Europe and America: The Meaning of “Western Defense”

Europe and America: The Meaning of “Western Defense”

For the liberal, the problem of defending the West is perhaps even more critical a question than for the socialist, since it is the liberal who eschews Utopias and therefore finds himself without an exit.

For the liberal, the problem of defending the West is perhaps even more critical a question than for the socialist, since it is the liberal who eschews Utopias and therefore finds himself without an exit. On the one side he is becoming increasingly depressed, if indeed not terrified, by the movement in America toward conformism, hysteria, and McCarthyism; as an alternative he can only see the heavy danger of “Soviet Imperialism.” Before such a prospect he feels impelled in the words of Dwight Macdonald to “prefer an imperfectly living, open society to a perfectly dead, closed society.”

I would argue that the mistake is precisely in so establishing the choice, and that the implement of this choice—Western Defense—has the ultimate and most abominable meaning of Western annihilation.