James Burnham: The Partisan Review Years

James Burnham: The Partisan Review Years

By Francis P. Sempa. When James Burnham formally left the Socialist Workers Party in 1940 (intellectually, he had left it the year before), he did not immediately embrace the conservatism of his American Mercury, The Freeman, and National Review years. Burnham instead...
Spengler, Toynbee, Burnham, and the Decline of the West

Spengler, Toynbee, Burnham, and the Decline of the West

by Francis P. Sempa In the United States, public schools are seeking to discredit the founding principles of our nation. In our major cities, rioting, looting, and crime go unpunished and in some cases are applauded by civil authorities. Left-wing district attorneys...
James Burnham: Marxist, 1933–1940

James Burnham: Marxist, 1933–1940

By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987), who became a leading anti-communist and prominent intellectual figure in American conservatism, began his professional intellectual career as a Marxist. His early writings appeared in leading Marxist and socialist...
Niebuhr on the Crisis of Our Civilization

Niebuhr on the Crisis of Our Civilization

By Francis P. Sempa Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was both a theologian (teaching at Union Theological Seminary for over thirty years) and a public intellectual. The American diplomat and realist historian George F. Kennan called Niebuhr “the father of us all,” meaning...
James Burnham and the Asia-Pacific: 1941–1978

James Burnham and the Asia-Pacific: 1941–1978

By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987) was an American political philosopher and public intellectual who traveled the intellectual journey from Marxism (the Trotskyite version) to conservatism. When he broke with Marxism in the late 1930s, he began writing for...