I no longer have the Burnham book to which you referred. Someone borrowed it years ago and never returned it. As I recall, he observed that an ideology, such as liberalism, to which so many people adhere must have some teleological function in human history. When Western civilization finally succumbs to the barbarians, he suggested that liberals will provide what they hope to be the definitive comment on this calamity by proclaiming ‘we deserved it’. Thus, I might add, they will provide the intellectual embalming fluid for our civilization.