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Support and do it there. Thank you. I want to
welcome everyone back to part five of my reading of
Raizard Lugutko's The Demon in Democracy. Still going through some
stuff with my my sinus is here, so apologize for
any noises and any I'll try to edit out as
much as I can, but yep, still going through some stuff.
A lot of people are most of the people I
know are sick. I just having trouble breathing, so better
off than most. So a reminder Thomas and I are
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forward slash movies. The latest movie we did was Highlander.
Sure a lot of you have seen Highlander, and uh yeah,
we're watching comments on it. So let's get going here.
We are up to chapter three and the title of
this episode. The title of this chapter is politics. Communism
and liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach
to politics. Both promised to reduce the role of politics
in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown
in previous history. The most famous statements about the imminent
twilight of politics come from the German Ideology by Marx
and Engels and Lenin's The State and Revolution. Actually read
both of those books. Read State and Revolution on the show,
Marx and Engels imagine how in the world to come
Man liberated from the burden of politics, would hunt in
the morning, go fishing at new and engage in literary
cleriticism after dinner. Lenin predicted a withering away of the state,
which would eventually be limited to simple administrative functions. A
famous thought attributed to him is that the administration of
the communist state would be so simple that even a
kitchen maid would be able to handle it. All these
stories about a stateless and deep politicized society were articulated
in the language of communist eschatology, but in the communist
reality things looked different. Neither the power wielding politicians nor
citizens trying to find their place in the Communist state
treated such declarations seriously. The state did not wather away,
nor was it likely to do so. Citizens' lives were
full of politics, and no one ever thought of spending
their entire life in moving from poetry to fishing and back.
And needless to say, the state's administration was not simply
simplified to kitchen maid level. Such a non political world
did not exist, and there was no indication would ever arise. Rather,
we witnessed an almost absolute domination by the Communist Party,
and consequently the growing intrusion of politics into the smallest
sectors of what was officially called the developed socialist society.
Politics remained the sole domain of the party, primarily its
highest authorities, above whom there were the Soviet leaders as
the ultimate political sovereign. For the rest of the public,
politics meant only an unceasing support for the Communist Party
through participation in parades, demonstrations, mass meetings, and other organized
outbursts of political enthusiasm. This was politics in a good sense,
but politics in a bad sense was also possible. It
meant challenging the decisions of the authorities, as for instance,
was done by the Solidarity movement in Poland. This type
of medically in politics was condemned and often punished by law.
What he's describing is politics is run by experts, the
managerial regime. That's exactly what he's describing in you can
get theoretically, it's possible in the United States to elect
the housewife to Congress or even the Senate. But is
she going to stay a housewife or her sensibility is
going to remain that of the housewife home, you know,
the person who runs the home. Was communism without politics
doctrinally possible at all? At least one important factor and
negates that possibility. The idea of the class struggle, which
in the Marxian theory, was to account for the rate
and direction of social change. The idea was simple and catchy,
with great potential for practical application, though on closer scrutiny
it could be easily refuted. As we know, Marxian engels
began by formulating a fundamental class conflict with capitalism, which,
according to them, played out between the capitalists representing the bourgeoisie,
and the proletariat representing the working class. The division of
society institute classes seemed to the communists at some point
a strikingly apt depiction of the capitalist world, but this
moment soon passed and the communist faith faced its first trial.
The original theory of the class struggle struggle predicted a
progressive antagonism between the two opposing groups, whereas what really
happened was to reverse antagonism gradually decreased until at the
end it virtually ceased to exist. Some naturally parted with
this theory, but others tried to save it by claiming
that the disappearance of the fundamental antagonism was only temporary,
or better that it could never happen because as long
as there is social injustice, and as long as there
are capitalists and imperialists, the struggle continues, even if many
people take it lightly or do not see it at all.
Stalin's famous statement that the more the communist society has developed,
the more fierce the class struggle becomes, though officially abandoned
at some point, retains its validity later on in less
sweeping versions. All crises of the communist system, protests, riots, demonstrations,
activities of the political dissonance and others, and anything that
slowed down the coming of the World Revolution and the
victory of communism seems to confirm that hostile forces, both
domestic and international, continued their war against the forces of progress.
Even today, despite the fact that communists that the communist
empire crumbled, an international brotherhood of Marxist has survived, whose
votaries have never stopped preaching that the class struggle goes on,
albeit in new costumes and with the use of new weapons.
The Communist eschatology promising the world without politics was not,
let it be noted, just a hoax perpetrated by ruthless
politicians from Marx and his first International through Lenin, Trotsky
and Stalins to today's socialists from all continents. The paradoxical
concept of a socialist politics where everything is political while
everyone dreams of a world free from politics, has a
much deeper source and accurately illustrates the paradox of the
modern mind. On the one hand, modern man believes that
making everything political is the highest form of manifestation of
his dominion. Politicization is therefore, nothing but a consequence of
the fact that everything that happens depends on his decision,
and that only his decision assigns meaning and value to things.
Such was the dominant moral postulate formulated by European philosophy
from the beginning of modern times. It has to be
expected that man's awareness of his growing power over life, society, knowledge, morality,
and everything else would be concordant with the increasing presence
of politics. More politics meant more instruments to make of this.
You make use of this power, so I want to
go back to this. On the other one hand, modern
man believes that making everything political is the highest form
of manifestation of his dominion. Politicization is there is, therefore,
nothing but a consequence of the fact that everything that
happens depends on his decision. And that so people ask
me sometimes often what is my poys What would I
have the state do? And I mean I really would
have the state just there to protect the culture and
what the culture is doing, so that no one subverts it,
so that no one gets in the way of it,
mostly subversives to look for subversives. And I don't want
the politicization of everything. I don't want the politicization of business.
I don't want the politicization of religion, faith, I don't
want the right politicization of anything cultural more than anything,
the state, in my opinion, should be there to make
sure that that doesn't happen. That is just what that group,
a homogeneous group of people who share common values and
common goals, whatever their goals are, that's what the state's
supposed to techt so that no one stops him from
doing that. Stay out of the economy as much as possible.
You don't need to. The state doesn't need to impose
tariffs if people don't have the thought to. If they're
of a culture that isn't going to send their manufacturing
overseas or to you know, if the culture does decide
that they want to import from, you know, different places. Well,
if it looks like the culture is suffering from that,
and that local manufacturing is suffering from that, well that
needs to be dealt with. It dealt with by the
people and the state. Only. State would only step in
when it has to to decide the exception. Really, my
thinking is constantly evolving on this because it's so far,
it's so different than what we've been raised with, but
it's what makes the most sense to me. So continuing,
But the rising tide of politicization did not eliminate the
dream of a world without politics. In fact, one could believe,
as did many, the disappearance of politics would be not
so much a conscious act of elimination as it would
the results of politics ultimately fulfilling its function. The final
withering way of the state was to be ultimate triumph,
to be the ultimate triumph of human aspirations of power,
man's absolute control of everything that relates to him. At
the same time, the stage where the struggle for power
becomes irrelevant and political activity comes to an end. Having
reached this stage, man can finally do what was always
his desire in the innermost striving of his nature to create,
to follow his dreams, to flourish. This paradox, however, contains
a serious problem and reach his fulfillment by increasing his
decision making power. Then it seems natural to assume that
the desire for power lies deep within his nature. Why then,
should we expect that this desire will vanish in some
future system that allows the unfettered realization of human aspirations
and free expression of human nature. It's a great question,
and it's when I asked the anarchists all the time. Okay,
the state disappears, how are you going to stop somebody
from starting another state, especially if you're basing it, if
you're basing your whole system off of non aggression. I've
literally been told recently through vigilantism, how long does that
last before a group needs to come together and decide
who decides the exception? Why would a revolutionary who led
the class struggle against the enemy, fought against exploitation, and
saw conflict in every part of life at some point
turn into an angler and an art critic, indifferent to
the issue of the distribution of power, willingly passing it
on to a kitchen maid. Was the power that absorbed him?
For so many centuries only a factor that resulted from
accidental circumstances, a factor that in other circumstances might never
have played any role. Two, the paradox reveals itself to
be much stronger in liberal democracy, which, like communism, had
a tremendous share in the process of politicizing modern society,
while at the same time proclaiming loudly that it was
pushing humanity to a politics free world. How modern man
came to the stage as a somewhat complicated story, primarily
because liberalism and democracy, taken separately, had different approaches to politics.
For a long time, liberalism was believed to be a
theory describing human activity as largely non political and a
human individual as a private person, not a citizen. A
standard illustrator of this view is, of course John Locke,
particularly his concept of ownership and labor. In his view,
once the state is created as a result of a
free contract, its main duty is to defend property whose
owners expanded through work. This, in turn should strengthen their
links with the state, which makes the process of acquisition possible. Nope,
from what I just said before, sounds great right Among
the thinkers who so to speak private size a citizen.
One should also mention Benjamin Constant in his famous lecture
about the difference between the freedom of the ancients and
that of the moderns. He argued, that's to participate in
public life, which was the freedom enjoyed by the ancients,
ceased to be a priority in our time and had
been supplanted by the individual freedom to pursue private goals.
In other words, and Constant wrote this openly, although later
he somewhat modified his position. People should elect their representatives
to political institutions in order for their representatives to provide
them with the freedom to take care of private matters.
Politics and the state are in the hands of a
small service people replaced and controlled by the elections, while
the rest of the people have as little to do
with politics as possible. They keep their peace of mind,
devoting their time to running their businesses, increasing their wealth
and property, enjoying their family lives, and pursuing personal passions
and interests. This is very much what John C. Calhoun
was talking about in his Disquisition on Government. But what
was the main thing that liberalism and modernism leaves out.
It is a people with common goals, common culture, and
who none of them are thinking about killing each other
just because they're in competition for something. The kind of
people who come together for the lack of a better term,
the common good. But that common good is like a family.
A family should come when a family comes together for
the common good, we don't call it communism or something
like that. Well, the same thing has to do with
a culture. You can find people when Sweden decided to
leave Laisse fair behind and become a gigantic welfare state.
You can find people all over the place throughout the
culture who complained about that, who were like, well, this
isn't going to work economically, you know, economists especially, But
even with economic problems, there really weren't people going to
war with each other over this and all these interest
groups who were inter fighting. And because it was a
monocultural society, if everyone's seventh and eighth cousins, it's a
lot better off than if you're importing the third world.
And I mean, really, the third world doesn't even exist anymore.
You're just basically importing people from the world where the
part of the world where they can't do for themselves,
they have to come here. They have to find a
place where people can do for themselves, and people can create,
and people can invent, and people can innovate because they can't.
And sure, if you have a gigantic welfare estate, which
I'm not saying you have to have, you're gonna have
economic problems, but they can be the war that you
see amongst the people, or is mitigated by the fact
that maybe most of these people are related in some
distant way. Again monocultural. But the hypothesis that a liberal
man is a non political animal, however probably, however probable
it may sound, is false and has never been true.
As liberalism progressed, the people who did not withdraw from politics,
much less abolish it, but on the contrary, continued to
empower it with prerogatives it had never had before. This
does not mean that Locke and Constant made an erroneous
diagnosis of modern society when they stressed the growing importance
of private matters. Indeed, these matters soon became the major
object of interests of politics and thinkers, but this did
not result at all in deep politicization. The majority of
private people did not divest themselves of political passions, and
whatever private pleasures they pursued, these goals did not change
the inherently political character of a modern society, and it
is easy to understand why. Liberalism is primarily adoption of power,
both self regarding and other regarding, to aim to limit
the power of other agents and at the same time
granting normal prerogatives for itself. In a sense, it is
a super theory of society. Logically prior to end, by
its own declaration of self importance higher than any other,
it attributes to itself the right to be more general,
more spacious, and more universal than any of its rivals.
Its goal is, as the liberals say, to create a
general framework within which others will be able to cooperate.
The liberals will never voluntarily give up this admittedly highest
of political prerogatives to anyone, and will never agree to
share it. Why this extraordinary hubris and the belief that
liberalism should play the main, in matter of fact, the
only organizing role in society. Until recently, the liberals have
been saying, probably in good faith, that they are doctrinally transparent,
because not only do they not exclude anyone from the
great society, but they want to include everyone in it.
To use an analogy, they think they are like those
who write the rules of the road and at the
same time are responsible for directing traffic. They aim to
create a system that would be most efficient and most
convenient to a large number of vehicles, much higher than
that of the other road builders or traffic wardens. According
to what they have claimed, they are the only ones
who can create such a system because only they are neutral,
their sole interest being to secure freedom for each and
every agent. There is no neutrality. There's no such thing
as neutrality. You're not neutral when it comes to your family.
This noble goal, however, has its other side, usually ignored
by liberals who claim to be transparent. Not only do
these liberals position themselves above the others, but they always
demand more power, essensibly from making more traffic rules and
hiring more traffic wardens, being almost never satisfied with the
power they have. Not only do they want to control
the mechanisms of the great society, but also those of
all its parts, not only what is general, but also specifics,
not only human actions, human thoughts as well. The original message,
we will create only a framework for a society at large,
and you will be able to do what you want
within It is rapidly turning into increasingly detailed message such as,
we will only create frameworks and education in the family
and community life, and you will be able to do
what you want within them later. But even this is
not enough. We will only create a framework at this school,
and you will be able to do what you want
within it later. Then the class follows the school, and
so on and so forth. Few liberals claim to be
transparent nowadays. Most of them openly stand for a specific
worldview which they believe to be the most adequate of
and four modern times formulate an opposition to other worldviews
and held to be uncompromisingly superior to them. They no
longer hide themselves into the formula we are creating only
a general framework, but fight hard for their power over
minds and institutions. The spirit of partisanship should not be surprising,
as liberal has always had a strong sense of the enemy,
a direct consequence of its dualistic perception of the world.
After all, liberalism is more about political struggle with nonliberal
adversaries than deliberation with them. This whole thing. When you
see classical liberals quote unquote like James the James Lindsay's
of the world, they will tell you that the reason
they've come up with this term woke right is because
the people they're calling woke right are looking at the
world through friend and enemy while they're accusing you of
being the enemy, accusing the woke right, while they create
a term called woke right to describe their enemy, the
enemy of liberalism. So all this, when it all comes
down to it, you go back to Carl Schmidt. All
politics is friend and enemy, and liberalism looks at anything
that isn't liberal as the enemy. Although such words as
dialogue and pluralism appear among its favorite motifs, as does
tolerance and other similarly hospitable notions, this overtly generous rhetorical
orchestration covers up something entirely different. In its essence, Liberalism
is unabashedly aggressive because it is determined to hunt down
all nonliberal agents and ideas, which it treats as a
threat to itself into humanity. I'm perfectly fine with hunting
down and as I said before, to keep subversives out
of your community. But that's not all humanity. That's your community,
that's people of like mind, that's people who share values.
If they come in and they start trying to screw
with it. You know, Han terrman Hoppit talks about his
covenant communities, where you can have a world of covenant communities,
where you can have a communist community over there, in
a liberal community over here, and you have a a
narco capitalist community over here. Well, in that community, as
soon as somebody starts preaching communism in his anarcho capitalist community,
their goal is to seek to correct that person, and
then if that person isn't correct, you could come out. Okay,
That's exactly what I'm talking about. The Only thing is
that the narco capitalist thinks that they're taking the moral
high ground because they don't have a state or monopoly
on power in order to do it. And I'm saying
that there will always be a state monopoly on power.
It's just a matter of what their purpose is. The
organizing principle of liberalism, as in all other philosophy, as
in all other philosophies, aiming to change the world radically,
is therefore dualism, not pluralism. The modern stalwart of liberalism,
Isaiah Berlin was absolutely faithful to the liberal spirit when
he said that the history of human thought could be
viewed as a conflict between pluralism and monism, and that
liberalism represents the former, whereas everything that is not liberal
represents the latter. This opinion, fairly typical, refeels the absurdity
of the liberal claim. First, Berlin and other liberal minded
thinkers put duality monism versus pluralism, closed versus open freedom
versus authority, tolerant versus autocratic as the primary division, and
by doing so had to assume that whoever supports pluralism
must be for dualism. It is like saying that anyone
who is for diversity must see the world dichotomously. This
leads to an even more bizarre conclusion that whoever supports
pluralism must favor liberalism, which means that anyone who wants
to recognize the multiplicity of social arrangements and the diversity
of human experience can accept only one philosophy and political
one philosophical and political philosophy, given on the course of
human history of human thought, there were dozens of different,
profoundly nonliberal philosophies, many of them of great intellectual value.
Such a conclusion can only be compared with Henry Ford's
famous statement about the model t in defense of pluralism.
We give people the right to choose any available philosophy,
provided that they choose liberalism. I believe the Henry Ford
quote about model T is that it comes you can
get it in any color, as long as it's black.
Something like that. I believe Berlin himself is probably educated
man knew very well and admitted quite frankly that the
most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were
monostic monastic in nature. The consequence of this was inescapable, inescapable.
Virtually everything intellectually intriguing that the Western mind produced in
the field of philosophy had to be classified not only
as monistic, but also as nonliberal. Therefore, if we take
Berlin's view seriously and disregard all monistic theories of the
entire history of human thought, we would be left with
very little. The effect of this supposed liberal pluralism would
be a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing in an
inevitable degradation of the human mind. Which it was. And
the quote from Henry Ford is at the bottom right here.
I'll give customers any color they want, so long as
it's black. The Communists who were the first to use
and with much success, to dualistic perspective to fight their enemies.
Made us accustomed to a certain practice of philosophical polemic.
They evaluated. They evaluated the arguments of their adversaries, and
the light of political consequences, the arguments were to be rejected,
not necessarily because of their demonstrated spuriousness, but because of
their political implications for communism. One accepted what served the
movement's cause, and one rejected what hindered its construction. Lenin,
of course, made this practice his only method of argumentation.
Every fact, thought, idea, book, or person was looked at
from one and only one perspective, whether they were useful
for or detrimental to Russian Communism. The liberals adopted a
similar practice, though probably they would not find the object
adjective pleasing. When faced with a statement, or an opinion
or an idea, the first and most important question they
ask is whether any of these may be dangerous, that is,
whether they may potentially contradict liberal assumptions. Their favorite version
of this approach is a slippery slope argument. It amounts
to the following, if one can indicate that this or
that idea may sooner or later lead to some harmful practice,
the idea should be discarded as politically contaminated. I don't
think there's any problem. I mean, I think we see
that the slippery slope argument works. Or some call it
a fallacy, I mean the history shows that it's real.
Maybe not in the way the siliberty slope fallacy is described,
but in cause and effect. Because most theoretical claims or
statements contain an element of unity which the liberals would
call moneism, or imply a hierarchy which the liberals would
call domination, these claims and statements can be interpreted as
directed or indirect encouragements to some form of political authoritarianism
and immediately become politically suspect. What I will say is
when I say I'm calling for a state, that the
perfect state would be one that protects the culture. I'm
also talking about hierarchy. I'm talking about the people from
within in that in that culture who have a in
that culture surviving. I'm talking about a natural hierarchy. I'm
talking about natural elites talking about aristocracy. To give an
example taken from Berlin, several philosophers made a distinction between
superior and inferior parts of the soul. Whether the statement
is true or falses of little importance. What is important
is that it is politically dangerous because it is easy
to imagine a group, a party, a community, or a
church considering itself to represent the superior part of the
soul in using coercion against another group, party, community, or
church to which it will ascribe the role of a
representative of the inferior part of the soul. This kind
of argument outrageous. Let us admit it is considered by
the liberals to be decisive, and it serves them to
disparage opponents by suggesting that by making seemingly harmless theoretical statements,
they open the gates to totalitarianism, fascism, inquisition, torture, Hitler,
and various other heart horrors. Yeah, making statements about saying
they would have you, there are many who would have
you say that by stating that trends that there are
no trans children. I saw that statement on Twitter the
other day. Someone just said there are no there's no
such thing as a trans child. There are some, especially
in the liberal camp, in the progressive camp, which is
basically the same thing that that just leads us down
the road to saying that black people have no agency
things like that. Surprisingly, this essentially intolerant and doctrinaire side
has been overlooked and liberalism achieved a remarkable success in
conquering people's minds. In the past few decades. The liberals
and the liberal Democrats have managed to silence and marginalize
nearly all alternatives and all nonliberal views of political order.
Liberalism monopolized people's minds to an extent that would put
to shame the theorists of socialism in the communist countries, who,
after all, had much richer resources at their disposal. Think
about what you know if you listen to Thomas. Thomas
talks about the fact that one of the reasons why
it would have been preferable to live in East Germany
than to live in West Germany is that, you know,
if you're under an East German regime, if you're under
a totalitarian regime, they may just you know, steal, take
your life. On the other side of that divide, you
had people who were seeking to racially cleanse you that
you're not a German anymore, You're not a Frenchman anymore,
You're not this, You're not that, you're you're not who
your ancestors were. We all have to be this one
homogeneous thing, which is more cruel, Which is more cruel.
Think about it. If you're a family man and you
have five kids and they kill you, your family lives on.
They can still push forth your family history, your culture,
who you are, who you were. Over on the other side,
if you have five kids and you're sending them to
school and they're teaching them that you know that the
African migrant who's being forced integrated into your community is
no different than you, and that you're all just humans
and family doesn't matter. It's all that matters is this
homogeneous nothing where no one has a history anymore, no
one has a culture anymore. I mean one is certainly worse. Unfortunately,
a lot of us have been brainwashed into believing that
death is worse than this basically racial cleansing that they're doing.
In democracy, politics was received in a different way. Depoliticization
was not and could not be an ultimate goal. Democracy
is the most political of all known regimes. None other
engages so many people in civic responsibilities, and none of
that depends so much on them for its own existence.
If the number of participating citizens decreases, the democracy is
believed to be falling into a state of crisis and
possible delegitimization. If the democratic system is upheld by the
activity of a minority, not a majority, it ceases, theoretically
at least to be democratic, and the entire political mechanism
breaks down. The democratic politicization of a special is of
a special kind, being energized by the spirit of partisanship.
Modern democracies function on the assumption that the driving force
politics is society's opportunity to choose a program according to
which the country should be governed. These programs are presented
to the public by a variety of political parties, and
the public, through a process of elections, selects a party
or a group of parties, and gives their representatives the
mandate to implement the chosen program. As Joseph Schumpeter accurately wrote,
democracy is a contest organized periodically by the public to
select their representatives. Democratic society is thus political out of necessity,
because through elections, it automatically gets involved in the struggle
for power. Moreover, this involvement is a civic duty which
the people can renounce only at the price of destroying democracy.
You know, if you if you don't vote, you can't complain. Right,
the political mechanism seems almost perfect. Its advantages are manifold.
It protects the people from uncontrolled power and provides a
right to participate in politics. It secures a smooth transition
of power from one political group to another. It offers
a wide range of competing programs from which the voters
can choose. It keeps the losing parties within the system,
as they may hope for success in the next election.
Of course, in reality, the democratic system is strongly deviated
from this model in one or more aspects. But it
cannot be denied that the mechanism proved formidably efficient in
stabilizing the process of transferring power through elections. The emergence
of liberal democracy strengthened the bad sides rather than the
good sides of the democratic model. The system soon began
to limit the offer of the party programs from which
the voters were to choose. Of course, the idea that
democracy is a system where we, the voters, have brought
offerings to choose from, like the customers in a department store.
Responding to the multiplicity of political preferences rationally examined by
us as individuals and groups never accorded with the facts.
A society might be large, but it needs to be diversified.
It need not be diversified. As early as the Athenian democracy,
it was discovered that the spectacularly noisy conflicts of the
bickering political groups did not change the herd like nature
of demos, and that when whatever the initial diversity, democratic
tendencies steer society towards some kind of uniformity. Tokeville, Mill
and a host of others made a similar argument about
the modern representative democracies, this phenomenon should not be surprised
in giving the nature of the democratic man a rather
uninspired being, not much interested in the world around him,
closed within his own prejudices, and amenable to impulses of mimicry.
Democracies have therefore always been threatened by and pushed into uniformity.
The mechanism that formed the uniformity of aesthetic tastes of
fashion and with its powerful, often absurd, and yet irresistible waves,
could be, and in fact has been easily extended to
them in a political opinion. True, the party system, which
legitimize political divergences serve to counteract this tendency. For this reason,
representative democracy was considered superior to direct democracy, as it
was thought to have the tools with which groups could
defend their political identity against other groups with different identities.
Why should you have to do that? There are communities
all over this country that are basically monocultural, yet they
are threatened by the vote of somebody three thousand miles away. Unfortunately,
since the transformation of democracy into a liberal democracy, the
spectrum of political acceptability has been distinctly limited. Liberal democracy
has created its own orthodoxy, which causes it to become
less of a forum for articulating positions and agreeing on actions, then,
to a much higher extent, a political mechanism for the
selection of people, organizations, and ideas in line with the orthodoxy.
This phenomenon can be seen especially in Europe, where in
the past few decades there has been a major ideological
reprochement of the right and left wing parties. This resulted
in the formation of what is called the political mainstream,
which includes socialists, Christian Democrats, the Greens, social Democrats, liberals,
and even conservatives. The mainstream that runs in Europe today
is tilted far more to the left and to the right.
Within it, the left has made a slight shift to
the right in some matters, mostly economic, and made a
further move to the left in other matters, mostly moral.
While the right wing movement shift to the left was huge.
Such a process has its roots in the past, even
quite distant, but undoubtedly the single most decisive direct impact
came from what happened throughout the Western world in the
nineties teen sixties. It was then that a massive political
revolution broke out and brought the left wing to dominant position.
If you go back and you check out my episode
with Adam from Mith of the twentieth Century where we
talk about What's his name Carrie Bolton's new book on
the Revolution of nineteen sixty eight. This wasn't an organic
revolution political revolution. This was an elite revolution to change
the political dynamics and the cultural dynamics of the country
and of the West. Because it happened in every country,
much like the revolutions of eighteen forty eight happened. It
happened in every country. It was then that a massive
political revolution broke out and brought the left wing to
a dominant position. The language of the revolution was a
medley of anarchist slogans, a Marxist rhetoric of class struggle
and the overthrowing of capitalism, and a liberal language of rights.
Emancipation and discrimination. Capitalism in the state were the main targets,
but university schools, family law, and social mores were attacked
with equal vehemence. The revolution broke out unexpectedly, considering the
fact that the Western societies were then at a peak
of economic prosperity and democratic stability. To be sure, there
existed factors that tarnished this rosy picture and substantially changed
the mood of the public, the European power's stormy process
of decolonization, America's entanglement in the Vietnam War, and political
awakening of political awakening of the black population. The revolution
of the sixties was a success because much of what
the revolutionaries proclaimed was met with widespread sympathy. Many thought,
and apparently they were right, that Europe, indeed the entire West,
had been for a long time harboring the ideas that
provided a fertile soil for left wing movements of the
kind that shook the world in the sixth These you know,
I always say that if if the National Socialist hadn't
burned a lot of the research from the Institute for
Sex in Ymar which was doing all this trends stuff,
well we could have seen this trans movement in the
sixties being pushed as hard as it has been. And
I know everything wasn't destroyed, and there was still a
lot of research there. But I've read a lot of
articles by them, and they could be lying, because I mean,
they're just liars saying that that burning sent them sent
them back decades. Among the ideas that defined the West
modern identity, shaped its image of the future, and provided
fuel for revolutions, was first and foremost the idea of equality.
As Francois Foray rightly wrote, equality gave the West the
main moral impulse and determined the direction in which the
political imagination pushed to fighters for a better world. The
paramount status of equality clearly favored the left much more
than the political right. Not only was there a tremendous
shift of the left in politics, but this shift was
sanctioned almost naturally and without much resistance from intellectuals and politicians,
as it spoils a political progress. A similar shift occurred
in the United States, although for specifically American reasons, a
process that has taken place there in the years since
is more complex and the left still meets with a
major counter offensive. Therefore, in America we can still see
a cultural war continuing unresolved for several decades, although the
forces of the left seemed to prevail gradually over those
of the right. Europe has not had such a war,
and it is highly unlikely it will break out in
the foreseeable future, as there is no social force of
any consequence that could law offensive against the cultural monopoly
of the left. It was this formation of a broad
political consensus in the sixties that generated a major influence
on the character of the social and institutional changes in Europe.
Although the multi party mechanism continued to induce the parties
to assert their own distinct identities against their opponents, the
overall degree of diversification conspicuously declined. From that time, it
has been customary to talk of mainstream politics and mainstream parties.
This disqualifying word has become an essential ingredient of today's
political discourse and denotes a large cross party area of ideas, objectives,
and programs shared by the major political forces. The tricky
side of mainstream politics is that it does not tolerate
any political tributaries and denies that they should have any
legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be
either mavericks and as such not deserve to be treated seriously,
or fascist who should be politically eliminated. When I was
talking earlier about the difference between like West Germany and
East Germany, just to give you an example, he's talking
about how everything's been liberalized over there in Germany. The
towns that were behind the Iron curtain right now are
would probably be they're considered backwards compared to the towns
that were on the west side. They're much more conservative.
Why they were protected from all this stuff. They didn't
go through his sixties, so they're actually way more conservative
than towns in historical West Germany. The bundes Republic. This
process marked the historical change not sufficiently to my mind,
noted and examined the liberal democratic system until then, a
loose procedural device with two major elements, a multi party
mechanism and universal suffrage, turned into a petrified set of
ideas and specific political goals. Basically, there are only two
acceptable ways of thinking. And really it's only one acceptable
way of thinking with certain allowed deviations, and that's how
you get a Democrat and a Republican party. But everybody
votes for money for Ukraine. Everybody votes for money for Israel. Moreover,
those ideas and goals acquired a strong radical coloring as
a result of the nineteen sixties Revolution, which profoundly transformed
Western societies. The revolution was carried out under the banner
of the liberation of various oppressed groups, those who wanted
to be liberated as well as those who never considered
themselves oppressed. But once the liberal democratic institutions assimilated these
ideas and goals and were forced to reassume that their
task was to continue this process of liberation through imposing
appropriate legal measures and introducing new social norms, they unleashed
a rapidly increasing politicization that could not be stopped without
rejecting the basic assumption. Whoever dared to doubt that liberal
democracy should work for the emancipation of every new groups
was immediately liable to a charge of being an enemy
of liberal democracy. As such, what happened as soon as
people started pointing out that Haitians had taken over Springfield, Missouri, Springfield, Ohio,
or that they were being shipped into Silicaga, Alabama. These
became the new groups that needed to be protected. They
became they became victims of people pointing out that they
were there. The revolution that shook the modern the Western
world in the sixties did not happened at the time
in the societies of stifling authoritarianism, but on the contrary,
in an era and in the countries where the democratic
system was quite firmly established, and yet the rebels were
so unhappy with it that they chose to reject it
in most inflammatory ways. And with it they challenged the
existing party system, which, as they claimed, differentiated the political
spectrum only superficially, preserving the status quo. This status quo
and this arrangement had thus to be broken, but not
within the system, but from outside it through action direct.
The party system had to be had to capitulate to
the will of the people, or rather to the movement
that quite arbitrarily assumed the role of the will of
the people. The revolution was not a triumph of classical democracy,
but an explosion of livid impatience directed. It's a discipline
of the democratic system. We go back to that. You
have a movement that quite arbitrary assumed the role of
the will of the people. The will of people in
the United States right now is to fix the economy,
to deport immigrants, to close the borders, and many other
things that Donald Trump has said that he is going
to do. He has adopted the will of the people.
And if he doesn't do that, that he quite arbitrarily
assumed the role of the will of the people. Politics.
It became necessary to fight for a democracy that was
more and more democratic, as well as more and more liberal,
a democracy liberated once and for all from all conservative burdens,
a democracy that was certain to bring specific laws, norms,
and mindsets. And if it fell short of these aims
in any respect, it was generally understood that the system
could be manipulated in order to bring what each dedicated
liberal democrat considered to be an indisputable, indisputable benefit. Within
a short period of time, Europeans changed their perception of
democratic politics and became convinced that it was about modernization, progress, pluralism, tolerance,
and other sacred aims which were to be carried out
regardless of what the voters decided during elections four. The
crowning achievement of these changes in the perception of democratic
politics was the European Union, which, after the Treaty of Mastricht,
boldly stepped into a new political role, surpassing everything that
could be seen so far in the national states. Earlier
forms of European integration were the work of politicians who
still had a living and painful memory of the previous
war in all its horrors. By launching a plan for integration,
these politicians reacted to the experience of the war, with
its hitherto unknown forms of depravity of human nature and
its uncontrolled explosion of political madness. By any standard, they
or remarkable people by virtue of their lives and education,
deeply indebted to what was best in Western culture, particularly
its Christian and classical heritage. While it is true that
what they wrote about the future of Europe was sometimes
too naive and unnecessarily idealistic, their writings still impressed us
with the political seriousness and the gravity of thought that
only the best traditions of European culture could inspire. Today,
it is difficult to find public figures of similar intellectual
and spiritual stature. When one compares to founding fathers of
integration with the current EU leaders, one cannot resist an
impression that the former belonged to a different world of
a long time past, hardly recognizable today. The memory of
the war experience it gave birth to the idea of integration.
War itself out with time, but the passage of time
was not the only or even the decisive factor. The
war was soon forgotten in Western European countries, which, after
its completion were almost immediately caught in the turmoil of
decolonization that reoriented the consciousness of the population and then
came the Revolution of the sixties. For the majority of
Europeans today, World War II is a closed stage of history,
both in terms of individual human biography and because it
has been judged to belong to the world of the
past with no connections to the present. On the other hand,
the Revolution of the sixties is still a living experience,
not only in the minds of old men remembering their
rebellious youth, but also because its social mythology is still
eagerly received and relived by the younger generation. At some point,
the sixty eight generation finally laid their hands on European integration.
The difference between the founding fathers and their successors is ignormous.
The former were, like their philosophical predecessors, from Hugo Groscis
to Kant, seekers of perpetual peace. In their moments of
sentimental nostalgia, they spoke fondly of a European brotherhood of nations,
thus resembling the former visionaries of European spiritual unity their successors.
It took over the War of Integration, created the Union
in Mastradict and have been ruling it since. No longer
talk about peace or no longer talk about peace or
evoca shared European heritage, but seeks to construct a federal
superstate to create a European demos and a new European man.
They are extraordinarily self confident and arrogant, and have no
particular respect for the heritage they do not know and
do not intend to learn about. They are bureaucrats and
apparatics rather than visionaries and statesmen. They were not shaped
by the European culture, of which they have limited knowledge
and toward which they do not bear form feelings. The
European Union reflects the order and the spirit of liberal
democracy in its most degenerate version. If the strongest features
of democracy were the elections and its built in possibility
of changing governments and its programs, the European Union has
done everything possible to reduce this possibility to the minimum.
There are no clear mechanisms for the transmission of power
and no institutionalized way for the voters to affect the
direct the direction in which the EU should go. The
EU Parliament does not create the government and does not
have much power. Moreover, it is probable that the only
parliamentary body in the world not to mention some of
the communists and authoritarian regimes where there is no opposition.
Regardless of who wins the elections. The European Parliament's key
decisions are made by the same political cartel, and the
same policy has been continued for years. European government, or
rather something that is the equivalent of the government, ie
the European Commission, did not arise as a result of
a decision by the voting electorate, but is completely independent
of the voter's will. The main functions in the European
Union are conducted by people who are not elected and
cannot be recalled by voters who have absolutely no effective
political tools. How then, in times of such brazen and
pervasive democratic rhetoric, could such an undemocratic instance who should
be created? Contrary to appearances, Answering this question is quite
easy if one remembers what was said above. The European
Union was not deliberately created as an antidemocratic system to
count available weaknesses of democracy, but on the contrary, as
a hyperdemocratic or hyperliberal democratic project. At least since the
time of Maastricht, it has been in the hands of
politicians and bureaucrats who, whatever their party affiliation, consider themselves
to be the model liberal democrats, ready to convert the
whole of Europe and even the whole world to liberal democracy. Consequently,
European politicians do not see any problem in singing in
the praises of liberal democracy while failing to tolerate any
deviation from the orthodoxy the mainstream, believing themselves to be
the embodiment the quint's assassins and I can say that
word when I'm not reading it, and the fundamental guarantee
he of the liberal democratic order. They consider it obvious
that all those who think differently and challenge their authority
must be enemies of the order, that fighting them is
a just defense. Let me see, let me read that again.
Believing themselves to be the embodiment Quint's ass qence, assessance
and the fundamental guarantee of the liberal democratic order, they
consider it obvious that all those who think differently and
challenge their authority must be enemies of the order, and
that fighting them is just defense. Equally, it is clear
to them that the parliament, where the same cartel has
ruled for years and will still rule unopposed for years
to come, is more perfect political construction than national parliaments,
where there is usually an opposition, sometimes even from outside
the mainstream, which in the next election has an opportunity
to win a majority of seats, create a government, and
change the direction of the policy to a greater or
lesser extent. In the EU, a change in policy is
always regarded as disaster of unimaginable proportions. To the European politicians.
The fact that the actual direction of EU policy is
created by people who do not have an electoral mandate
is of no particular importance because, as they probably assume,
these people were selected and anointed by the elite mainstream
European politicians thus fall victims of the same self mystification
as other groups who identified their own behavior with the
views attributed to them. They are motivated by a strong
belief that they represent the system, which, as is commonly believe,
respect diversity, choice and pluralism, and this allows them to
believe that their rule, albeit still performed by the same
majority and having only a loose relationship with the preferences
of the voter, is also the rule that respects diversity,
choice and pluralism. So why risk a good thing? Why
overrely on the decision of voters? Referendum in old traditional
solution of direct democracy, which as serious flaws but is
sometimes necessary, has for some time now not enjoyed the
respect of the EU mainstream. Forcing the ratification of the
Treaty of Lisbon without a referendum and then playing a
pretty perfidious game with the Irish referendum are illustrative examples
of these politics. Recently, Greece was prevented from holding a
referendum on the issues related to its financial crisis. On
the other hand, if it is convenient, the EU blasts
the government it dislikes for failing to adopt a new
Constitution by referendum. Its attack for this reason on Hungary
was of course outrageous, given the deceitful attempts by the
Union itself to adopt its own constitution without consulting the
people at all. Even elections an impeccably democratic institution, it
would seem, are not necessarily deemed always desirable. Recently, precedent
setting cases occurred when the governments in two EU countries,
Greece and Italy, were changed without elections, only under pressure
from the European institutions as expected, as special circumstances, namely
the financial crisis, were indicated to justify such steps, But
the bare fact is that was violated was not a
simple rule or custom, but the holiest of the holy
principles by which, as we have been made to believe,
democracy stands or falls. Sometimes the country may hold elections
universal fare and according to all other rules, but the
results are against the expectations of the mainstream, then their
credibility in the eyes of the Union decreases, respectively. Case
and point are the reactions to the EU of the
EU to the government of the Law and Justice Party
in Poland and the fidays government in Hungary. Immediately after
the elections launched an extremely aggressive hostility campaign. The mind
of a model EU politician has been con addition, in
such a way that any dissonate moved to the right
from the mainstream must meet the most severe condemnation. Learn
that over here, huh, especially on the right quote unquote.
The EU political system is not easy to define, and
there are several ways to look at it. It can be,
for instance, qualified as a peculiar example of the majoritarian democracy, or,
to put it in a less neutral way, as a
tyranny of the majority. This shows even in a language
used by the European politicians. When told that their supercilious
disregard for those outside the mainstream contradicts the basic requirements
of the liberal democracy they so touchingly praise, they ignore
such an allegation as totally devoid of merit. A minority
can afford to say what it wants, and still the
majority has its way without bothering to reply. And if
they were to provide an answer, it would be we
have democracy here the majority rules, needless to say, the
answer is to use communists speak to be treated dialectically.
There are acceptable majorities, such as the Cartel, which has
ruled the European Parliament for many years, and the unacceptable
ones such as Hungary under the FIDE. The decision as
to which is acceptable and which is not to be
which is not is determined by the mainstream. The European
Union can also be described somewhat different differently, namely as
a kind of elite government, or better yet, as a
liberal democratic government of the European aristocracy. The word aristocracy
is used here in a metaphorical sense, of course, as
is specific to a certain group of people who believe
themselves superior to others. This feeling is probably a remnant
of the nineteen sixties, when the leaders of today, being
then young and rebelling against a political order, already considered themselves,
as all revolutionaries do, superior to the slothful masses. When
they were young, these leaders were believed to be the
architects of the new world that was to emerge as
the results of the revolution. Now being old, they claimed
to be the authors of the institutional system they think
is the greatest political success in history. The attitude in
both cases is the same, a hasty and arrogant dismissal
of what stands in their way and what they readily
qualify as prejudice and anachronism. In this respect, the EU
leaders and bureaucrats are no different from other enlightened governments
of the past, except perhaps that they managed to conceal
their contempt for the demos. Both of these portrayals of
the EU has a majoritarian democracy, and as the rule
of enlightened aristocracy, seems to contradict the standard view of
what liberal democracy should be. No matter that this view,
as we know, is often mistaken. In reality, both of
them reflect well the internal logic of the system. It
is of course true that at the level of nation states,
voters have more to say, and tricks similar to those
in deployed by the EU politicians would be difficult to
manage in most member states. However, the European Union was
not established in the Drabrian Islands, but on the Old Continent,
and fairly adequately mirrors the present European way of thinking.
The phenomenon of mainstream a shift to the left with
a simultaneous reprochemont between left and right did not come
into being in Brussels or Strasbourg, but in the nation states.
It was also there that after the Revolution of the sixties,
powerful political movements were mobilized to fight against every new
forms of so called discrimination. It was in the Nation
States where a program of enlightened liberal democracy took shape,
with the aim to manage all facets of individual and
social lives, and at the same time it denied political
as well as moral legitimacy to everyone who questioned this program.
It was there that an avalanche of legislation was launched
to make liberal democracy the only formula for all institutions
and community. It is true that European societies were not
given an opportunity to vote in the referendums on the
Lisbon Treaty, and when they had such an opportunity, as
in the case of the Constitutional Treaty, a few of
them voted against it. It is true that the Treaty
of Lisbon would have ended up where its predecessor did
in the trash basket if citizens were allowed to decide
independently again. But once the public was excluded from the
decision making process and the entry into the force of
the treaty completed without their participation, no major group protested
against the unfair and, as it is commonly said on
democratic attempts, by their governments and eureaucratic institutions. No protests
were voiced on other similar occasions. The public never questioned
the role of the mainstream, and the citizens of Europe,
as well as the political parties in Europe, did not
exert any particular pressure on the democratization of the Union.
To be sure, it is difficul called to import the
EU mechanisms into the systems of the member states of
Parliament without opposition or a non elective government. What prevents
us from happening is the existence of old institutions too
deeply embedded in this tradition to be easily removed. But
if we were to imagine the creation of a completely
new state in Europe today, the dream country of today's
liberal democratic Europeans, most likely it would not differ much
from the European Union. It would be ruled by the mainstream.
The enlightened majority would not be threatened by anything or
anybody from the margin. Those outside the mainstream would constitute
a sort of museum of antiquities, and any alliance with
them would be an embarrassment. In Parliament, progressive parties would
enter into polemics with even more progressive ones competing to
grant further powers to various privileged minorities and increasing and
issuing increasingly bolder anti discrimination decrees. It is difficult to
predict the future of Europe within the EU model in
terms of the political doctrine. European society at the moment
does not exhibit any ardent desire to move away from
such a model, even if the inefficiency and arrogance to
the bureaucracy is more and more annoying. Perhaps the future
will bring some significant movement from within when the arrogance
succeeds to a tolerable level. There is no doubt that
a remedy must start from the nation states, and it
is in them where the first impulse of changes should occur,
the dethronement of the mainstream and the break of the
liberal democratic monopoly. Until this happens, we will have more
of the same. The EU will not change by its
own will, and the majority of Europeans will continue to
cling to the belief that, despite the disadvantages, the EU
is a more or less accurate emanation of the soul
of today's Europe. All right, that's it. We'll be back
for part six and the second half of there's only
five chapters in this, so we're getting pretty close to
the end here. And yeah, I hope you're enjoying it,
and I hope you're getting a lot out of it.
I'll look into exactly what they're doing with the EU. Now,
for those of us who unders properly understand globalization, this
should be very eye opening if you haven't really dove
into it yet. And from someone you know who lives
over there in Poland, yeah, he can give you the
view that you can't see from all the way over
here if you're listening to the States. All right, that's it.
We'll see you back for part six in a few days.
All right, take care, thank you, Bye,