficulties in World War III): and the very idea that the assassins of Katyn sat in judgment over the assassins of Auschwitz is tragicomic.

Points of accusation like the wanton attack on Norway, an accusation per se justified, make no sense if one remembers that Mr. Churchill admittedly prepared an attack on Norway himself.[162]

The thing to do would have been to have the Nazis tried by German courts simply for common crimes according to the Code of Penal Law. The principle Nullen crimem sine lege was as much ignored as that of the impartiality of the judges – for instance, when the Russians condemned the German attack against Poland in which they themselves had participated.

Even worse were the following minor Nuremberg Trials, almost completely based on Marxist principles: An effort was made to implicate German industry and high finance.[ 163] No less infamous was the Krupp Trial in which Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach [164] was place don the bench of the accused instead of his gravely ill father.[165]

Here again Marxism, financed by American taxpayers' money, was celebrating orgies.

In the writ of accusation against Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and his ten codefendants of the same firm we find the words:

The origin, the development, and the background of the crimes committed by the defendants, and the criminal plans, in which they participated, can be traced back to 100 years of German militarism and 133 years—four generations—of the manufacturing of arms." [166]

Apart from the fact that the Krupp works normally produced arms on the average of only one-fifth of their total output, one recognizes in this sentence and, even more clearly in other passages of the accusation, the Marxian verbiage.

The accusation was presented by General Taylor, U.S.A., formerly of the Federal Communications Commission, then 40 years old. His aides were Mr. Joseph Kaufmann from New York and later Mr. Raggland from Texas. The director of the Chief Trial was Mr. H. Russell Thayer who had been Assistant Secretary of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy during the Spanish Civil War. The basic notion of the trial was to prove in the best Leninist fashion that "big business" (especially in the form of "monopoly capitalism") creates and fosters wars. [ 167]

All of the accused were condemned and later released and the confiscations annulled. In retrospect, the trial appears too preposterous.

On the other side of the ocean, we had the Yamashita Trial, a travesty of justice. [168]. When Yamashita's lawyer, Frank A. Reel [ 169] published a book about his tragically innocent defendant, the rather conservative director of the publishing company, the Chicago University Press, lost his position.

Leftist forces mismanaged the world situation practically everywhere. Working through the occupation authorities, where the much saner military were unable to interfere with the civilians, they set up a witchhunt against monarchists in Austria (thus continuing Nazi policies!) and they also prevented the return of the South Tyrol to Austria:

For this the British Labour government was mainly responsible. Self-determination was obviously only desirable if it benefited leftist issues, but the South Tyrolians, being mostly conservative agrarians would, once returned to Austria, have prevented a full Socialist victory. [ 170] The damage done by the dinamitardi, the tortures committed by the caribinieri, the wall of hatred between Austrians and Italians—this only "bleeding border" left in Free Europe we owe first to Mr. Wilson, then to Mr. Bevin [171]—and to the Soviets who supported Mr. Bevin, and thus incidentally ratified the Hitler-Mussolini Agreement of 1939 pertaining to the iniquitous Brenner Border.

It seems that Nazi decisions, Nazi thought, Nazi mentality, and Nazi institutions in many ways are here to stay.

True, other people, other groups, fared much worse than the Austrians. the !50,000 cases of rape perpetrated by the Red Army in Eastern Austria was perhaps only a practical demonstration of "sexual democracy." [173] (Let us remember Mr. Henry Wallace's charming formula: We have political democracy, they have economic democracy.")

Many Austrians were deported, some returned, others disappeared forever. Still, it was on Austrian soil, in the East Tyrol, that large numbers of Russians and Cossacks who had fought against Communism were clubbed half dead, packed into box cars and sent back as "unpatriotic traitors."

A British major (Davis) had given his word of honor that England did not think to surrender the Cossacks and Russians to the Soviets. When the truth leaked through, the disarmed anti-Communists resisted His Majesty's soldiers in the services of bolshevism: Many Russians were killed on the spot, [174] fifteen more were killed during the transport while trying to escape, six committed suicide, seventeen succeeded in disappearing during the transport to the Russian occupation zone.

There were twelve generals in that group handed over to the USSR by that great conservative Winston Churchill to placate, to mollify, to befriend his Communist comrade-in-arms. But even this act of prostitution did not buy their friendship and less than a year later this Epimetheus of European politics utters the Great Warning in his famous Fulton speech.

An Austrian eyewitness has described the scenes in Lienz, worthy of Brueghel's brush. (He estimates that about three hundred the number of Cossacks who hanged themselves in the Lienz woods after being surrounded by the 8th Brigade.) With bayonets and clubs, these men and many women were subdued. A Russian who escaped to tell the tale, S. G. Korolkov, now living in the United States, has painted the memorable scene of the "Hell of Lienz." [ 175]

And while Mr. Churchill perpetrated such wonderful deeds, the Americans, apparently, could not stay behind. The New York Times reported the ghastly scenes that took place in Dachau when the Russians who had fought against Communism were made "ready" to be "shipped" eastward.

The long somber report ended with the description of the evacuation of the second Russian barrack.

The inmates … barricaded themselves inside and set the building afire. Then all tore off their clothing, apparently in a vain effort to frustrate the guards and, linking arms, resisted the pushing and shoving of the Americans and Poles trying to empty the place. The soldiers then tossed in tear bombs and rushed the building.

Some prisoners, they discovered, were already dead, having cut their own throats, while others had used pieces of cloth to hang themselves. [ 176]

One can easily imagine what confidence in the United States and Britain these actions engendered inside the USSR, but hatred and suspicion against the West were precisely the feelings which not only the Soviets but also their faithful collaborators the American leftist establishment wanted to create.

And it ought to be remembered that the American heirs of the Nazis in Dachau (of all places!) perpetrated these horrors three-quarters of a year after the end of the war—and this in accordance with the agreements made at Yalta, at least half of which the Soviets had already broken.

Remembering the American tradition in regard to political refugees throughout the ages, one cannot but be aghast at the betrayal of such trust, such a noble tradition.

The so frequently followed British example, too, was at times exceptionally evil. The Austrians have seen not only the "Hell of Lienz" but also the bestial surrender of the Domobranci, the Catholic Slovene Home Guard, which had protected Slovenes against the depredations of Tito's partizani. Thousands of them were rounded up, shipped over the Karavanken Mountains to be mowed down in masses and their corpses used as natural fertilizer for the fields.

One should never forget that Sadism is the outstanding characteristic of the entire left.

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[Askel5]

Opening quote from page 335.

Body of the thread from pp. 322-329.

Footnotes (which are fascinating but altogether about as long as the article itself) are available upon request.

[Askel5]

Well, I couldn't help myself once I got going.

The paragraphs you'll want to read begin here, I hope.

A couple other interesting links I found (there aren't that many) ...

• The President's Commission Higher Education for Democracy, 1947

• Odd mention within Chinese Ideas in the West (Columbia)

• A Comparative Understanding of American Educational Missions to Korea and Japan after World War II

  At this point the American Education Mission to Germany influenced the on-going plan for sending an educational mission to Korea. After the Mission to Japan returned with a favorable impression, U.S. government authorities resumed discussing the issue of an Educational Mission to Germany. The National Education Association(NEA) played a constructive role in bringing about the Office of the Military Government (U.S.) for Germany's(OMGUS) official request for the Educational Mission on May 8, 1946. The Mission, with Dr. George F. Zook as chairman, left the U.S. on August 23 and stayed in Germany for about one month to study and observe the educational situation in the U.S. Zone. On September 20, 1946, they submitted their report to General Clay, Deputy Military Governor, and returned to the U.S. on September 26, 1946. As this brief schedule shows, the Education Mission to Germany was hastily carried forward after USEMJ, even though the idea of an educational mission to postwar Germany had first been suggested early in June 1945 by the National Education Association. A year of occupation elapsed without any basic policy change in educational reform in Germany under the four powers' ruling by division for a number of reasons. First of all, it was hard to arrive at a consensus among four countries with different political ideologies and educational traditions. Likewise, conflicting attitudes in the U.S. toward educational reform of Germany made it more difficult to reach an agreement. A positive attitude toward the imposition of the American educational ideology and system on Germany was coupled with the negative attitude that the U.S. should respect the German educational culture and system already in existence. The fact that the Soviet Union had the most comprehensive educational reform program in Germany also stimulated the U.S. to adopt an active program. The resulting solution was to invite a group of educational specialists from the U.S. as soon as possible.
  
  Unfavorable impressions from the Education Mission to Germany likely had an influence upon the delay of the educational mission to Korea. Especially the subject of comprehensive schools sparked controversy. William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, expressed his personal dissatisfaction with the final report on some points and detracted the value. A few private citizens also challenged the validity of the mission report. OMGUS considered the report as only a supporting document or a supplement. The Mission's hesitant attitude toward occupied Germany resulted in passive and inarticulate policy recommendations. The mission to Germany made little impact on German education reform.

  and last, but certainly not least ...

• Something from IHE Perspectives ?

  In the 1980s and again, in the 1990s newwaves of reform brought different challengesand a new awareness of changing demandsand expectations. Other commissions, councils,and committees would issue numerous, com-prehensive, and relevant reports addressingthe problems and issues of higher education-in an open, voluntary, and rapidly changing society.
  
  Throughout the ensuing "stages" ofprotest, dissent, reform, renewal that characterized the postwar years, the influence of wartime experiences could be detected as "alive, if not in good health".
  
  Despite many false starts, sudden changesof direction, periodic loss of momentum, roller-coaster ups and downs, and unpredictableweather, higher education has made remark-able progress. And despite the difficulty ofcharting their course of progress-and with the continuing problem of never knowingits destination-higher education, as it is known in the first year of a new millennium, can identify its "new departure" or "turningpoint" as "wartime experiences that encour-aged postwar planning."

  (I'll have to read the whole thing -- to be fair, natch -- in order to decide for myself if that's a good thing ... =)

[Askel5]

Politics is like the Sphinx: It devours all those who cannot solve its riddles.

Regards, your friend the Delphic ... uh, something besides princess, eh?

[Lurker]

It's always interesting to read the thoughts of monsters isn't it?

Regards,

L

[Askel5]

Well, Keuhnelt-Leddihn's my latest crush, of course (and one day I'll be able to spell his name without looking) ... but INDEED one MUST read the monsters.

They're not exactly shy about saying exactly what they mean.

What was particularly fascinating about coming across this the other night was that my Dad (the Colonel) and I had gotten into it over the Nuremberg defense just the other night. Now I have the angle (one I've never appreciated before) with which to argue better my position.

So good to see you out and about. I trust all is well with you and yours.

[Lurker]

Well if you have a 'crush' on this guy, that explains why I never had a chance with you.

Never, ever compete with a guy whose last name you can't spell I always say.

Regards,

L

[Askel5]

LOL ... don't worry ... he's resting in peace somewhere. I doubt very seriously I'd have had a chance with an Austrian aristocrat =)

He used to come to New Orleans and speak to a circle of friends of mine. I'm crushed I never got to hear him but one gets an idea of what his conversations must have been like, reading him.

One of their favorites stories was this. During the question/answer after one of his lectures (likely on the subject matter herein), one of the Xavier students from the black Catholic university here in town went chapter and verse on the tribulations of the Black Man in America. Keuhnelt-Leddihn paused a moment as he fixed him with a look and simply stated (in his aristocratic Austrian accent):

History is a vale of tears.

End of story.

Night, Lurker.

[exodus]

Thanks for the flag, Askel5.

You might also want to read a book by James Bacque, "Other Losses." Bacque details the mass deaths of disarmed German soldiers and civilians while under the military command of General Eisenhower's command after the war was over.

It's horrifying reading.

[Dales]

I like Kuenhelt-Leddihn. Have you ever read this interview with him?

November and December 1997 • Volume 7, Number 6

Christianity, the Foundation and Conservator of Freedom

Born in 1909 in Austria, Dr. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a prolific writer on the political theory of human freedom and has been published in National Review, Modern Age, and The Freeman, among others. His most recent English books include Leftism Revisited and Liberty or Equality. In addition, Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a gifted artist whose paintings have been widely acclaimed.

R&L: You have often described yourself as an arch-liberal. The word liberalism has very different meanings in the United States and Europe. Could you explain the differences of those understandings of this term?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: The term liberal in its political connotation we owe to Spain, the nation that always valued freedom most highly if not excessively, and therefore also produced a great many anarchists in the last one hundred fifty years. Resisting the Napoleonic invasion, Spain proclaimed in the liberated south, in Cadiz, a liberal constitution whose supporters were called los liberales. (They denounced their opponents as los serviles.) In 1816 Southey used the expression liberal for the first time in England but still in its Spanish form, liberales. Sir Walter Scott adopted the French form libéraux. In 1832, in connection with the big parliamentary reform, the Whigs assumed the liberal label, the Tories the conservative one. Oddly enough, it was the liberal Chateaubriand who called his paper Le conservateur, a word he invented, but in that early period liberals and conservatives were not so far from each other.

In the United States I observe the perversion of the term liberal, which caused real liberals to call themselves libertarians. The large, hospitable house of liberalism kept all its windows and doors open, and thus the winds from outside could pervade the building. As a good liberal, one has to be open-minded, to respect the "signs of the times"–and these, unfortunately, were leftist and collectivistic. Thus, self-

confessed liberals became illiberal. The American Mercury, then editorially managed by Eugene Lyons, published a series of "Creeds": the "Creed of a Conservative," the "Creed of a Reactionary," the "Creed of a Socialist," and then, separately, the "Creed of an Old-fashioned Liberal," and the "Creed of a New Liberal." Needless to say, the latter leaned toward socialism and the omnipotent state. When I speak in Asia, South America, Africa, Australia, or Europe, I have no trouble identifying myself as a liberal. In the United States, where time-honored expressions are so easily confounded, I have to begin with explanations. It’s too bad!

In Europe we do not distinguish sharply any longer between conservatives and liberals. I consider myself to be a liberal in the European sense, or to be more precise, a Neo-Liberal, but I never call myself a conservative. Chronicles has accepted an article of mine titled "Conservative or Rightist?" I am for the word Rightist. Right is right and left is wrong, you see, and in all languages "right" has a positive meaning and "left" a negative one. In Italian, typically, la sinistra is "the left" and il sinistro is "the mishap" or "the calamity." Japanese describes evil as hidar-imae, "the thing in front of the left." And in the Bible, it says in Ecclesiastes, which the Hebrews call Koheleth, that "the heart of the wise man beats on his right side and the heart of the fool on his left."

R&L: Being, then, both a historian and a liberal, could you describe the history of the classical liberal tradition?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: First, we have pre-liberalism, that is, liberalism from a time when people who were liberals did not call themselves liberals, and the word liberal was not used in an economic way or in any other way. For example, Adam Smith is a pre-liberal, as is Edmund Burke, who also is invoked by conservatives, which is very important. As democracy answers the question, "Who should rule?" with, "the majority of politically equal citizens either in person or through their representatives," liberalism answers the question, "How should government be exercised?" Liberalism answers that question by saying that government should be exercised in such a way that each individual citizen receives the greatest amount of freedom, but reasonable freedom with its technical and moral limitations. In other words, freedom is the principle of liberalism

Then we have Early Liberalism. I count Tocqueville, Montalembert, and finally, Lord Acton as very typical Early Liberals. (As you can see, these tendencies do overlap in time very widely; you cannot say where one stops and the other begins. After all, Tocqueville was born in 1805, and Acton died only in 1902.) These Early Liberals are little interested in economics, but they are Roman Catholics, bound by their religious faith, and also–which is quite typical–all aristocrats. The nobility always has been the most liberal-minded layer of society and the most sensitive opponents of autocratic government. Consider Runnymede in 1215 where the English barons tried to get more rights and to limit royal power.

The next stage is formed by the Old Liberals, but they unfortunately have a tendency toward philosophical relativism. And in their opposition against interference and limitations, they finally very often take on an anti-Christian, and specifically an anti-Catholic, tendency–which, of course, is differently developed in various persons. This is the reason why we find a condemnation of liberalism in Article Eighty of the Syllabus, but, of course that condemnation is of Old Liberalism

In 1947 there was a very important event in the history of liberalism–the establishment of the Mont Pélèrin Society, which took place in the Mont Pélèrin Hotel. The founders of that society–Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. von Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke–proposed to call it the Tocqueville-Acton Society, whereupon Professor Frank Knight of the University of Chicago rose, banged the table, and said, "If you call this society after two Roman Catholic aristocrats, I’ll quit." Well, they then decided to call the society not after any great men but after the hotel where they were meeting.

The Mont Pélèrin Society suffered a severe schism when the Neo-Liberals walked out in 1961, a move led by Wilhelm Röpke with Alexander Ruestow and me. We called ourselves the Neo-Liberals as opposed to the Old Liberals. Many of the outstanding Neo-Liberals were Germans and Austrians who had experienced the Third Reich and saw the importance of looking for eternal values in the Christian message. They were very conscious of the Early Liberals and, like them, believed very strongly in moral limitations and were convinced that Christianity was a very powerful factor in establishing freedom.

After all, eleutheria, which means "freedom," is mentioned again and again in the New Testament, but isotes, "equality," is not.

R&L: In what way is Christianity a factor in establishing freedom? Or perhaps in other words, what is the relationship between religion and liberty?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: The Bible teaches us that man is created in the image of God, in spite of original sin, as in Genesis 8:21, "Man’s mind from his childhood tends toward evil." Of course, God is very different from man, but not totally. See, if we are like God, then God is like us in some ways. God is the Creator; we are also creators. If you paint a picture, or write a book, or plant a garden, or even make a pair of really first-rate shoes, then you are a creator. Animals create, yes, but automatically. Think of an ant-heap, if you like; this kind of activity is automatic, but man’s is different. He is a creator.

Christianity has a personalistic theology, which is very important. The word person comes not, as Jacques Maritain thought, from per se, meaning "by itself," but from the Etruscan word phersú, which was the mask of the actor. The mask gave a specific role to the actor on the stage. So, life is a grand game, a great play of God (I am citing here Hugo Rahner, who is the more gifted brother of Karl Rahner and who has written about the playful God in his book Man at Play) in which we are actors. We play with God. We have a responsibility to play our roles, which God might have chosen, but which we are acting with our own lights, on our own behalf, prayerfully trying to comply to His great game and fulfill our destiny and our task here on earth.

Now, if man is a creator and a persona, he needs the possibilities to exercise his creativeness, and for that he needs freedom. Here, then, is the demand for freedom. This is a discovery that Hayek–whom I knew very well, indeed–made very much at the end of his life. In his last book he suddenly sees that religion has something to do with freedom, a discovery that Mises did not make. The realization that religion can make a demand for freedom is very important.

R&L: Would it be fair to say, then, that the principle of the Imago Dei is the foundation upon which freedom rests?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: That’s right; we have been created in the image of God.

R&L: What then is Christianity’s role in the preservation of freedom? If Christianity provides principles that establish freedom, how does Christianity conserve freedom in a society?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Christians should speak out when they see measures that unnecessarily restrict freedoms; they should protest publicly in the name of freedom and in the name of the Christian faith. I must here emphasize that the formula is as much freedom as is reasonably possible, but only as much intervention as is absolutely necessary, you see, with the maximum of the former and the minimum of the latter.

The difficulty is doing that in a democratic framework where the vast majority of people live very materialistically and therefore choose interventions from above–from the state–which bring them advantages. In such a system, the people say to the parties, "We will vote for you if you give us material advantages (which might be handouts) and if you give us freedoms (which might be totally immoral, like abortion and so on)." In other words, the people blackmail the parties, and the parties are eager, eager, eager to get the majority’s votes, votes, votes. And it goes the other way around, with the parties bribing the people and declaring: "If you vote for us, you’ll get that and we’re committed to this." It’s what I call the BB gun–bribing and blackmailing, blackmailing and bribing. This leads us nowhere.

We must always keep in mind Romans 12:2, "Do not conform to the aion" and aion means the "world and the spirit of the period." As Christians we have to resist the spirit of the time. Chesterton made a wonderful remark: "The Catholic Church is the only thing which protects us from the degrading servitude of being a child of your time." In other words, we do not give in. We stay our own course, which is not the course of the flow of the time in which we live. The church, therefore, always has been a stranger in this world, but at this present time, the church is more of a stranger than ever in the past. We can make no compromise at all with the spirit of this time.

R&L: What is the spirit of this time? What is it that the church must resist?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Anthropolatry, the worship of man. Saint Augustine wrote The City of God and a group of American agnostics wrote The City of Man, published in 1940. We are in the period of the worship of man and the corresponding idea that God created the world as "Supreme Architect" but then retired, and it is now up to man to build the city of man. That is blasphemous. We have to keep in mind the City of God, of course, not the city of man.

R&L: What form of government, then, provides the soundest moral basis for freedom?

Kuehnelt-Leddihn: That is a very large question. According to Plato, there can be no good government unless the philosophers are kings and the kings philosophers, by which he does not mean Ph.D.s and crowned heads. What he does mean is the rule of those well-informed and knowledgeable. But do not forget there are two aspects to this: There is knowledge, and there is experience, and they have to go together. Knowledge alone is insufficient; practice alone is insufficient. To be a good ruler, one needs the combination of knowledge and practice to which has been added moral principles. Now, you had such a form of government in China with the Mandarins. The man who became a Mandarin was one who passed the examinations, and they were frightfully difficult, taken over the course of days. I had the privilege to talk to Dr. Sung-Fo–the son of Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic–who was the director in Taiwan of the examination board for the civil service. He told me, "We don’t look to see if you’re from Princeton or Harvard. That means nothing; here you must pass the examination." And if you passed, then you were accepted as an administrator, as a civil servant, and these people were highly respected by the population because they knew they were great scholars.

[Dales]

Well, Keuhnelt-Leddihn's my latest crush, of course (and one day I'll be able to spell his name without looking) ... but INDEED one MUST read the monsters.

Are either of you saying here that you consider Keuhnelt-Leddihn to be one of the monsters?

If so, I find that surprising.

[Askel5]

Neither ... it was just very late and less than crystal clear, I think.

Thanks very much for the excerpt. I'm going to be sad when I do finish the book ... the next one I ordered is coming from overseas (only place I could find it) and who knows when it'll get here.

He's on my short list of folks I hope to meet one day (if all goes well on my end) and eternity permits him time.

[Askel5]

I will find it, thanks.

I think we've been doing the dirty work of the Soviets for a long time, actually.

I think it's possible, though, that during my first sustained fascination with communism (beginning about 6th grade), I ignored or glossed over such atrocities as somehow warranted by war. My thinking's grown more consistent since then, thank God, and it's time to revisit the truth.

Those that don't study history are doomed to repeat it.

[Askel5]

Thanks again for the excerpt.

I wonder how I missed putting him together with Mont Pélèrin Society (having heard my friends talk about him for years) ... perhaps the spelling of his name, I guess, threw me.

[cornelis]

He's on my short list of folks I hope to meet one day

R.I.P. 1909-1999

[cornelis]

I think we've been doing the dirty work of the Soviets for a long time, actually.

[Askel5]

I think our ability to avert our eyes and scream nothing but "NAZI!" as we concentrate solely on the Holocaust that is (if the UN's Racism Conference had had its way limited strictly to Jews killed by Hitler) is probably the gravest error of all.

We've enabled all of that and simply looked the other way.

Why?

[cornelis]

Why

Why such a deafening silence from the academic world regarding the Communist catastrophe, which touched the lives of about one-third of humanity on four continents during a period spanning eighty years?

Why is there usch widespread reluctance to make such a crucial factor as crime--mass crime, systematic crime, and crime against humanity-- a central factor of analysis of Communism?

Is this really something that is beyond human understanding? Or are we talking about a refusal to scrutinize the subject too closely for fear of learning the truth about it? [such as, "Time and again the focus of terror was less on targeted individuals than on groups of people."]

The reasons for this reticence are many and various. First, there is the dictator's understandable urge to erase their crimes and to justify the actions they cannot hide . . .

. . . Not satisified with the concealment of their misdeeds, the tyrants systematically attacked all who dared to expose their crimes and victims grew reluctant to speak out . . .

As is usually the case, a lie is not, strictly speaking, the opposite of the truth, and a lie will generally contain an element of truth. Perverted words are situated in a twisted vision that distorts the landscape . . . Like martial artists, thanks to their incomparable propaganda strength grounded in the subversion of language, successfully turned the tables on the criticism leveled against their terrorist tactics . . . Thus they held fast to their fundamental principle of ideological belief, as formulated by Tertullian for his own era: "I believe, because it is absurd."

Like prostitutes, intellectuals found themselves inveigled into counterpropaganda operations . . . confronted with this onslaught of Communist propaganda, the West has long labored under an extraordinary self-deception, simultaneously fueled by naivete in the face of a particularly devious system, by the fear of Soviet power, and by the cynicism of politicians . . . this self-deception was a source of comfort . . .

there are three more specific reasons for the cover-up of the criminal aspects of Communism. The first is the fascination with the whole notion of revolution itself . . . Openly revolutionary groups are active and enjoy every legal right to state their views . . .

The second reason is the participation of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazism . . .

The final reason . . . the Communists soon grasped the benefits involved in immortalizing the Holocaust.

--Stephaen Courtois, "Introduction" The Black Book of Communism

Another reason can be added in distinction to the West in general: American optimism. Among the mature, our American confidence in trouncing the enemy in WW II has turned a benign eye to the danger of evil; among the adolescent, seriousness would be handily dealt with a fast joke to ensure contempt and ridicule.

Among the educated, our optimism confidently rides the raft of reason, convinced that the life of reason effectively excludes the reality it is meant to understand.

Another reason why is because knowledge of other facts is limited. Probably self-confidence is the cause of that limitation as well.

More can be added.

[Askel5]

Thank you, Cornelis.

Would that Covenantor and Coyote were here as well.

[Askel5]

(P.S. I stood up and cheered upon his line about "fanaticizing pragmatists".)

[Dales]

Askel, I am confused by something here. You cheered this line?

The time of the old-fashioned cabinet wars is over, war has become total, partly because technology gave us staggering means of destruction, partly because, due to the withering away of religion, totalitarian ideologies capable of mobilizing the masses and fanaticizing pragmatists, have filled this void.

I never have taken you for one who is big on pragmatists. As a matter of fact, I have always considered you to be somewhat disdainful of people like me who tend to take a more pragmatic view about what can be done about issues such as abortion and such.