“because it is based on a fundamentally inadequate and mistaken concept of man’s nature, I believe it is doomed to final failure—for the same reason that the proposition that two and two make five is doomed to final failure. It does not follow, however, that the free world … will necessarily prevail in its present mortal struggle with Communism. Free men are divided among themselves, and profoundly unsure of their course. When God is “dead” in the hearts of many good men, and Science is our king; when even conservatives find it difficult to synthesize and express in modern terms the traditional wisdom of the West … it is impossible to feel that the prospects for the victory of free men are very bright, still less that their victory is inevitable. But … since the real problem is not our adversary’s strength but our own weakness and irresolution, the remedy lies within us. Communism’s absurd and primitive scientism could not possibly prevail against a free world sure of its own meaning and destiny. That is why I agreed so thoroughly, from the very first, with the basic contention of National Review: namely, that what America has most to fear is not the Communists either at home or abroad, but our own good-hearted, well-meaning fellow citizens of the liberal persuasion, whose unintended effect has been to sap the survival powers of free societies everywhere.”
Source: Special Counsel (1968)
Keywords: foreign-affairs,national-security,social-change
