Word: burnham
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Burnham, the ex-Communist, ex-Trotskyite professor who has recently been canonized by Time-Life, is a shrewder, slicker model of this type (top of his Princeton class, always a sharp dresser); his book is smart, superficially cogent, and therefore the more dangerous. His thesis is that the time is ripe for world empire by one power, and that the inescapable conflict is between Russia and the United States. Borrowing handfuls from historian Arnold Teynbee's arbitrary classification of civilizations (what are the criteria for a civilization?), Burnham sees America as the saviour of Western Civilization from the dynamic surge...
Most of it is appallingly--untrue. Burnham cries that we must first reach out to stop communism everywhere, supporting against it Chiang, France, a strong Germany. We should abandon all attempts to "get along" in the UN, make unilateral decisions and implement them with force. Next, we should take the offensive, drawing first Latin America and then other nations into our new "World Empire," suppressing communism as we go. At home, Burnham would have us illegalize the Communist Party and crush all its "fronts;" his black and white approach leads him to lump the Federation of Atomic Scientists with...
...Burnham's conclusion (and much of the rest of his book) draws heavily on Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History (TIME, March 17). Gloomily he holds out a great, Toynbeean hope...
...Burnham, however, is quite willing to leave to others the task of finding just how and where to apply the general policy of building what he calls the "democratic world order...
Harry Truman-or any American-looks small against that measure. The American people look bigger than Burnham thinks they...