Know Thine Enemy: A Historical past of the Left: Quantity 1

Quantity I of Know Thine Enemy presents a historical past of the political philosophy that’s recognized all through the world at the moment as “the Left,” which grew out of an effort by revolutionaries in eighteenth-century France to interchange the “superstition” of Christianity with a secular social and ethical system primarily based on cause and science. The guide traces the event of this challenge via many phases, starting with quite a few efforts in Europe to construct a working mannequin for a socialist utopia, transferring on to the creation and eventual failure of Marxism, and eventually, to the various efforts to revise the Marxist mannequin, which ready the best way for the emergence of fascism in Italy and Nationwide Socialism in Germany.

It additionally traces the early improvement of American’s homegrown model of socialism, the introduction of European socialism within the post-Civil Conflict migration of staff from Europe, and the following creation of Progressivism and liberalism.

The aim of the guide is to acquaint readers with an intimate and complete appreciation of the views and efforts of the heroes within the virtually three-century-long assault on Western Values, whose actions, speeches, writings, and aspirations collectively type the inspiration of American conservatism. In doing so, it hopes to strengthen, reinforce, and sure, refine the readers’ present conservative beliefs, and thus assist in the battle in opposition to the widespread foe, as a result of the destiny of the nation and, certainly, of Western Civilization itself, relies upon upon it. As the nice Chinese language normal and army strategist Solar Tzu famously stated over 2,500 years, “If you realize your enemy and know your self, you needn’t concern the results of 100 battles.”