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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to part three of my reading of Raizard Lguco's
Demon and 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
sniffle in 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 cause of me. Whenever it starts getting cold again
and dry, just drives 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. Utopia, communism, and liberal
democracy are believed to be the ultimate stages of the
history of political transformations. The Marxist contended that communism was
the last act of human drama, and that once it
was achieved, there was no incentive or 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 conviction exhausted the
process of political transformations if there is, if there is
such a thing as an ability to hypothesize possible political arrangements,
this cannot lead us, in the first case, beyond communist
or in the second beyond liberal democracy. They are the
end points 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 supporter is 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,
alternative suggestion is at best nonsensical and not worth the moment.
It's reflection and at worst, a highly reckless and irresponsible game.
The belief that socialism has no alternatives 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
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 dis equilibrium from
which societies 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, plate those of freedom and the
rule of the people. Remember who was it who said,
at 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
maximize the freedom of the individual, and as the 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 improve 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 it 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 quote unquote 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 the morality of politics.
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 see some communists and socialist ideals reflect that
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, give
me a reason? And I guess that comes back to
something that ce Jangle 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 a 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,
it'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 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 soleentative of freedom.
In the case of communism, the truth may seem 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 expressing 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 are you
talking about? As 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 compared to Plato, the Sophists were liberals compared to Socrates,
accum compared to Saint 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 twentieth 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 hola doom, or all of
these things. Now, let's talk about the German. Now let
them start talking about the Germans in World War Two
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 they're simply utopias. A note of clarification is required, however,
a widely accepted, though not accurate definition that states that
the word utopia denotes some political project that is idealistic
in its intentions, but completely unrealistic, impracticable, impractical, and incompatible
incompatible with human experience. The creators of utopias are therefore
usually looked down upon as naive sentimentalists or feared as
dangerous in human 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?
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 Utopia's
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 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
reader's pardon for such a vile sounding phrase. The final
solution following its implementation in justice, 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,
it 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 eschelis 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
in 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 and Utopias would contempt attributing the term utopian to
his socialist opponent, invariably with an attitude of annoyance. He
used this word in a colloquial sense, however, which gave
him grounds to accuse previous generations as 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
Angles 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 Lesak Kolakowski, had no doubt that it was a 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 the 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
twentieth century, especially in free market theories, can be easily explained.
It is enough to imagine a liberal order in its simplicity,
free market without an 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 socialism 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 hum For some liberals,
such simplicity will be tempting precisely because the liberal solution
has been applied in diluted 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 esplicily simple
and universally applicable mechanisms to solve all major problems. In short,
we will have a utopia. The utopia intendency 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
the free marketeers wanted to win popular support. The failure
of the free market and the contest of popularity, they thought,
was precisely that contrary to socialism, it never existed in
its simple and pure form. And this 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 as 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 Leedric
von messes Einrand, Robert Nozick, and many other historians did
precisely this. It went far beyond the realm of the
free market. As Nozick 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 Nosa 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 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. Democratus was one of the few. Some scholars
also mentioned Protagorasts, 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,
symptomatically 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 Enthusidides the Peloponnesian War,
is in fact more a defensive Athens and Athenium 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 Tokville 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 despatic 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 was 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 light of classical political theory, was for
a long time, first and foremost an American specialty. 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 grants it to capitalism.
Several decades later, in its 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 of by Pierre Rosenvolan Vallon, 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? Where to
be where to be found? In dereda Finally, the word
utopia had to appear, and it did. The man who
called the liberal democratic political system of 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 orthodox. When he said it,
no one was surprised with his clear Anglo Saxon mind.
Roles expressed in public what many had been thinking for
some time but did not dare speak aloud. Let us
return to him for a moment to Churchill's famous quote.
It comes from the speech that he delivered at the
British House of Commons in nineteen forty seven, 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, 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 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 not the message of skepticism and criticism, however
toned down, that won the hearts of millions of supporters
and demiocracy 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 swist 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. We take 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 is now what we always is.
Now what a lot of people say. It's like, Oh,
the government broke it. 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. Each subsequent
step was made by adding more content to the previous one,
which results in a gradual departure from the initial statement,
which created finally, a huge chasm between propositions one and five.
Proposition one expressed a rather skeptical view about all regimes,
including democracy, whose advantage over its rivals was it's a
somewhat less imperfect nature. Proposition. Proposition five is an enthusiastic
declaration of faith in democracy and absolute condemnation of everything undemocratic.
Someone who asserted with that out cannot without violating logic,
smoothly past 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 a 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 then, if we agree that
democracy has its weaknesses, would such weaknesses be reduced by
having more democracy? In what way? Will in what way
will more democracy reduce? For example, democratic vulgarity, or the
cult of meati deocrity, 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 seem true 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 is 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 inner compulsion 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
was such an attitude of democracy will probably not use
the term utopia, but there is no better words to
denote the system he has been taught to revere. I'm
going to cut it right there, come back in a
couple of days and finish up chapter two. I hope
you're getting a lot out of this. I know me
rereading this for this like second or third time. I
think the 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 of days
and we will finish up chapter two of Laguto's demon
in Democracy, take Care