James E. Bristol

This pamphlet is about the phenomenon of liberal democracies leaping to adopt a program of repression and deceit in their own societies as part of a desperately fearful response to threats to their way of life. Thus they betray their own principles and values out of fear. Well, it actually is about this phenomenon in the US in the 1950s, but Bristol's perceptiveness presents the phenomenon in detail so clearly that it applies itself readily to the present and other eras and places.
Bristol's special contribution, I think, is to name the fear as a spiritual sickness, and to prescribe, to overcome the hysterical fear, a program based on what we believe in and know is right, rather than what we are opposed to. A pro-democracy and peace program is different from an anti-communist (or anti-terrorist) program. Thus he proposes practical foreign and domestic policies based on concern, justice, sharing, nonviolence, and love as a way out of the domestic struggle between "McCarthyism" and "anti-McCarthyism."
While the examples are dated, and the program one that should be familiar to Friends, the understanding of the perennial dynamics and spiritual aspects of the phenomenon are so clearly and deeply presented that this pamphlet can still interest us.… (mais)