Lance Fairchok discovered Jean Francois Revel — and thus the rarest of works — quite by accident:
While researching anti-American organizations that support terrorist groups, I came across a thin volume entitled simply, Anti-Americanism. Written by a respected French intellectual, it is the rarest of works, examining and condemning the reflexive and unjustified anti-Americanism found in the European and particularly the French press. It is a clear and biting indictment of the unreason of the popular press and of the totalitarian left. Revel’s regard for the US was unclouded by naive romanticism. He judged us fairly, took stock of our strengths and weaknesses and found us admirable.
While visiting a used bookstore a few weeks later, he found another Revel book, How Democracies Perish, which he cites twice:
- Exaggerated self-criticism would be a harmless luxury of civilization if there were no enemy at the gate condemning democracy’s very existence. But it becomes dangerous when it portrays its mortal enemy as always being in the right. Extravagant criticism is a good propaganda device in internal politics. But if it is repeated often enough, it is finally believed. And where will the citizens of democratic societies find reasons to resist the enemy outside if they are persuaded from childhood that their civilization is merely an accumulation of failures and a monstrous imposture?
- But democracy can defend itself only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy. His aim of destroying democracy itself, of actively seeking an absolute monopoly of power, is shrewdly hidden behind the citizen’s right to oppose and criticize the system. Paradoxically, democracy offers those seeking to abolish it a unique opportunity to work against it legally. They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract. The frontier is vague, the transition easy between the status of a loyal opponent wielding a privilege built into democratic institutions and that of an adversary subverting those institutions. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying it principles.
(Hat tip à mon père.)