Mini-Review: Modern Times

For years, this was the way the world worked: conservatives were pessimists, liberals were optimists. No more. Modern liberals fret about global warming, global poverty, and Barack Obama's popularity. Conservatives, though not exactly a sunshine crowd, nonetheless enthuse about the limitless potential of human creativity.

Reading Paul Johnson's "Modern Times," a history of the post-World War I world, takes you back to those grim old days of conservative pessimism. Some historians see the twentieth century as a sustained surge upward. Not Johnson. He finds the roots of modern history in Einstein's theory of relativity; corrupted by opportunistic intellectuals, relativity became relativism, the idea that there exists no eternal, immutable truth. From that doctrine sprang Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and a host of lesser ghouls.

To Johnson, the twentieth century is not a single story but rather a series of vignettes. A professional politician--Lenin was the first--takes power. He then embarks on an ever-more-ambitious program of social engineering, culminating either in civil war or genocide. Examples in the first category include Iran, Chile, and postcolonial Africa. The second category needs no explanation.

"Modern Times" is a throwback in another manner. Johnson believes in the importance of the individual; economic and social forces may shape history, but everything is ultimately the product of an individual's choice. Thus, there is a clear-cut cast of twentieth century heroes and villains. And Johnson has some very peculiar heroes. He admires the strong, silent leader; his favorite twentieth-century presidents are Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower, and his admiration for Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer verges into hero-worship.

As you might have guessed from the Coolidge reference, "Modern Times" deals in iconoclasm. Johnson does not spare third-world saints like Gandhi from his poison pen. Indeed, most third world leaders--referred to as the "Bandung generation"--are universally dismissed as lifelong politicians more skilled in rhetoric than reality.

Johnson's goal is width, not depth, which explains the general lack of cultural history. Artists and intellectuals only appear in order to serve as punching bags. "Modern Times" refuses to acknowledge the existence of Elvis, the Beatles, Hollywood, postmodernism, and sports of any kind. Religion is missing. So is art. And you will have to search long and hard to dig up any mention of computers.

This is a forgivable failing, though, and it is hard to find fault with such an elegantly written, fiercely argued book. "Modern Times" is conservative history--not the history of conservatism, but history as told from a conservative viewpoint. Give it to any friend reading Howard Zinn and watch the fireworks explode.