The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads Ryszard Legutko's 'Demon in Democracy' Part 3

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

42 MinutesPG-13Pete continues 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.

Ready for huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cupra plug-in hybrid range for mentor

leon and terramar now with flexible pcp finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro search cupra and discover our latest offers cupra design that moves finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from vows wagon financial services arland limited subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Great to see you back at Spex Savers. Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me?

Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes. Our Black Friday deals are eye-catching. But the letter charts over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025.

Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and add free, 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 podcast. 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 back to part three of my reading of Rizard Lagucco's Demon in Democracy. took a week off there for Thanksgiving. Thank you for allowing that. And let's jump back in and keep going. We're on chapter two.

It's called Utopia. I am really stuffed up. So if you hear me sniffling or I'm going to try to mute out all the sniffles and any kind of any other kind of gross sounds, but you may hear me inhaling a bunch. But it's just because something is in the air and it's causing me. And whenever it starts getting cold again and dry, just dries me out. And it makes no sense, but it makes me sneeze and it makes me go crazy. So anyway, let's get going here.

Chapter 2. Utopia. Communism and liberal democracy are believed to be the ultimate stages of the history of political transformations. The Marxists contended that communism was the last act of human drama and that, once it was achieved, there was no incentive. sense of a reason to strive for anything superior. So when you think about something that is that you can't think beyond, it's God, right? God, try to think of something greater than God. Communism is their God, basically. Similarly, according to its followers, nothing politically superior can arise in the wake of liberal

democracy, which, per a common, though rarely explicitly, articulated, exhausted the process of political transformations. If there is such a thing as an ability to hypothesize possible political arrangements, this cannot lead us, in the first case, beyond communism or in the second, beyond liberal democracy. They are the endpoints, which we'll never get to. Both communism and liberal democracy are therefore perceived, from an inside perspective, as having no alternatives. The only change that one can imagine happening was one for the worse, which in the eyes of supporters meant not a slight deterioration, but a disaster. Basically, if you turn away from communism or democracy, you're an apostate.

The communists would say, if communism is rejected or prevented, then society will continue to be subjected to class exploitation, capitalism, imperialism, and fascism. Yeah. The liberal Democrats would say, if liberal democracy is not accepted, then society will fall prey to authoritarianism, fascism, and theocracy. In both cases, the search for an alternative suggestion is, at best, nonsensical, and not worth a moment's reflection, and at worst, a highly reckless and irresponsible game. The belief that socialism has no alternative stemmed from a presupposition that this system eliminated the root causes of social and economic conflicts, which, if it will be recalled, allegedly set in motion the machine that in the course of his

history transferred one political order into another. By fully implementing the idea of class justice, communism put an end, once and for all, to that state of disequilibrium from which society suffered since the earliest stages of their existence. Attacking the socialist order was therefore not a normal political activity, but a monstrous sin and assault on the most precious achievement in the entire history of humanity. Basically what I said. It is. in fact, a religion. Liberal democracy is also viewed by its supporters as the final realization of the eternal desires of mankind, particularly those of freedom and the rule of the people. Remember, who was it who said, the end of history? I know at least a thousand of you are

screaming at me right now. The person's name. If, as did the liberals, we interpret history as a complex set of conflicts that slowly but irresistibly maximized the freedom of the individual, and, as a Democrats, as a comparably complex set of conflicts that slowly but irresistibly liberated the people from tyranny and empowered them with political instruments of self-government, then liberal democracy will indeed seem to be a happy ending of the eternal human dreams. because liberal democracy assumes the individual is supreme to all, above anything, and nothing can be added to it. And even if you want to collectivize voluntarily,

you become a threat to those who just want to be individuals. They may not say that now, but they're going to be afraid that you're going to start, you're going to start a tyrannical government, and you're going to start taxing them, and it's all immorality and all, yeah, straight on down the line. Because it is extremely difficult to imagine something that might follow this last stage of historical development

without constituting an improved vision of it, version of it. It is equally difficult to imagine that anyone who is morally balanced and of a sound mind could in faith act against liberal democracy and the ideals in importance. embodied. All you have to do is start going on social media, X, go into a thread of people who are rah, rah, rah, the regime, and start talking about an alternative to it. Start talking about the opposite of it. All these people are globalists. Start talking about becoming

nationalists or start talking about becoming um quote-un-un-quote fascist see what happens see that you are not looked upon as an insane person it is therefore more than natural

that both systems identified existing structures with human ideals communism was social justice and social justice was communism this marriage between the system and the ideal gave birth to a particular type of mentality inadvertently prone to political moralizing. Yeah. Political moralizing is the greatest moralizing. Once you, if you've ever done it, if you've ever fallen for it, once you stop politically

moralizing, the people who are still politically moralizing look upon you as a savage, like an animal, because you're not sharing their morality of politics. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro.

Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Cooper. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from folks, Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited.

Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast.

Come see for yourself. Needle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Great to see you back at Spec Savers. Okay, could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S.

Deals. Oh, right, yes. Our Black Friday deals are eye-catching, but the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of design or glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details.

Living in such a system, one could not simply describe facts or express one's political persuasion because everything had to be entangled in the phraseology referring to the good of humanity, the liberation of peoples, the wickedness of imperialism, the blessings of a classless society, and the happiness of life under socialism. From the very beginning, socialism, communism was sanctioned in moralistic terms, without which it was in a system inconceivable, every communist or socialist, even if cynical or cruel, was compelled to see some communist and socialist ideals reflected even in the simplest matters and could not express the simplest thought without referring to them. Another way that they are looking to replace God, because their morality has no foundation.

Oh, oh, it's immoral. It's wrong for somebody to own a company and employ people. Okay, why? Give me a reason. And I guess that comes back to something that C.J. Engel talked about, we talked about on my show, is natural rights versus historical cultural rights. Natural rights are universal. That means you have to apply them to everyone. Even the person pouring over your border who isn't supposed to be here.

They have the same natural rights that you do. Well, why are you keeping them from them? No, rights are cultural, historical. If rights are not cultural and historical, then you must apply them to everyone. You must open the borders. You must go to war for somebody who is, who is, being enslaved on the other side of the world. If you don't, that's illogical.

Cultural, historical. The rights we have in this country are cultural, historical to Anglo-Saxon law. So, liberal democracy boasts of bestowing freedom on individuals and emancipation on groups, while simultaneously taking it for granted that freedom and emancipation are possible only in a liberal democracy. or rather that freedom and emancipation are liberal democracy. Over time, the mind of a liberal Democrat began to resemble that of a socialist, exhibiting the same tendency to combine the languages of morality and politics, as no other discourse could possibly do justice to the nature of the system. There are no topics, no matter how

trivial, that the liberal Democrat could raise or discuss without mentioning freedom, discrimination, equality, human rights, emancipation, authoritarianism, and other related notions. No other language is used or even accepted. Both assertions about the unity of institutions and ideals, those of the communists and the liberal Democrats, are completely unfounded. Communism does not represent class justice, nor was liberal democracy the sole representative of freedom. In the case of communism, the truth may seem little, may seem little controversial today, given that the crimes committed under its slogans exceed human imagination.

The portrayal of liberal democracy as a realization of the eternal desire for freedom is very popular, almost verging on a platitude, especially in recent decades. This picture is false. First, liberalism was certainly not the only orientation expressed in the desire for freedom, nor was it particularly consistent in this devotion. The supporters of republicanism, conservatism, Romanticism, Christianity, and many other movements also demanded freedom and did a lot to advance its cause. If freedom, as we understand it, in Western civilization is not only an abstract value, but has a concrete shape well-grounded in institutions, social practices, and mental habits, then the contribution of liberalism is one of many, far from decisive. It is hard to imagine freedom without

classical philosophy and the heritage of antiquity, without Christianity and scholasticism, without different traditions in the philosophy of law and political and social practices, without ancient and modern republicanism, without strong anthropology and ethics of virtues and duties, without Anglo-Saxon and continental conservatism, or many other components of the entire Western civilization. All of that. What he's talking about is he's talking about cultural. Where we came from. Liberal Democrats circumvent this objection in such a way that they attribute the term

liberal to everything they think succeeded in making a breakthrough in the walls of oppression and authority. This allows them to accept that Socrates was a liberal compared to Plato. The Sophists were liberals compared to Socrates, Akham compared to St. Thomas, Erasmus compared to Luther, Luther compared to Calvin, and so on. In this somewhat bizarre view, liberalism, whether Democratic or not yet, Democratic existed in Western culture from the very beginning, but only in the modern day did it gain momentum and finally triumph in recent times. Such lavish squandering of the term liberal is obviously fraudulent and constitutes a completely unjustified attempt to elevate liberalism to a privileged position, allowing it to grant favors to some and taking them away from others. When we look at the activities of liberals in the course of the last hundred years,

it turns out that they were quite dogmatic on the issue of freedom on a theoretical level, but very opportunistic in practice. They did not shun seeking allies in enlightened absolutisms. In the 20th century, they engaged in a long-term flirtation with socialism, including its Soviet version, being probably motivated by a similar assumption. Even the most liberal of liberals displayed extraordinary softness against the Soviet Union and the Soviet communism, and sometimes even actively supported the idea of unilateral disarmament of the West, as did libertarians, all in the name of freedom.

Liberals also showed weakness against terrorism and the left-wing dictatorships in the third world, but many of them reacted with noticeable self-restraint when it came to anti-communist activities of groups in the Soviet block countries, their freedom-related account is therefore not overly clean. So this is what we know this. We know this. All we have to do is look and see. It is perfectly fine in an American university in this, quote-unquote, liberal democracy to teach the benefits of the Soviet Union to deny the Hullodom or all of these things. Now let them start talking about the Germans in World War II in a positive light, or asking questions.

Part two. The above similarities point to something more significant. Both systems, by being final, meet the criteria by which we define utopianism. Both are simply utopias. A note of clarification is required, however. A widely accepted, though not accurate definition that states that the word utopia denotes a political project that is idealistic in its intentions, but completely unrealistic,

impractical, and incompatible, incompatible with human experience. The creators of utopias are therefore usually looked down upon as naive sentimentalists or feared as dangerous inhuman social engineers. This definition is wrong. None of the great utopians created their blueprints for a good society with the assumption that these plans were completely devoid of practical value. None of them considered himself to be a dreamer, deliberately separating himself from and ignoring all lessons of human experience.

What have I been saying for four years? Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th, because the little news, Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.

Lidl, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP

finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by Way of Higher Purchase Agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited.

Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump-Dunbeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Saver sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations.

Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. What indeed would have been the point of such fantasies? Who would have devoted the time and energy to create political projects that were politically useless? The designers of Utopias knew very well, and often admitted that, given the circumstances,

the implementation of their products would be difficult, extremely difficult, or even unlikely. I would use the term impossible. Yet they never had the slightest doubt about their functional value and their intent. intention was put, yet they never had the slightest doubt about their functional value and their intention was put, was to put them to practice. Sorry, for some reason that sentence just messed me up. Utopia is thus not a political fantasy, but a bold project, bolder than others, because it aims at a solution to all the basic problems of collective life that humanity has faced since it began to organize itself politically. Utopia is, I beg the rebut.

pardon for such a vile sounding phrase, the final solution. Following its implementation, injustice, poverty, tyranny, and other political sins will disappear once and for all. Their disappearance will be structural and not depend on contingent factors. The first utopias were written about in the Renaissance, the period when belief in human greatness was a primary article of faith as well as major intellectual and artistic incentive. The message was simple. Man can achieve greatness and be equal to God because he has an unlimited creative potential.

Yes, he can fall lower than the beasts, but he can also reach higher than ever before, as there is no upper limit to knowledge or art. The greatness thesis led to another argument in the centuries that followed. While it was true that great artists created extraordinary works of painting, music, and literature, and also superb works in mathematics, philosophy, and physics, was equally true that in one area human genius had not yet appeared. Politics. Why not, then, create a great political work of art? Why not devise a political construction that would be comparable to other great human achievements? Utopia was precisely to be such a political

masterpiece. To put it differently, the human race gave the world Dante, Plato, and Eschelos, I apologize for not knowing how to pronounce that name. And later, still, Bach, Shakespeare, and other geniuses. And it was now high time that it had its genius of political creation. The fact that so far no political masterpiece had been created did not mean that creativity and politics was an exception to human greatness, but that the attempts were not sufficiently vigorous or that such a great political artist had not yet been born.

communism was to be such a masterpiece. It is true that Karl Marx viewed utopias with contempt attributing the term utopian to his socialist opponents, invariably with an attitude of annoyance. He used this word in a colloquial sense, however, which gave him grounds to accuse previous generations of socialists of a faulty reading of reality. They naively believed, in fact they did not, but this is what he said, that socialism would triumph simply by its own intrinsic. righteousness. And this belief he angrily rejected, the mere attractiveness of a political ideal did not make it practically feasible. The world, he said, was not malleable to human whims, and any change must derive from an accurate description of the objective laws according to which the world develops. After these rather simple-minded criticisms, he felt entitled to refer to his own theory as

scientific, which was later repeated with delight by his followers, from Engels and Lenin through Stalin and to the teachers of Marxism in the Soviet bloc countries. The scientific nature of socialism, however, has been dubious from the start because it was not clear what science was behind it and what it was supposed to justify. Such a science, of course, did not exist. The most that can be said was that socialism was backed by some sort of theory of society and history, which in no case was scientific. Its justification of socialism as political structure did not even meet the criteria of a decent argument. Thus, serious scholars of Marxist socialism,

such as Leszac Kovikovsky, had no doubt that it was utopia. It was the movement's utopia and not specific nature that made the Marxist version of communism so phenomenally popular. The utopianism of liberal democracy is not so obvious. Besides, liberalism and democracy are not related to utopian thinking in the same way. Initially, liberalism, especially in some economic versions, seemed anti-utopian because it precluded any perfect and ultimate form of economic order. Free market economy was even called the dismal science to emphasize the gloomy aspect of its consequences. But there were also highly optimistic versions, according to which to free market was a miraculous instrument to eliminate war. and bring about the global brotherhood of humanity and a future of commerce, a future era of commerce.

Commerce, it will be recalled, was seen as a trademark of the new civilization of peace, wealth and stability. Oh, what did the man say? If goods don't cross borders, armies will? If you trade with someone, they'll be your friend. How's that working out? This rediscovery of liberal utopianism in the 20th century, especially in free market theories, can be easily explained. It is enough to imagine a liberal order in its simplicity. Free market without

any state intervention and individual rights unregulated by the state except the general rules of cooperation, and to realize that these simple mechanisms have never really been tried. Real libertarianism has never been tried. Real communism has never been tried. Real classical liberalism has never been tried. What's his name? James. Lindsay once said classical liberalism hasn't even started yet. It hasn't even begun to fight. For some liberals, such simplicity will be tempting, precisely because the liberal solution has been applied in undiluted form. There were always compromises with other political and economic systems with traditionally inherited institutions or with people's conservatism. But once we do away

with the mitigating factors and try the free market solution uncompromisingly and radically, we will have a pure system, a splendidly simple and universally applicable mechanism to solve all major problems. In short, we will have a utopia. The utopia and tendency has yet an extra dimension. Economic liberals could not get over the popularity of socialism, which they considered a completely irrational idea, but which for reasons with which they were never satisfied, managed to touch the hearts and minds of millions of people throughout the world. This tremendous success of their main enemy made them critically reassessed to previous methods by which to free marketeers wanted to win popular support.

The failure of the free market in the contest of popularity, they thought, was precisely that. Contrary to socialism, it never existed in its simple and pure form, and this never happened because of the weakness and half-heartedness of its message. And so they concluded, if the free market is presented not in a timid, apologetic, and cowardly way, but in proud openness as an optimal answer to every important problem, if it officially, as it were, entered into an ideological race with socialism as a superior, all-encompassing formula, it must and would win. Once the economic liberals drew this conclusion, they deliberately and consciously started using the term utopia for what they were advocating. After all, what can be more attractive than a utopia that works? And work it must,

they said. Some liberals could not even conceal their bewilderment that such a fantastic project is theirs, giving everyone, literally everyone, the freedom to pursue their own desires, had not yet caught human imagination strongly enough. So they openly spoke of a liberal utopia to promote what they thought to be the only one worth the name. Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ein Renn, Robert Nozik, and many other historians did precisely this. It went far beyond the realm of the free market. As Nozik wrote in his famous work under the symptomatic title, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, what the liberals advocated was not just another utopia, but rather a utopia of utopias,

or in other words, a regime that would include all other regimes, a final order incorporating all other orders. With this, the millennial long dispute about which system was supreme would be finally resolved. The utopia of utopias would offer a place for everyone to have and strive for his own concept of a utopia, for socialists and conservatives, royalists and egalitarians, and everyone else. The utopia of all utopias would be, as knows it claimed, the only morally legitimate state, the only morally tolerable one, the state that best realizes the utopian aspirations of untold dreamers,

and visionaries. To call it a utopia of utopias was to give it a luster to thrill the heart or inspire people to struggle or sacrifice, to man barricades under its banner. Democracy did not have obvious links with utopian thinking. Since antiquity, democracy has been considered one of the defective systems, not better but certainly not worse than oligarchy or monarchy. Plato and Aristotle gave us an insightful crisis,

critical analysis of it, taking as evidence the functioning of the democratic experience in ancient Athens. Much of what they said had a lot of validity today, even though the ancient democracy differed considerably from what passes for a democratic regime today. Plato and Aristotle were not the only critics of the system. In fact, it is extremely difficult to find a classical philosopher who would be its defender. Democritus was one of the few. Some scholars also mentioned Protagoras, although his Democratic credentials are highly problematic. The ancient philosopher's primary question was not what makes the best regime. Democracy certainly did not qualify. Why not? The answer was simple. They thought democracy was a messy system,

systematically undermining the rule of law, profoundly partisan, often hostile to the most prominent leaders and citizens. The famous defense of Democratic Athens delivered by Pericles and Thucydides the Peloponnesian War is, in fact, more a defense of Athens and Athenian imperialism than of the democratic political model. When Plato and Aristotle wrote their scathing remarks about the Athenian system, they thought it was already in decline, and Athens might soon become a victim of the crisis from which it would not be able to recover.

And this is exactly what happened. In early modernity, this classical view of democracy did not change much. Political thinkers were interested in why and how the state comes about, how it should work, how to secure its stability, and who the sovereign is. In all these considerations, the problem of democracy was relegated to a secondary or even tertiary place. There was no challenge to the ancient theory that it was a defective system. When the founding fathers were creating the foundations of the American Republic, they treated democracy as well as other political models with great suspicion and therefore devised a complex political mechanism to alleviate its weaknesses. When Tocqueville observed the same society a few decades later, however, he had no doubts about its democratic character. By then, democracy was not only driven out, had not only driven out all political alternatives and become the sole ruler of the American mind, but revealed itself as such an imposing way that the democratic scenario seemed to be the French aristocrat, seemed to the French aristocrat to be the destiny of all Western societies. Such a perspective did not make him happy, and he finished his book on a clearly pessimistic note. Clearly pessimistic note. Democracy was more of a problem.

than a solution. What he saw at the end of the Democratic road was a new despotism, different from earlier despotic regimes, invisible but dangerously enslaving people's minds, accepted willingly by the demos as the most genuine representation of the people's desires. I'm not commenting here because I don't need to. This is, I mean, just listen. You know, you're, If you're, if you have some instilled boomerism in you or you know a boomer who's like, it's a republic, not a democracy. It's not. And what's a republic?

People are still voting, right? I mean, they limited the votes, but people are still voting, right? They're voting in their interest, right? Well, unconditional praise of democracy absurd in the last. of classical political theory was for a long time, first and foremost, an American speciality. However, the global triumph of democracy, the liberal democracy, actually, had to wait a little longer. E.M. Foster is famous for saying that it deserved two cheers, not three, which is exactly as many as Irving Crystal granted to capitalism several decades later. In his famous aphorism,

Churchill indirectly acknowledged the old truth that democracy was not a political masterpiece, though, and it was something new. He seemed to hint that it was superior to other regimes, which was tantamount to granting it a position it had never occupied before. A few decades later, all ambiguities were gone, and if the slogan, Three Cheers for Democracy came from nobody's pen, it was only because there were better compliments at hand. Democracy was spoken of by Pierre Rosen-Vallon, Valon, among others, as an unfinished project that is one that was constantly being revised, still undergoing improvements, never completed, and still allowing a lot of room for human

creativity. It was democracy constantly democratizing itself, so to surpass democracy, or something equally vague, almost meaningless. similar remarks about democratic democracy or democracy so democratic that it continues to go beyond democracy were to be found in Derrida. Finally, the word utopia had to appear, and it did. The man who called the liberal democratic political system a utopia was John Rawls, the greatest of the great authorities on all the supporters, advocates, and analysts of the system,

and the maker of what might be called today's liberal democratic orthodoxy. When he said it, no one was surprised. With his clear Anglo-Saxon mind, Rawls expressed in public what many had been thinking for some time, but did not dare speak aloud. Let us return for a moment to Churchill's famous quote. It comes from the speech that he delivered at the British House of Commons in 1947 and reads as follows, Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise.

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. The statement had a life of its own and was repeatedly twisted or modified according to the intentions of those invoking it. Two versions with two different interpretations stand out. The first one is a mild paradox. Democracy is the worst political system except for all the others. The sentence contains two main pieces of information about democracy standing in a paradoxical relation to other systems. Democracy is flawed. After all, it is the worst, and at the same time, it is superior to other regimes. Therefore, it turns out not to be the worst because the others are even worse. If we assume that the first piece of information is more important, then the lesson drawn from

Churchill's statement would partly concur that what the ancients wrote about the power of the people, that is, that it is a highly imperfect system, and therefore requires great vigilance and implementation of corrective mechanisms that may also be undemocratic. Churchill did not identify any particular fault of democracy, but one could read into a suggestion of moderate skepticism and criticism of democratic procedures, but it was a question of, It was not the message of skepticism and criticism, however, toned down, that won the hearts of millions of supporters in democracy around the world. Another conclusion, different from the previous one, gained much larger support.

The reasoning was simple. It was enough to treat the second piece of information as a basic one that all other regimes are more defective and to ignore completely the first part that democracy also has many faults. This gave the conclusion an unambiguously pro-democratic meaning, not. that democracy is the least objectionable of all regimes, but that it is the best one. And if it is the best, its defects are negligible. With this twist of meaning, any criticism of democracy becomes unfounded and any critic

irresponsible and not worth listening to. There is no sense in criticizing something that by definition is superior to the alternatives. The crowning step of this reasoning was that whatever democracy shortcomings, they can be removed by more democracy. The best cannot be corrected by anything but the best. When we take a look at each conclusion separately in the above reasoning, we can easily see that they in fact constitute a series of unsubstantiated claims. The sequence of the steps is as follows. One, all systems other than democracy are worse than democracy. Two, democracy is the best political system. Three, democracy must not be criticized because such criticism may undermine something for which

there is no better alternative. Four, only democracy is acceptable, and therefore all changes and adjustments in democracy can be performed by democratic means. Five, the remedy for the weakness of democracy is more democracy. Isn't that what a lot of people say? It's like, oh, the government broke it and now the people who broke it are going to try and fix it. Well, I mean, sure. The people who broke it probably aren't going to be able to fix it. Even if they want to, it would take other people to fix it. I'm not going to even say it'll take another system to fix it.

But if we know that democracy is already flawed, why would you want to fix it? You would just want it to die. Thoughts. That even hits me. me. Each subsequent step was made by adding more content to the previous one, which resulted in a gradual departure from the initial statement, which created, finally, a huge chasm between Propositions 1 and 5. Proposition 1 expressed a rather skeptical view about all regimes, including democracy, whose advantage over its rivals was its somewhat less imperfect nature.

Proposition 5 is an enthusiastic declaration of faith. in democracy and absolute condemnation of everything undemocratic, someone who asserted without cannot, without violating logic, smoothly passed to assert. The last assertion's absurdity leaves to the eye, but in spite of that, it is today regarded, surprisingly, as an expression of a profound political wisdom. To see this absurdity, no special insight is needed, and excess of anything is never good. After all, No one will claim that the shortcomings of oligarchy can be removed by extending oligarchy. Flaws of tyranny by expanding tyranny, defects and disadvantages of monarchy by increasing the element of monarchy.

Nobody in his right mind will claim that progressive monopolization is a cure for monopoly, and that the remedy for anarchy is more anarchy. Why, if we agree that democracy has its weaknesses, would such weaknesses be reduced by having more democracy? in what way will more democracy reduce, for example, democratic vulgarity or the cult of mediocrity, or the weakening of social customs and traditions, or the overproduction of legislation, or the omnipresent spirit of partisanship penetrating every aspect of life? If the increasing role of the masses led to the vulgarization of culture, why would placing even greater importance on the same masses lead to culture's refinement? If democracy introduces yet further groups in the political and legislative process and provides them with the tools to secure their interest through legislation, which in turn leads to legislative excesses, then why would the increased number of these groups and their increased influence generate legislative restraint?

And so forth and so on. Let us note that a similar rhetoric was used in communism. When faced with the notoriously recurring symptoms of the decay of the system, communist rulers and propagandists euphemistically called the distortions, called them distortions, always saying that these resulted from the deviation from socialism, and that more genuine socialism was needed to set things right. No empirical experience could support this claim. In fact, the opposite seemed truer and truer every day,

but evidence usually has little value against a strong political faith. both claims that the cure for problems of socialism is more socialism and that the cure for deficiencies of democracy as more democracy should be therefore treated not as propositions, but as manifestations of political piety and to be more terse or politically sanctimonious or to be more terse of political sanctimoniousness. Democracy serves to create a state of mind

where a citizen feels an intercompulsion to emphasize in public or in private, the absolute superiority of democracy to dispel any doubts about the superiority and to delegitimize as an act of reprehensible disloyalty any attempt to consider non-democratic corrective options, if only in the forms of intellectual experiments. A person with such an attitude to democracy will probably not use the term utopia, but there is no better word to denote the system he has been taught to revere. I'm going to cut it right there. come back in a couple days and finish up chapter two.

Hope you're getting a lot out of this. I know me rereading this for, it's like second or third time. I think second time. I'm seeing things I didn't see the first time. And I think this is a pretty incredible book. So yeah, back in a couple days. And we will finish up chapter two of Lagutko's Demon and Democracy.

Take care. Bye.