James Burnham Quotes
Any individual right or freedom is properly extended only to those who accept the fundamental rules of democracy. How … could any society survive which deliberately nursed its own avowed and irreconcilable assassin, and freely exposed its heart to his knife.
Burnam’s expression predated by two years Justice Jackson’s famous dissent {633526}
James Burnham, *-1987, Founder, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Director, Political & Psychological Warfare Division, CIA, The Struggle for the World, 1947
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
- Born: November 22, 1905
- Died: July 29, 1987
- Nationality:
- Profession: Philosopher
James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the philosophy department at New York University; His first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (1931). Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. He rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His book The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.
