Midweek Notebook

Once Iran is defeated, we'll revert to our greatest existential threat: suicidal liberalism

• A passage from one of Leo Strauss’s classic essays on the defects of modern empirical social science (“An Epilogue,” if you know the canon) comes back into fresh relevance in light of this week’s events:

“The old political science was concerned with political improvement by political means as distinguished from social engineering; it knew that those political means include revolutions and wars, since there may be foreign regimes (Hitler’s Germany is the orthodox example) which are dangerous to the survival of freedom in this country, and of which it would be criminally foolish to assume that they will transform themselves gradually into good neighbors.” [Emphasis added.]

Here I’ll add that “criminally foolish” is a fitting description for the unserious Democratic Party when it comes to foreign affairs these days.

P.S. “An Epilogue” ends with one of Strauss’s most memorable attacks on conventional political science:

“Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli’s teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.”

You can see why “mainstream” social scientists hated Strauss and his like-minded successors.

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• Are You a Liberal? Take James Burnham’s famous 39-question quiz from Suicide of the West to find out, now available online courtesy of Michael Millerman.

My result: I scored only 10% liberal, and am classified as a “Reactionary.” I’ll take it proudly! (Even ten years ago I would have scored higher, but the galloping dementia of the left over the last decade has radicalized me (or is it “reactionarized”?).

I think the quiz should be updated, not only with current questions but with a new scoring metric, so that it is possible to get a negative score. In any case, try it yourself, and post your score and observations in our comment thread. (Sorry that Substack’s comment format doesn’t allow you to post your graphic like mine here.)