He rightly chides particular failures of the British empire in decline, like Anthony Eden's 1956 failure at Suez, but at the same time longs for a British and an American empire that would assert itself without regard to the consequences. But Johnson is just plain weird, combining a Libertarian-like view of the power of the individual and a rejection of economic collectivism, with a near-devout belief in the power of empire. If he had been a traditional social conservative, or an economic conservative of the Stockman-Laffer school, one could accept his biases and move on. I did not begrudge him his tendency to paint all collectivist thought with a broad brush, if only because the world needed an appropriately sober look at the crimes of Lenin as well as Stalin.īut by the time we get to the 1930s, Johnson's oddball rejection of all modernist trends became a bit much to take. In the first couple chapters, I was ready to give this book an instant 5 stars, due to the author's ability to integrate economic, cultural, and political trends in a coherent whole.
An agnostic wag once said, "Any fool can make fun of evangelicals, but if you really want to see a crazed doctrine, look for a conservative Catholic, preferably a conservative Jesuit." This certainly holds true for Paul Johnson, who mars what could have been a superbly written book of breathtaking scope, with points of view that aren't merely limited or blinkered, but downright crazed at times.
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