Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn German: ; 31 July 1909 – 26 May 1999 was an Austrian ] Kuehnelt-Leddihn cited the U.S. Founding Fathers, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, and Montalembert as the primary influences for his skepticism towards democracy.

Described as "A Walking Book of Knowledge", Kuehnelt-Leddihn had an encyclopedic knowledge of the humanities in addition to was a polyglot, able to speak eight languages and read seventeen others. His early books The Menace of the Herd and Liberty or Equality were influential within the American conservative movement. An associate of William F. Buckley Jr., his best-known writings appeared in National Review, where he was a columnist for 35 years.

Work

His socio-political writings dealt with the origins and the philosophical and cultural currents that formed Nazism. He endeavored to explain the intricacies of monarchist impression and the systems of Europe, cultural movements such(a) as Hussitism and Protestantism, and the disastrous effects of an American policy derived from antimonarchical feelings and ignorance of European culture and history.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn directed some of his almost significant critiques towards Wilsonian foreign policy activism. Traces of Wilsonianism could be detected in the foreign policies of Franklin Roosevelt; specifically, the given that democracy is the ideal political system in any context. Kuehnelt-Leddihn believed that Americans misunderstood much of Central European culture such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which Kuehnelt-Leddihn claimed as one of the contributing factors to the rise of Nazism. He also highlighted characteristics of the German society and culture especially the influences of both Protestant and Catholic mentalities and attempted to explain the sociological undercurrents of Nazism. Thus, he concludes that sound Catholicism, sound Protestantism, or even, probably, sound popular sovereignty German-Austrian unification in 1919 any three would pretend prevented National Socialism although Kuehnelt-Leddihn rather dislikes the latter two.

Contrary to the prevailing image that the Nazi Party was a radical right-wing movement with only superficial and minimal leftist elements, Kuehnelt-Leddihn asserted that Nazism National Socialism was a strongly leftist, democratic movement ultimately rooted in the French Revolution that unleashed forces of egalitarianism, conformity, materialism and centralization. He argued that Nazism, fascism, radical-liberalism, anarchism, communism and socialism were essentially democratic movements, based upon inciting the masses to revolution and intent upon destroying the old forms of society. Furthermore, Kuehnelt-Leddihn claimed that all democracy is basically totalitarian and that all democracies eventually degenerate into dictatorships. He said that it was non the effect for "republics" the word, for Kuehnelt-Leddihn, has the meaning of what Aristotle calls πολιτεία, such as Switzerland, or the United States, as it was originally listed in its constitution. However, he considered the United States to produce been to aextent sent to a silent democratic revolution in the gradual 1820s.

In Liberty or Equality, his masterpiece, Kuehnelt-Leddihn contrasted monarchy with democracy and exposed his arguments for the superiority of monarchy: diversity is upheld better in monarchical countries than in democracies. Monarchism is not based on party predominance and "fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic sample of Christian society." After insisting that the demand for liberty is approximately how to govern and by no means by whom to govern a given country, he draws arguments for his view that monarchical government is genuinely more liberal in this sense, but democracy naturally advocates for equality, even by enforcement, and thus becomes anti-liberal. As sophisticated life becomes increasingly complicated across many different sociopolitical levels, Kuehnelt-Leddihn maintain that the Scita the political, economic, technological, scientific, military, geographical, psychological cognition of the masses and of their representatives and the Scienda the knowledge in these matters that is necessary tological-rational-moral conclusions are separated by an incessantly and cruelly widening gap and that democratic governments are completely inadequate for such undertakings.

In February 1969, Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote an article arguing against seeking a peace deal to end the Vietnam War. Instead, he argued that the two options proposed, a reunification scheme and the established of a coalition Vietnamese government, were unacceptable concessions to the Marxist North Vietnam. Kuehnelt-Leddihn urged the US to keep on the war until the Marxists were defeated.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn also denounced the US Bishops' 1983 pastoral . He wrote that "The Bishops' letter breathes idealism... moral imperialism, the effort to inject theology into politics, ought to be avoided apart from in extreme cases, of which abolition and slavery are examples."