Epilogue

This epilogue highlights the legacy and continued significance of James Burnham. Burnham's ideas played an important role in ending the Cold War, but the end of the Cold War did not end his relevance. In fact, current divides within the Republican Party between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives can partly be interpreted as conflicts between the two James Burnhams; each Burnham has influenced a competing sect with its own philosophy of power. In the late 1990s, so-called neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan—two students of Burnham's thought—began demanding the ousting of Saddam Hussein by using American force in a piece for the New York Times titled “The Bombing of Iraq Isn't Enough.” Another group of twenty-first-century conservatives have advanced related ideas presented by the more pessimistic Burnham in The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians. This Burnham has been called a “hallowed figure” among national conservatives (NatCons) who form Donald Trump's base. Indeed, Trump shares Burnham's domestic worldview that revolves around elites and the ways that they undermine democracy. Burnham's ideas about power and popular resistance were even displayed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when federal, state, and local governments exercised a virtually unprecedented amount of power against their citizens.