The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads Ryszard Legutko's 'Demon in Democracy' Part 1

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

67 MinutesPG-13Pete begins a reading of a book that greatly influenced him, "The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies" by Ryszard Legutko.The Demon in DemocracyPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file

and you can listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support.

Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone to my next reading. I just finished reading, but in finish, true believer by Eric Hoffer. I just became, oh, I mean, I did what a lot of us do. You read a book, and I told you I was reading it with you, I'd never read it before, and you decide, yep, this book is crap. And, yeah, I think that I read far enough to get the gist of his message. I think I showed you where the flaws are. And I want to move on to something else. And this next book is very important to me because when I finally was able to just say out loud, there's no way I can be a liberty.

anymore. I don't believe that, I just don't believe in it and not in the way that it is promoted. This book, The Demon in Democracy, by Rizard La Gutko. Just, this is the one that probably spoke to me the most, where I reached one point in the book and I just said out loud, yeah, but I can't be a libertarian anymore. It just this doesn't make sense to me. So, all right. I think I also, the reason I want to read this book is, first of all, it's great. The arguments are, I mean, steel manned. And it's one of those readings and commentaries that you can give to your friends, that you can give to Normies.

This is a book that actually I think you can, that Normies can pick up. And especially if they've been following, say they're a Trump supporter. or something like that. Someone who sees there just is something really wrong, this is something you could actually give to them. So I'll try and make it as normally friendly as possible. All right. A little bit about Lagutko.

He's a Polish philosopher, politician. He's a professor of philosophy at the... I probably should have pronounced the practice this one first. Yeah, Yagia Leon, Yagiyayayyan University in Krakow, specializing ancient philosophy and political theory. Member of the right-wing law and justice party domestically. He has also served as a member of European Parliament since 2009, being a prominent member of the minority European conservatives and reformist political groups.

Under communism, he was one of the editors of the Samistat Quarterly Akra. After the collapse of the communist regime, he co-founded the Center for Political Thought, which combines research, teaching, seminars, and conferences, and is also a publishing house. He has translated and written commentaries on Plato's Fido, Fido, Uthrefer, an apology.

He is author of several books, Plato's Critique of Democracy, Toleration, a Treaties on Liberty, an essay on the Polish soul, Socrates, 2005, he's elected to seat to Polish Senate, where he became deputy speaker in 2007. He was Poland's education minister, and from 2007 to 2009, Secretary of State, in the chancellery of President Lech Kaczynski, he is currently a member of European Parliament where he sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee ahead of the Polish Law and Justice Delegation to the European Parliament and co-chairman of the Conservatives and Reformists

parliamentary group. Sued in 2010 for violation of personal rights by calling students who demanded removal of Christian symbols from a public school, unruly brats spoiled by their parents, he asked for a dismissal of the case based on his immunity as a member of European Parliament. In 2011, the court denied the requests. Plaintiffs are represented by an attorney on a pro bono basis under the Presidential Cases Program of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. He lost this case.

He is a fellow of Collegium Invisibilis as a professor of philosophy. Won't go into his use too much. He thinks that same-sex marriage is an unnecessary destructive experiment. He's argued homophobia is a stick with which you beat people who dare to raise any kind of objection and a totally fictitious problem and claim that Christians are the group that have been discriminated, the most discriminated against. So, yeah, let's get into this. I'm just going to jump right in.

And his first chapter, I think it's only five chapters. And the first chapter is called history. So let's go. Let us begin with what seems obvious. That communism and liberal democracy share a similar perception of history. Great assumption right out the gate, right? Societies, as the supporters of the two regimes, are never tired of repeating. are not only changing and developing according to a linear pattern, but also improving,

and the most convincing evidence of the improvement, they add, is the rise of communism and liberal democracy. And even if a society does not become better at each stage and in each place, it should continue improving, given the inherent human desire to which both regimes claim to have found the most satisfactory response. so these both of these democracy liberal democracy and communism of course have presuppositions the communist view of history is well known the simplest version the one that circulated among the great unwashed in people's democracies was that communism is bound to prevail everywhere even in the capitalist united states among our distant african comrades and on any other continent

in its Marxian vision, this was expressed in a more complex way. Marx and his colleagues did not occupy themselves with communism as the goal of history, and did not deliberate over details of the communist political machines to be. Such a prospect was too fanciful and vague. What they focused on was an analysis of capitalism and the transition from the present to the future system. If you listen to Thomas and my, or watch Thomas and my episode with, on Hobbsmom, you will probably understand that a little clearer. The description of the historical process leading to communism has three main versions. According to the first, socialism slash communism, was the final stage of social development,

illuminated by the discovery of Marx's laws of history. As Engels famously said at Marx's funeral, just as Darwin discovered the laws of nature, so Marx discovered the law governing societies. According to these inexorable and universally binding laws, capitalism would be superseded by socialism due to the inherent logic of history. Just as in nature, some species had replaced others as a result of innate process of natural selection. Later on, the liberals sharply attacked this view. Carl Popper, to give the best-known example, argued in his books on historicism and totalitarianism,

that history cannot be an object of a scientific inquiry, and therefore it is impossible to discover the laws of historical development. In fact, he said more than that. He claimed that those who, like communists, formulate such laws not only commit a methodological mistake, but also open up the field for political violence, which, for they feel free to use in the name of the future. In communist countries, historical thinking translated itself into a very simplistic but politically momentous formula. Communism would prevail everywhere it was said, but there were countries that were more or less advanced on the road

to it. The most advance was, of course, the Soviet Union. The Orthodox disciples of the laws of history thus surmised that all other countries would have to advance through the same stages that the Soviet Union did, even though the Soviet Union from the start was not an industrial powerhouse, which is kind of a need there. The most advanced, okay, later on, this doctrinaire assumption was modified to allow for some national specificities, which were called the Polish or the Romanian or the Hungarian roads to communism. The idea of national specific, specific, the sufficity of communism came to be more or less adopted in practice, but never in the

official ideology, because it could have legitimized the unthinkable and unpartnerable act of leaving the socialist camp. This expression is not the author's irony, but the term then officially used. The second version of transition from capitalism to communism was through a conscious human action. The society could be pushed forward to the next stage of development by the group that was most aware of its historical role. Who this group was supposed to be was a hotly discussed issue. The most common response was, of course, the proletariat. Another possibility was the Communist Party,

which was believed to be the vanguard of the proletariat. Some pointed out the peasants, as in China, where there was no industry and therefore no working class others, as in the 1968 revolution that shook the Western world, students and intellectuals. The constitutions of the people's democracies ascribe the role to the working people of town and country, which in practice meant, of course, the Communist Party.

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standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoise, sky.a slash speeds. The third idea for transition to communism, the most complex and the most difficult to translate into political categories, originated from specific anthropological assumptions, according to which the historical development of humanity was toward full self-conclusive. consciousness, which meant the full realization of human nature. Lysak Kalkowski, in his history of Marxism, made this insight, which he derived from earlier philosophical sources, the key to understanding the whole Marxist tradition. Thus, the quest for communism was not dictated solely

by implementing a specific political plan or simply by a desire to win the struggle for social justice. All of these strategies sprang from a deeper source, which was to bring the potential to its full flourishing. This humanistic anthropological theory, somewhat convoluted and expressed in an unintelligible language of German metaphysics, was to play a significant role in the history of Marxism. It was dug up from time to time, especially in the 20th century, when communism transformed itself into a regime of crime and terror in order to rehabilitate the movement's human face and to contrast it in its refined anthropology with Bolshevik socialism.

The humanistic thrust was associated with the young Marx's remaining under the influence of Hegel, and contrasted with the old Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and indirectly with the Soviet Union and Communist parties over which, as it was argued, the spirits of the old Marx, Engels, and Lenin presided. These three scenarios were not separated by Karl Marx, but constituted the three aspects of the same historical process. three, there existed laws of history, the laws that were objectively determining the direction of historical change. These were executed through human activities by groups and organizations such as communist parties that were increasingly aware of their historical roles. All of this contributed to the growing self-consciousness of humanity on its road to the fullness of existence.

Needless to say, in the communistic practice, the unity of the three aspects did not matter because the interpretation of historicism depended not on the choice of philosophy, but on the current party line. So you can see that it's confused. They're guessing, which one of these is going to work best for where we are. The concept of communism as the culmination of history was not a mere succession of political regimes. History covered the entirety of human experience, including human nature, the human mind, social relations, law, institutions, and even science and art. The group that took responsibility for change was clearly at the beginning a partisan group almost marginal in the context of the then-existing political system. But in the process of approaching the final stage of

history was growing in importance and finally became the only political actor capable of pulling together and transforming, whether gradually or radically, peacefully or by force. Everyone in everything, thus elevating the human species to new, previously unknown levels. A segment, party, or faction from some point in history was granted the status of the midwife and architect of the whole in the short stretch of one society, Russian, Polish, German, and in the long haul of the whole of humanity. Start with one country, and then it just the dominoes starts to fall in other countries when they see what's happening in that country. Or as was the case in what became in the Soviet Union was they would go looking for satellites that were ready, that were ready for

their influence, that they could influence with their manufacturing and their weapons, things like that. From the perspective of historicism, any opposition to this process was extremely harmful to humanity and inconceivably stupid. So when Thomas 777 says that, that all of the 20th century was a dialogue with Marxism that comes from this attitude, that from this perspective of historicism, any opposition to this process was extremely harmful to humanity and inconceivably stupid. While these Marxist movements were going on, even our, in the United States, our intellectuals, our academics, were arguing that this is what this is where we were headed. This is what we needed. And in many places it wasn't a

conversation, if you understand what I'm saying. What the enemy of progress defended was by definition hopelessly parochial, limited to one class, decadent, anachronistic, historically outdated, and degenerate. Sooner or later, it had to give way to something that was universal, necessary, and inclusive of the whole of humanity. It was obvious to any open mind that history had to grant victory to communists and that all they had to do was wait patiently for the signs of impending victory. Communist artists and intellectuals produced countless treatises, novels, films, and plays showing how the New Times condemn the enemies of communism to the dustbin of history

and how the armies of socialism march to their final victory. For an average citizen of a communist country, it was enough to take a look at a newspaper or turn on the radio to be convinced of this implacable truth. When you believe, when you have this ideology that is going to basically create a utopia for mankind, how do you not? It's just a given that everybody, that this is going to happen everywhere. And if you're in a country like the Soviet Union, of course your newspapers, that's all they're going to be promoting that as truth. And they will be talking about other countries like the United States as completely decadent and how they treat their minorities and things like that. And yet, despite the ardent belief in historical inevitability, the longtime prospect of the advent of socialism for the entire race at some point drifted far away. so far that it ceased to be taken into serious it ceased to be seriously taken into consideration.

History might indeed eventually admit that communism was right, but the signs of its conquest were increasingly weaker. The world revolution was not coming, and in fact was not even close. The failure of spreading the flame of the Bolshevik revolution to Western Europe closed a certain chapter in the communist narrative. The idea of bestowing the blessings of communism on all people on Earth was thus abandoned. Instead, the party doubled its efforts in the countries that were lucky enough to find themselves in a communist orbit. The success of the new order depended on the rate and extent of penetration of communism in all areas of life. In more concrete terms, it meant, amongst others, that the entire society had to be transformed into a communist society with all communities

and institutions controlled by the Communist Party, the sole maker and arbiter of socialist standards. We in Poland had a socialist society, socialist schools and universities, a socialist family, socialist morality, and for some time, even socialist art and socialist realism. In the socialist motherland, we had the socialist economy in which people worked in a system that took the form of a socialist competition. What did such language mean in practice? First of all, it was a signal that everything and everyone was involved in building socialism, and that it was not possible to evade this task. The person who dodged the duty could reasonably be suspected of stupidity or bad intentions, and usually of both.

Even relatively independent organizations, and these were few, had to submit regular declarations to prove that they participated in work according to the best of their abilities and that they certainly appreciated the value of the project. Sometimes this meant, especially in the beginning, a radical restructuring that would change everything and not leave anything as it was before. Such was the experience of the universities, schools, and all organizations that, when restructured in accordance with the nature of the communist system, lost their heritage, and acquired a new function and a new identity. By now, anyone should know that

part of communism, if everything is going to become about communism, anything that is not about communism, like your religious belief, your family loyalty, your loyalty to anything, has to be abandoned, has to be destroyed, and you must adopt the new identity. For a long time, building socialism was presented as a race against capitalism in bourgeois society. The more socialist we made ourselves, the less we were capitalist bourgeois, and thus our ranking in the race improved. Later on, the race rhetoric subsided because of the leadership's weakened self-confidence and the decreasing chances of success. What remained, however, was a habit, even though only verbal, to oppose all that was capitalist in bourgeois because, and this message was transmitted with

paralyzing monotony, communism in one form or another was always our destiny. For all of us living in the camp of socialist countries, history was already determined. The reconstruction of old bourgeois structures could not be expected because the eggs from the omelet had the eggs from which the omelet was made had disappeared long ago. Rather, one had to look for a place in the new communist structures and adapt them to the elementary requirements of reason. Even if capitalist bourgeois elements were to appear from time to time as necessary concessions in order to save the country from a dramatic disaster, they still had to have a socialist

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TV and broadband sold separately terms apply for more infoes east guy out of e slash beads part two liberal democracy does not have and never had an official concept of history that can be attributed to a particular author it does not have its marks lenin or lukex lincoln lewkis nevertheless from the very beginning the liberals and the democrats made use of a typical historical pattern by which they were easily recognized and which often appeared not only in the variety of general opinions they formulated, but also, on a less abstract level, in popular beliefs and stereotypes, professed to be a representation of liberal thinking in mass circulation. According to this view, the history of the world, in the case of liberalism, was the history of the struggle for freedom against enemies

who were different at various stages of history, but who perpetually fought against the idea of freedom itself, and in the case of democracy, the history of a people's continuing struggle for power against forces that kept them submissive for centuries. Both of these political currents, liberal and democratic, had therefore one enemy, a widely understood tyranny, which, in the long history of humanity, assumed a variety of additional distinctive costumes. Every now and then it was a monarchy, often the church, and at other times an oligarchy. The main enemy of freedom was portrayed in various ways in different countries and different traditions. As John Stuart Mill wrote in the passage opening his essay on liberty,

the struggle between liberty and authority is the most conspicuous feature of history since the earliest times known to us. In England at some point, there emerged a Whig concept of history that was to portray the country's basic dramatic political history. According to this view, the history of British civilization, was a progressing expansion of freedom and its legal safeguards and the disappearance into the past of bad practices of autocracy or arbitrary authority beyond the control of the people in Parliament. More specifically, the history of England could be presented, as has been done many times,

as a narrative of the emergence of parliament and creation of a constitutional monarchy with a particular legal system sanctioning it. But the Whig view of history of Great Britain deserves a broader look, There were also authors who treated it as a basic libertarian model of development. If one was going to introduce the idea of freedom to Western civilization, then, as they claim, the most clearly expressed representation of the idea of freedom at its most mature, the one most rooted in law, institutions, and customs, and in freedom mechanisms themselves, was revealed in the history of England.

Such were the feelings of numerous Anglophiles from the Enlightenment thinkers to Friedrich Hayek. naturally a question arises of what was supposed to happen and what would happen at the end of history when freedom would claim victory over tyranny. There were millions of people. There, for millions of people, communism offered a rousing but actual quite vague vision. Under communism, people were promised to have a lot of time off from work, to be free from alienation, to find employment that was rewarding and fulfilling, and to have the means of production socialized, which would result in each person receiving according to his needs.

What all that was supposed to mean in more specific terms, nobody knew. When Soviet communism emerged, some said that, in fact, it was precisely the system that the socialist profits had in mind. Others categorically opposed this opinion, claiming that communism was a terrible perversion of genuine socialism, while still others argued that the Soviet regime was merely a transitional phase. Somewhat unpleasant, yet necessary, leading to the future realization of Soviet ideals, of socialist ideals. Given the vague notions of what true socialism was supposed to be, each of these assessments was right to some extent. So we can see what's happening here is if you have no general vision

of what socialism is supposed to be, and you have, you can't even figure out, you can't even look at your ideal, which is the Soviet Union, and figure out, Are they in the transitional phase? Or they, where are they? Then it's hard to even know what it is or to how to run it or to know what path you're on. Or if you have an end goal, if you have an end goal, you have to know where you are. The liberal vision, although less thrilling to hearts and minds, was a bit more concrete. The impetus of liberalism was understood to lie in its cooperative feature,

which was to bring the human race to a higher stage of development, then called the Age of Commerce, The era of conflicts, wars, and violence, it was claimed, was coming to an end in the period of cooperation, prosperity, and progress was near. In short, the liberal era was the era of peace. This, in any case, was the way of thinking one could find in Adam Smith, Friedrich Bastiat, and other classical liberals. It does not sound particularly grand or original today, but we should remember that war was a ubiquitous experience then, and thus the prospect of peace appeared tempting, if almost unrealistic, and the theories that justified it had to appear exciting in their boldness. In a famous essay, Emmanuel Kant wrote about the advent of the era of

perpetual peace among the republics. What is interesting, however, is that, according to Kant, the Blessed Era could and actually should be preceded by a phase of enlightened absolutism. Authors such as Spinoza, who wrote favorably about democracy, made the praise conditional on people's first meeting high intellectual and moral requirements. That's something that we, high intellectual and moral requirements. It's pretty much been read out of our culture, right? We don't promote the most intellectual. We promote the ones that are the most deserving morality is subjective.

What does morality even have to do? Why would we care if the President of the United States was moral or not, as long as he can do the job? That started with Clinton, very openly. They believed, and it was fairly widespread view at the time, that tyranny, despotism, and other anachronistic regimes, hindered the development of human capacity, stopping it at the early stages of dependency and helplessness. Following the removal of such regimes, work was to begin, partly resulting from spontaneous internal desire for self-improvement of the mind and partly imposed by the enlightened rulers that in the end would generate and improve society composed of better and more rational individuals.

A comparison between the liberal democratic concept of the history and that of communism shows a commonality of argument as well as of images of the historical process. Three common threads occurring in Marx's work have their counterparts in the liberal and democratic tradition. There is a belief in the unilateralism of history, leading inevitably and triumphantly to the era of perpetual peace, or in other terms, to the refinement of commerce and cooperation that humanity will reach due to the victory of freedom over tyranny. Another is the equivalent of deliberate human action, albeit not run by the party, but by active entrepreneurs and all the, types of freedom fighters, as well as to distinguish minority groups, elites, and enlightened rulers who will prepare humanity, until now apathetic enslaved and ignorant, for the new reality.

The third topic, mankind's achieving maturity and intellectual independence, is usually described in simpler language than the German romantic used by the young Karl Marx and amounts to a promise of a modern society liberated from ignorance and superstition. Part 3. Over the past 150 or 200 years, the concepts of communism, liberalism, and democracy evolved under the pressures of reality. It seems beyond doubt, however, that the first two views, that history has a unilateral pattern and that a better world is shaped by conscious human activity are still very much present in the modern political mind. That first sentence is really important. Over the past 150 or 200 years, the concepts of communism, liberalism, and democracy

evolved under the pressures of reality. Ideologically, you have all these kind of theories, libertarianism, classical liberalism, even national socialism and communism, and all of these things start out in a lab. They start out free from the air, free from contamination. But once they start to are implemented and start to evolve under the pressures of reality,

they're not going to look like what was dreamed up from the beginning. That's something that you have to get in your head. And as soon as I got it in my head, mostly from reading like James Burnham, then you just realize, well, what do you, what's most important? what's the most important ideology. And usually it's the ideology that's closest to you and it's closest to your community. And it's who you are and where you came from. It's the language you share.

It's the culture you share. It's the history you share. That's what's most important. And will they evolve under the pressures of reality? Yeah. Yeah. But they're eternal and they're real. their real life.

They're not something that was drawn up in a lab. They actually evolved under the pressures of reality, not from some grand vision of who we are, but from the reality of who we are. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input

and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.

Find out more at airgrid. orgate.orgheim. Employers, rewarding your staff? Why choose between a shop voucher or a spend anywhere card when with options card, you can have both. With Options Card, your team gets the best of both worlds. They can spend with Ireland's favourite retailers or choose a spend anywhere card. It's simple to buy and easy to manage. There are no

hidden fees, it's easy to use and totally flexible. They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. Visit OptionsCard.I.E. Today. This Black Friday, gain stream and go full speed with one gig Sky Broadband and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky broadband, essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter. TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more info.cisees sky.a. Of course, few people talk of the laws of history today, mainly because this quasi-scientific language lost its appearance. heal in an age when the concept of science changed. Nevertheless, both the communists and liberal

Democrats have always upheld and continue to upheld the view that history is on their side. Whoever thought that the collapse of the Soviet system should have done away with the belief of the inevitability of socialism was disappointed. This belief is as strong as ever in the past practices of socialism, whether Soviet or Western, are well appreciated, not because they were beneficial in themselves, but because they are still believed to have represented the correct direction of social change. One can observe a similar mindset among the liberal Democrats who are also deeply convinced that they represent both the inherent dynamics of social development and a natural tendency in human aspirations. But the communist and liberal Democrats,

while praising what is inevitable and objectively necessary in history, praise at the same time the free activities of parties, associations, community groups, and organizations in which, as they believe, what is inevitable and objectively necessary reveals itself. Both speak fondly of the people and large social movements, while at the same time, like the Enlightenment philosophers, have no qualms in ruthlessly breaking social spontaneity in order to accelerate social reconstruction.

What is social spontaneity? Something that evolves naturally among groups. And what have we seen in this country? What have we seen under our Republican, representative Republican form of government? There comes times when people called social engineers seek to destroy that social identity, that social cohesion that has formed organically and sought to destroy it so that they can reform it in the way they think best.

Admittedly, for the liberal Democrats, combination of the two threads is intellectually more awkward than for socialists. The very idea of liberal democracy should presuppose the freedom of action, means every man and every group or party should be given a free choice of what they want to pursue. And yet the letter, the spirit, and the practice of the liberal democratic doctrine is far more restrictive. So long as society pursues the path of modernization, it must follow the path whereby the programs of action and targets other than liberal democratic lose their legitimacy. The need for building a liberal democratic society thus implies the withdrawal of the guarantee of freedom for those whose actions and interests are said to be hostile to what the liberal

Democrats conceive as the cause of freedom. How much do the people who promote this the hardest hate Christianity, hate the family, hate gender norms, whatever their vision. Whatever their vision, is, whatever the, and when he says liberal Democrats, he's not talking about the Democrat party in our country. He's not talking about progressivism. He's talking about classical liberalism. He's talking about liberalism in all its forms. In order to, if you say, oh, well, I mean, everybody should be allowed to do what they want. And, you know, as long as, you're not hurting anybody else and everything. Well, that's, that doesn't exist. Everything is going to affect, if you have a town of people and 20% of them decide, if you have a town of a thousand people

and everything is peaceful and, you know, things start going bad economically and, you know, 20% of the women aren't prostituting, there are people who will tell you that that's not going affect the society at all. Or they'll tell you, yeah, it'll affect the society, but so what, as long as nobody is getting hurt? As long as nobody's property or person is being disturbed. Thus, the adoption of the historical preference of liberal democracy makes the resulting conclusion analogous to that which the communists drew from the belief in the historical privilege of their system. everything that exists in society must become liberal democratic over time and be imbued with the spirit of the system. As once when all major designations had to be preceded by the adjective socialist or communist,

so now everything should be liberal, democratic, or liberal democratic, and this labeling almost automatically gives a recipient a status of credibility and respectability. Conversely, a refusal to use such a designation or even worse, an ostentatious rejection of it, condemn one to moral degradation, merciless criticism, and ultimately historical annihilation. That goes for representative reform of public, republic two. Okay, what did our representative reform of public become? It was voting, right? and you go along and what happens? Well, times are changing. We have to let more people vote.

I had this conversation with someone the other day, and they, you know, they said that they were fighting, you know, that Trump was fighting for conservative values. And I said, great, so he's the leftist. And he, the person asked, how are, how are conservative, you know, and then I asked him, I said, what are you fighting for? And he said, I'm fighting for the value. the values of the founders of the country. And I said, okay, so you want white European rule, and you want only white landowners male to vote. And, you know, there wasn't any pushback

because this person is a thinking person. They're struggling. They're questioning their priors. And realized immediately that, yeah, pretty much conservatism is in this country is just basically, civil rights era liberalism. But they still want to go to church, be able to go to church. That's it.

That's it. It's all leftism. They don't get it. They don't get that. And where does that lead? Where are we? Why did Donald Trump get elected? Countries emerging from communism provided striking evidence in this regard.

Belief in the normalcy of liberal democracy or, In other words, the view that this system delineates the only accepted course and method of organizing collective life is particularly strong. A corollary being that in the line of development, the United States and Western Europe are at the forefront while we, the East Europeans, are in the back. The optimal process should progress in a manner in which the countries in the back catch up with those at the front, repeating their experiences, implementing their solutions, and struggling with the same challenges. Not surprisingly, there immediately emerged a group of self-proclaimed eloquent acuches of the new system who from... Let me look that up real quick.

My apologies. I should have done this prior, but I did not. It is a male midwife. That's pretty remarkable. So let me start that again. Not surprisingly, there immediately emerged a group of self-proclaimed, eloquent male midwives of the new system, who from the position of the enlightened few took upon themselves a duty to indicate the direction of change and to infuse a new liberal democratic awareness into anachronistic minds.

They were, one would be tempted to say, the Kantian Prussian kings of liberal democracy, fortunately devoid of a comparable power, but undoubtedly perceiving themselves to have a similar role as pioneers of the enlightened future. In their view, today also consciously or unconsciously professed by millions, the political system should permeate every section of public and private life, analogously to the view of the erstwhile male midwives of the communist system. Not only should the state and the economy be liberal, democratic, or liberal democratic, but the entire society as well, including ethics and moors, family, churches, schools, universities, community organizations, culture, and even human sentiments, and aspirations. The people, structures, thoughts that

exist outside the liberal democratic pattern are deemed outdated, backward-looking, useless, but at the same time extremely dangerous as preserving the remnants of the of old authoritarianisms. Some may still be tolerated for some time, but as anyone with a minimum of intelligence is believed to know, sooner or later, they will end up in the dust bin of history.

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Because progress needs, because we're progressing. We're progressing. We're getting better. And all we need is the right economics to do it. all we need is the right form of leadership to do it, or all we need is no leadership at all to do it, as long as it's liberal and democratic. Because believe me, even in my former anarcho-capitalist self, everyone's going to have to agree. anyone who speaks out is going to be looked down upon, is going to be marginalized,

is going to suffer some kind of, as has been described, some kind of shame, some kind of ostracism from the group, because you don't believe like we do. And we're going to keep this like this, whether you like it or not. Their continued existence will most likely threaten the liberal democratic process, and therefore they should be treated with the harshness they deserve. Once one sends one's opponents to the dustpin in history, any debate with them becomes superfluous.

Why waste time, they think, arguing with someone whom the march of history condemned to nothingness, an oblivion? Why should anyone seriously enter into a debate with the opponent who represents what is historically indefensible and what will sooner or later perish? people who are not... There are people... You know, there's still people out there who want to live around people who look and sound like them? I thought we put those people in the dustbin of history.

Ugh. People who are not liberal Democrats are to be condemned, laughed at, and repelled, not debated. Debating with them is like debating with alchemists or geocentrists. Again, an analogy with communism immediately comes to mind. The opponents of communism, example, those who believed free market to be superior to planned economy, were at best enemies to be crushed or laughing stocks to be humiliated. How else could any reasonable soul react to such anachronistic, dangerous ravings of a deluded mind? Nowadays, if you're like, well, I don't want either a free market or a planned economy,

both sides look at you like you're insane. After all, in a liberal democracy, everyone knows, and only a fool or a fanatic can deny, that sooner or later a family will have to liberalize or democratize, which means that the paternal authority has to crumble, the children will quickly liberate themselves from the parental tutelage, and family relationships will increasingly become negotiatory and less authoritarian. These are the inevitable consequences of the civilizational and political development, giving people more and more opportunities for independence. Moreover, these processes are essentially beneficial because they enhance equality and freedom.

in the world. Thus, there is no legitimate reason to defend the traditional family. The very name evokes the smell of mothballs, and whoever does it is self-condemned to a losing position and, in addition, perpetrates harm by delaying the process of change. The traditional family was, after all, part of the old despotism, with its demise the despotic system loses its base. You get that? The traditional system, the traditional family was, after all, part of the despotism. With its demise, the despotic base, the despotic system loses its base. The liberalization and democratization of the family are therefore to be supported wholeheartedly and energetically, mainly by appropriate legislation that will give children more power, for example, allowing increasingly younger girls to have abortions

without parental consent, or providing children with legal instruments to combat their claim against their parents or depriving parents of their rights and transferring those rights to the government and the courts. I mean, this is, he wrote this before the whole transgender thing blew up, but I'm sure that would have been in there. Sometimes, to be sure, these things can lead to excessive measures perpetrated by the state, law, and public opinion, but the general tendency is good, and there is no turning back from it. Similarly, in a liberal democracy, everyone knows, and only a fool or a fanatic can deny that

schools have to become more and more liberal and democratic for the same reasons. Again, this inevitable process requires that the state, the law, and public opinion harshly counteract against all stragglers. Those who are trying to put a stick in the spokes of progress, dreamers who imagine that in the 21st century we can return to the school as it existed in the 19th, pests who want to build an old-time museum in the forward rushing world. And so on and so forth. Similar reasoning can be applied to churches, communities, and associations. As a result, liberal democracy has become an all-permeating system. There is no, or in any case, cannot be, any segment of reality that would be arguably

and acceptably non-liberal democratic. Whatever happens in school must follow the same pattern as in politics. In politics, the same pattern as in art, and in art the same pattern as in the economy. The same problems, the same mechanisms, the same type of thinking, the same language, the same habits. Just as in real socialism, so in real democracy. It is difficult to find some non-doctoral slice of the world, a non-doctrinal image, narrative, tone, or thought. And for those who do not believe that this would have anything to do, anything would be apply in a society such as, you do you, like a libertarian society, let a bunch of trad families start getting.

getting together and building their own community and then deciding and having people, watch a pushback. There's a lot of pushback from people who, if they start building a community, will start thinking that they're looking to build political power, or they're willing to, or they're trying to create their own state. And see what happens. See if you don't feel like you're threatened. You will.

because eventually they will because people will start coming for them people will start threatening them people will start saying that they're not following the same path as us and that they may start influencing other people and they'll start going after them when they start going after them

they're going to seek to protect themselves and the best way to protect yourself is to build a state is to create a government to protect yourself. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.

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And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price. subject location, new customers only, 12-month minimum terms, starting thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more info as he's got out of e-slash-beads. Which is why anarchism can't work.

In a way, liberal democracy presents a somewhat more insidious ideological mystification than communism. Under communism, it was clear that communism was to prevail in every cell of social life, and that the Communist Party was empowered with the instruments of brutal coercion and propaganda to get the job done. Under liberal democracy, such official guardians of constitutional doctrine do not exist, which, paradoxically, makes the overarching nature of the system less tangible, but at the same time, more profound and difficult to reverse.

It is the people themselves who have eventually come to accept, often on a pre-intellectual level, that eliminating the institutions and compatible with liberal democratic principles constitutes a wise and necessary step. 40 years ago, at the time when the period of liberal democratic monopoly was fast approaching, Daniel Bell, one of the popular social writers, set forth a thesis that a modern society is characterized by the destruction of three realms, social, economic, and political. They develop, so he claimed, at different rates, have different dynamics and purposes, and are subject to different mechanisms and influences.

This image of structural diversity that Bell saw coming was a, attractive, or rather, would have been attractive if true. But the opposite happened. No disjunction occurred. Rather, everything came to be joined under the liberal democratic formula, the economy, politics, and society, and as it turns out, culture. Part four. The very idea that political regimes come into being through historical necessity must seem dubious, not to say ludicrous, to any sane mind. Unquestionably, an infinite number of additional perils. parameters, including yet unknown and unexpected ones, may change the direction of history. Even if one is deeply attached to liberal democracy, one should always keep in mind that there are

many worthy goals, inconsistent with the movement's mechanisms and traditions that a lot of people can or should pursue because they enrich our experience and have accompanied human strivings since time immemorial. Besides, once we grant, and the liberal Democrats usually do, that progress has been made possible by humans incessant pursuit of creativity, inventiveness, power of imagination, and freedom of thought, and that these qualities have often changed the course of history, why should we all of a sudden acquiesce to a complacent notion that the same qualities cannot lead us beyond the liberal democratic horizon? The so-called Higelian Sting, or to put it

simply, veneration of historical necessity, has been well described, mainly by Cislaat Mislos in the captive mind, which analyzes mechanisms of the communist servility of Polish intellectuals. The author himself, let it be noted, was likewise massively stung and for the rest of his life, struggled painfully with the vicissitudes of historicism, which he never entirely abandoned. The manner of thinking that made artists and intellectuals counts out to the communist creed, and subsequently to invest all their intellectual and artistic accounts, capital to legitimize its atrocities, which Milosh recreated accurately captures an important, if not the entire aspect of the treason of the intelligentsia in totalitarian systems.

It seems that the idolatry of liberal democracy, which nowadays we observe among the same groups that so easily succumbed to a totalitarian temptation, their angry rejection of even the slightest criticism, their inadvertent acceptance of the obvious maladies of the system, and their silencing of dissenters, their absolute support for the monopoly of one ideology and one political system, are part of the same disease to which apparently intellectuals and artists are particularly susceptible. It thus seems that the mental enslavement described by Milosh was not a single occurrence occasioned by a short-lived infatuation with communism, but an inherent handicap of the modern mind. One can imagine two opposing mindsets represented by two attitudes, that of an old man and that of a younger.

The old man, with his rich experience, is likely to be wary of further fundamental changes. Perceiving them to be an ever-recurrent symptom of immaturity, the youngster full of energy will enthusiastically get involved in changing the world for the better, according to the plan that he believes to be superior to all previous ones. The old man will prefer to remain meditative, prompting young people to learn from the older and wiser, calling for humility, prudence, and discretion. The youngster is active, happy to instruct others, full of pride in his responses, bold in action, dreaming of transgression, and admiring it in others. The old man will be inclined to think that everything has already been done. The young man believes that he himself, society, and perhaps even humanity, are currently facing a unique opportunity in history. The old man will be guided by the image of a golden age. Everything used to be better until a lasting and deepening decline that most likely stems from corruption of human nature.

The youngster looks into the future and believes that all the best things for the human race are yet to come, and that the history of humanity, despite occasional calamities, shows a steady progress. The old man is balanced in his reactions and assessments, looking for the appropriate courses of action in the world, which, according to him, was founded on human error, ignorance, poor, recognition of reality and premature ventures. The youngster has an excitable nature, moving from desperation to euphoria, eagerly identifying numerous enemies whose destruction he volubly advocates and equally happy to engage in collaborative activities with others because he believes the world is full of rational people. The old man says that given the weaknesses of the human race

institutions and communities, family, schools, and churches, should be protected because over the centuries, they have proven themselves to be tools to tame humans' evil inclinations. The young man will argue that such institutions and communities need to be radically exposed to light, air it out, and transformed because they are fossils of past injustices. The old man is a loner who believes that only such an attitude as his can protect the integrity of the mind. The youngster eagerly joins the herd and join the uproar mobilization and direct action. So here we have contrasting, and where we're

the one that meant the most to me. The old man says that given the weaknesses of the human race, institutions, and communities, families, schools, and churches should be protected because over the centuries they have proven themselves to be tools to tame human evil inclinations. Yes, families, schools, and churches keep people grounded, keep people together, keep people as part of a group. It is individualism as we learned from the last book, True Believer, individualism is what causes breakdowns and inevitably the reaction to go back to collectivism, to the families, the schools, and the churches, because it's not that they're getting it wrong. It's not that they haven't just come up with the right

formula yet, but the right formula was there all along, family, schools, and children. churches for centuries have been used to tame humans' evil inclinations. Can you argue against that? Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.e.4 slash Northwest. Employers, rewarding your staff?

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All for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12-month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infooshees sky.a slash beads. When in light of this dichotomy, we take a look at the modern mind, we might say at the risk of simplification, that it resembles that of a youngster much more than that of an old man.

This mind, equipped with a variety of assumptions and technical means, ventured a huge attempt to reform knowledge, society, and individual people. The most obvious of his assumptions is that the purpose of man's existence in the world is to change things. The youngster relevant to his age arms this assumption with arrogance, self-indulgence, and irresponsibility. See, the Hoffer would say that the youngster is just somebody who he can't, he doesn't see that he can make it as an individual, so he's going to go join a group. No. No, more or less, if he's going to join a group,

it's going to be one that seeks to tear down the, tear down the, from a left standpoint, in a society such as this, in a society such as ours, he's going to join a group that's going to seek to tear down the past. And the way you can see that that is what this society that we are in is, is any time one pops up that talks about restoring the past, they are called Nazis, reactionaries, backwards, every phrase that has phob in, has phob at the end of it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's groups are what protects us. Groups are what protects society. And liberal democracy, classical liberalism, seeks to break down those groups. Even though they might say, no, we're okay with those groups, as long as they're not hurting anyone else, the individuals will eventually come for them.

That's just history. And how are you going to stop people from doing it? The socialist and a liberal Democrat interpretation of history is typical of the youngsters. It delivers the promise of great transformation. It is bold, absolute, simplistic, easily stimulated by optimistic projects. It is only natural that so many intellectuals have been at the service of this promise, at least since the Renaissance era, worshipping revolutions and plans for new ones. To the younger, communism once represented itself is the greatest, most comprehensive,

and most sublime idea for such a transformation. Another idea at the time was fascism, which was close to socialism, in style at least, and appeared in several national versions, of which the Italian interpretation won the greatest acclaim as a manifestation of youth. The parliamentary systems were not so exalted. As part of various national traditions and institutions, they preserved their common sense and fared well at a time when half the world had gone mad for communism, fascism, and German national socialism and surrendered to bloody excesses with the approval of the masses and a large part of the elites. At some point, however, when they became the model of democracy and liberal democracy, everything changed. Suddenly, it turned out that liberal democracy was the global pioneer

of progress and that it, rather than as predecessors or competitors, was to bring humanity to a stage of development that had only been dreamed of for centuries. An intellectual and a liberal democracy faces a similar dilemma to the one that once troubled his fellow socialists, whether to join the vast torrent of history or to remain on the sidelines, to continue to be a vigorous youngster transforming the world, or to change into a grumpy old man who does not like much and whose wisdom has little social effect. For many, the choice turned out to be not so difficult after all. Moving with the flow, the socialist and liberal Democrat gives an intellectual more, gives an intellectual more power, or at least an illusion of it. He feels like a part of a powerful global machine of transformation. He not only understands the process of change better than others and knows how to organize the world, but also, by looking at the surrounding reality, can easily diagnose which phenomena, communities and institutions will disappear and, when resisting, will have to be eliminated for the sake of the future. Therefore, he reacts with indignant pity toward anyone who wants to stop the unstoppable.

He indulges in a favorite occupation of the youngster to criticize what is in the name of what will be, but what a large part of humanity, less perceptive and less intellectual, intelligent than himself, fails to see. The youngster committed to the liberal democracy is, however, somewhat different from his communist comrade. Communism was entirely a figment of the imagination of theorists who put it in practice as a big and brutal experiment against the will of the majority, while liberal democracy is no invention, but a system that boasts an impressive track record and has grown out of the culminate, that word is killing me. Cumulative experience of generations.

It gets to a point where I'm reading so much and words just disappear on me. At a time when death camps, gulogs, five-year plans, and political police regimes were created, many Western countries preserve that which is difficult to overestimate and always worth defending, parliamentarism, and a multi-party system, and the rule of law. This youngster, however, fails to notice that at some point this system, or rather the arrangement of systems covering many variants, become haughty, dogmatic, and dedicated not so much to facilitating the resolution of political conflicts as to transforming society and human nature. It lost its prior restraint and caution, created powerful tools to influence every aspect of life, and set in motion

institutions and laws, frequently yielding to the temptation to conduct ideological warfare against disobedient citizens and groups. Falling into a trap of increasing self-glorification, the system began to define itself more and more against its supposed opposition. All sorts of non-liberal and non-democratic enemies whose elimination was considered a necessary condition to achieve the next level of ideological purity. The multi-party system was gradually losing its pluralistic character. Parliamentarism was becoming a vehicle of tyranny in the hands of ideological constituted majority, and the rule of law was changing into judicial arbitrariness.

Thus, the youngster's mind, in its previous embodiment, had flirted with communism, can now, without any resistance, transfer its affection to liberal democracy, finding in it a source of similar ecstasy, but reassurance that this system had never resorted and never would resort to the drastic measures known from the history of communism. Confident in the humanistic values of his new liberal democratic creed, he infuses the old political institutions with new energy and injects them with new ideological content while remaining notoriously unaware that under new circumstances these institutions are no longer what they once were, and that they now serve a new purpose.

I think I'll stop right there. So, yeah, I hope you're enjoying this so far. A lot of this, he writes in such probably because he's, I don't know, this was written in Polish originally, I believe, and then it was translated, and I think it's very, he writes in a way that's very easy. I think a lot of the first part where he's talking about communism, basically some people can get lost, but once you get past that,

you start to see exactly where he's going with it. And believe me, this gets, it gets more and more where your eyes are going to be open to, oh yeah, how could I not see this before? So, yeah, that's it. I'll be back for part two in a couple days. Thank you for tuning in. Take care.

Bye. Thank you.