Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Times

408 Pages·2007·19.76 MB·english

by  Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

LIBERTY OR EQUALITY
Other books in English by the same author:
Novels:
GATES OF HELL
NIGHT OVER THE EAST
MOSCOW 1979
BLACK BANNERS
Socio-political work:
THE MENACE OF THE HERD
(under pseudonym " Francis S. Campbell ")
LIBERTY
OR
EQUALITY
The Challenge of our Time
By
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Edited by
JOHN P. HUGHES
"952
THE CAXTON PRINTERS, LTD.
GALDWELL, IDAHO
ALL RIGHTS OF REPRODUCTION RESERVED
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE CHAPEL RIVER PRESS
ANDOVER. HANTS
To my friends and former students at
Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to express his thanks to a number of American publishers
and copyright holders who permitted him to quote from these various books:
The Atlantic Monthly Press: The Letters of William James, edited by H. P.
Bowditch.
Messrs. Brandt and Brandt: The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, edited by
A. W. Lane and L. H. Hall (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922).
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Incorporated: Gustav Stolper, This Age of
Fable (Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1942).
Harper and Brothers: Count Herman Keyserling, America Set Free; D. W.
Brogan, France Under the Republic.
The Harvard University Press: The Holmes-Pollock Letters (Volume II)
edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe.
The Houghton Mifflin Company: Henry Adams and His Friends, compiled
by H. D. Cater; Letters of Henry Adams, edited by Chauncey Ford Worthing-
ton; Henry Adams, The Formative Years, edited by Herbert Agar.
Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated: J. Fenimore Cooper, The American Demo-
crat; Peter Viereck, Metapolitics—From the Romantics to Hitler; D. W.
Brogan, The American Character; Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the
Slaves, translated by S. Putnam; Maurice Baring, Have You Anything to
Declare?
Little, Brown and Company: Ogden Nash, I'm a Stranger Here Myself.
Longmans, Green and Company: Josef Bernhart, The Vatican as a World
Power, translated by George N. Shuster; W. E. H. Lecky, Democracy and
Liberty.
The Macmillan Company: E. A. Robinson, Collected Poems; Henry Adams,
The Tendency of History; Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, translated
by Dom J. McCann.
William Morrow and Company, Incorporated: Albert Jay Nock, Our
Enemy, The State.
Sheed and Ward, Incorporated: Nicholas Berdyaev, The End of Our Times,
translated by Donald Attwater.
The University of Chicago Press: Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the
Backlands, translated by S. Putnam; Donald Pierson, Negroes in Brazil: A
Study of Race Contact in Bahia.
The Viking Press, Incorporated: The Portable James Joyce.
The Yale University Press: William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of
Facts and Other Essays, edited by A. G· Keller.
W. W. Norton and Company: Everett Dean Martin, Liberty.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface . . . . . . . .. ix
CHAPTER
I. DEFINITIONS AND BASIC PRINCIPLES I
II. DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM: THE
PROPHETS . . . . . . . 12
The nineteenth-century political thinkers, 12; the contagion
of uniformism, 15; the illiberalism of democracy, 20; the
prophets of totalitarianism, 41; the menace of the state's
growth, 48; the age of collectivism, 67; prophets of the
Russian peril, 73; summary, 82.
III. A C R I T I Q UE OF D E M O C R A CY . . .. 86
The basic problem, 86; moral aspects of democracy, 91;
difficulties and illusions, 97; self-government, 105; ethics
and representation, no; knowledge, 116; shadows of tyranny,
122; additional aspects of the problem, 127.
IV. DEMOCRACY AND MONARCHY . . . 133
The question, 133 ; the essence of monarchy, 136; the caricature
of monarchy, 143; monarchy compared with democracy, 150.
A NOTE ON THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORITY . 164
V. THE POLITICAL TEMPER OF CATHOLIC NATIONS . 179
The social implications of Catholicism, 179; the Catholic
character, 188; Catholicism and political behaviour, 198;
Catholicism and the forms of government, 204.