From The Times Literary Supplement, a review of The Devil in History, by John Grey…”some lessons of the twentieth century.”

I’m wondering if we ever learn the lessons….unlimited growth in government control seen as “progress,” the classification of those who don’t adhere to the liberal party line as less than human (“Have you no shame? asked by people who have no shame), a skilled propaganda machine by “Democrat operatives with bylines,” and a creeping fascism as we supposedly go “forward.”

In its predominant forms, liberalism has been in recent times a version of the religion of humanity, and with rare exceptions – Russell is one of the few that come to mind – liberals have seen the Communist experiment as a hyperbolic expression of their own project of improvement; if the experiment failed, its casualties were incurred for the sake of a progressive cause. To think otherwise – to admit the possibility that the millions who were judged to be less than fully human suffered and died for nothing – would be to question the idea that history is a story of continuing human advance, which for liberals today is an article of faith. That is why, despite all evidence to the contrary, so many of them continue to deny Communism’s clear affinities with Fascism. Blindness to the true nature of Communism is an inability to accept that radical evil can come from the pursuit of progress.

 

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