Modern Times by Paul Johnson

The 20th century was a time of extremes for humanity; extreme ideologies, borne out of the writings of 19th century revolutionaries, led to extreme suffering, and forced the great Western democracies to resort to extreme measures to preserve themselves. Technological advances, paradoxically the most hopeful and the most horrible manifestation of mankind's innovative spirit, improved the lives of millions, but ended the lives of millions more; tragically showing that what we have gained in knowledge, we have lost in wisdom. Some have called these days the "Age of Anxiety," a time in which the civilized world gropes in darkness, searching for some sort of meaning after the old world's philosophies of ever-upward progress and eventual utopia were shattered by the collective trauma of the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the ensuing nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of all the horrors endured by humanity during the 20th century, however, none led to more death and sorrow than the modern scourge of totalitarianism. This is the inescapable conclusion of British historian Paul Johnson's sweeping masterpiece, Modern Times: From the Twenties to the Nineties. In Mr. Johnson's analysis, totalitarianism--an impersonal, bureaucratic monster with a charismatic cult-like figure as its head--was made possible (indeed, inevitable) by the replacement of absolute standards of right and wrong with moral relativism and Nietzche's "will to power." When all notions of a final Arbitor of man's actions are banished, and the State is the only entity through which man can find meaning and fulfillment, it opens the door for unspeakable evil, as we witnessed during the Holocaust and Stalin's purges. Joel Engel, writing in the Weekly Standard, put it well:

Let's imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle off this mortal coil, poof, you're history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders / murderers / rapists / embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police, and punishment. Skeptics and atheists can say what they like about religion, but it's hard to deny that the fear of an afterlife where one will be judged has likely kept hundreds of millions from committing acts of aggression, if not outright horror. Nothing clears the conscience quite like a belief in eternal nothingness.

As Mr. Johnson shows in example after example, there is another common theme of the 20th century that has extended into the 21st: No matter how heinous and brutal a foreign dictator might be, as long as he is virulently anti-American, he will enjoy either the implicit or explicit support of decadent American leftists. Of course, such an assertion usually leaves those leftists sputtering in protest, but the historical record is replete with examples: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and numerous others (Chavez of Venezuela, a leftist favorite who recently had his term as president "extended" until 2030, is a good contemporary example) all used pliant Western journalists and "intellectuals" to improve their image in the world. How telling it is that third-world despots often enjoy more support in American universities than they do among their own people.

The scope of Modern Times is remarkable. From the rise of Japanese militarism to the unraveling European empires in Africa to the socialist revolutionaries of Latin American, Mr. Johnson writes with great learning and insight, regardless of the culture or the time period. He has an uncanny ability for finding little-known but revealing quotes from famous historical figures, and he captures them in all their various peculiarity and greatness. Even the most familiar historical events seem fresh when read in Mr. Johnson's lively prose. There is not a wasted sentence in this meticulously detailed and thoroughly engrossing work.

Modern Times, after detailing the rapid collapse of Soviet Communism and the triumph of the Western democracies, ends on a optimistic note, as if the author hoped that through the end of the Cold War, the modern world might finally exorcise the demons of totalitarianism and social engineering that had led to so much suffering during the 20th century. But in the years since then, new fanatical revolutionaries have arisen, and once again, the world dithers while more aggressive men apply their will to power. Just as Hitler and Stalin before him, Osama bin Laden vows to remake the world in his own image, and is willing to use whatever means necessary to secure his evil vision. If the 20th century is any guide, such fanaticism must be fought relentlessly. But as the 20th century also shows, sometimes nations seek not to fight the growing threat, but to accomodate it. "The historian of the modern world," Mr. Johnson writes in the closing chapter, "is sometimes tempted to reach the depressing conclusion that progress is destructive of certitude." We would do well to remember that even amid the hand-wringing, guilt-ridden calls for "nuance" and "understanding," if not outright capitulation, there are some things in this world that demand moral certitude. The defense of civilization against the likes of bin Laden and his ilk is one of them.