1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,120
Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the

2
00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:06,559
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond

3
00:00:06,599 --> 00:00:10,359
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to

4
00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:15,000
explain something right now. If you support me through substack

5
00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:19,719
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that

6
00:00:19,760 --> 00:00:24,239
you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll

7
00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,239
be able to listen to the episodes through there. If

8
00:00:27,239 --> 00:00:31,120
you support me through subscribe, star gum Road, or on

9
00:00:31,199 --> 00:00:34,719
my website directly, I will send you a link where

10
00:00:34,759 --> 00:00:37,079
you can download the file and you can listen to

11
00:00:37,119 --> 00:00:41,439
it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support

12
00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:44,759
everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. It allows

13
00:00:44,799 --> 00:00:47,960
me to basically put out an episode every day now,

14
00:00:48,439 --> 00:00:51,119
and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate.

15
00:00:51,640 --> 00:00:53,799
I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two

16
00:00:54,600 --> 00:01:00,079
even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you,

17
00:01:00,759 --> 00:01:02,880
So thank you for the support. Head on over to

18
00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:07,159
Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, forward slash support and

19
00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:11,640
do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone

20
00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:16,359
to my next reading. I just finished reading but in

21
00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:21,480
finish she Believed by Eric Hoffer, I just became Oh,

22
00:01:21,519 --> 00:01:23,680
I mean I did what a lot of us do.

23
00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:25,439
You read a book and I told you I was

24
00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:27,799
reading it with you, I'd never read it before, and

25
00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:33,280
you decide, Yep, this book is crap. And yeah, I

26
00:01:33,359 --> 00:01:36,079
think that I read far enough to get the gist

27
00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:40,719
of his message. I think I showed you where the

28
00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:43,599
flaws are and I want to move on to something else.

29
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:46,879
And this next book is very important to me because

30
00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:51,920
when I finally was able to just say out loud, yeah,

31
00:01:52,280 --> 00:01:54,480
there's no way I can be a libertarian anymore. I

32
00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:59,519
don't believe that. I just don't believe in it, and

33
00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:05,239
not in the world way that it is promoted. This book,

34
00:02:05,640 --> 00:02:11,520
The Demon and Democracy by Rizard Lagutko, just this is

35
00:02:11,560 --> 00:02:14,479
the one that probably spoke to me the most. Where

36
00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:18,159
I reached one point in the book and I just

37
00:02:18,159 --> 00:02:22,680
said out loud, yeah, but I can't be a libertarian anymore.

38
00:02:22,719 --> 00:02:25,599
It's just this doesn't doesn't make sense to me, So

39
00:02:26,479 --> 00:02:29,439
all right, I think I also the reason I want

40
00:02:29,439 --> 00:02:32,000
to read this book is, first of all, it's great

41
00:02:32,199 --> 00:02:38,840
arguments are I mean steelmanned and it's one of those

42
00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:42,159
one of those readings and commentaries that you can give

43
00:02:42,159 --> 00:02:45,560
to your friends, you can give to normies. This is

44
00:02:45,599 --> 00:02:48,039
a book that actually I think you can that normies

45
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:51,280
can pick up, and especially if they've been following, say

46
00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:54,319
they're a Trump supporter or something like that, someone who

47
00:02:54,319 --> 00:02:57,879
sees there just is something really wrong. This is something

48
00:02:57,879 --> 00:03:01,680
you could actually give to them. So I'll try and

49
00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:04,960
make it as normally friendly as possible. All Right, a

50
00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:10,199
little bit about Lagutko. He's a Polish philosopher, politician. He's

51
00:03:10,199 --> 00:03:13,599
a professor of philosophy at the I probably should have

52
00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:19,919
pronounced the practice this one first. Yah Yagi leone ya

53
00:03:20,240 --> 00:03:26,439
Yi a Yonian university in Krakous specializing ancient philosophy and

54
00:03:26,439 --> 00:03:29,520
political theory. Member of the right wing Law and Justice

55
00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:32,840
Party domestically, he has also served as a member of

56
00:03:32,879 --> 00:03:35,680
European Parliament since two thousand and nine, being a prominent

57
00:03:35,719 --> 00:03:41,039
member of the minority European Conservatives and Reformist political group groups.

58
00:03:41,400 --> 00:03:43,840
Under communism, he was one of the editors of the

59
00:03:43,879 --> 00:03:48,120
Samastad quarterly OKRA. After the collapse of the communist regime,

60
00:03:48,199 --> 00:03:51,919
he co founded the Center for Political Thought, which combines research, teaching,

61
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:56,159
seminars and conferences, and is also a publishing house. He

62
00:03:56,199 --> 00:04:02,680
has translated and written commentaries on Plato's Feida Fido You

63
00:04:02,840 --> 00:04:06,680
three frow an Apology. He is author of several books,

64
00:04:06,719 --> 00:04:11,039
Plato's Critique of Democracy, Toleration of Treaties on Liberty, an

65
00:04:11,120 --> 00:04:15,120
Essay on the Polish Soul Socrates. Two thousand and five,

66
00:04:15,199 --> 00:04:18,360
he's elected the seats of Polish Senate, where he became

67
00:04:18,439 --> 00:04:21,160
Deputy speaker. In two thousand and seven. He was Poland's

68
00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:24,040
Education Minister and from two thousand and seven to two

69
00:04:24,079 --> 00:04:28,920
thousand and nine Secretary of State in the Chancellery of

70
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:33,519
President Lech Kaczinski. He is currently member of European Parliament,

71
00:04:33,519 --> 00:04:36,160
where he sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee ahead of

72
00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:40,439
the Polish Law and Justice delegation to the European Parliament,

73
00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:44,920
and the co chairman of the Conservatives Hen Reformists parliamentary group.

74
00:04:45,759 --> 00:04:48,639
Sued in twenty ten for violation of personal rights by

75
00:04:48,639 --> 00:04:51,759
calling students who demanded removal of Christian symbols from a

76
00:04:51,759 --> 00:04:55,600
public school unruly brat spoiled by their parents. He asked

77
00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:57,879
for a dismissal of the case based on his immunity

78
00:04:58,319 --> 00:05:01,040
as a member of European Parliament. In twenty eleven, the

79
00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:05,160
court deny the requests plaintifts are represented by an attorney

80
00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:08,720
on a pro bono basis under the Presidential Cases program

81
00:05:08,759 --> 00:05:13,160
of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. He lost this case.

82
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:19,279
He is a fellow of Collegium Invisibilite as a professor

83
00:05:19,639 --> 00:05:23,439
of philosophy. I won't go into his views too much.

84
00:05:23,519 --> 00:05:27,240
You know, he thinks that same sex marriage is an unnecessary,

85
00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:32,439
destructive experiment. He's argued homophobia is a stick with which

86
00:05:32,480 --> 00:05:34,680
you beat people who dare to raise any kind of

87
00:05:34,680 --> 00:05:39,199
objection and a totally fictitious problem, and claim that Christians

88
00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:42,839
are the group that have been discriminated the most discriminated against.

89
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:48,439
So yeah, let's get into this. I'm just going to

90
00:05:48,519 --> 00:05:52,639
jump right in and his first chapter, I think it's

91
00:05:52,639 --> 00:05:56,720
only five chapters, and the first chapter is called history,

92
00:05:56,879 --> 00:06:00,519
So let's go. Let us begin with what seems obvious

93
00:06:00,600 --> 00:06:07,160
that communism and liberal democracy share a similar perception of history.

94
00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:12,199
Great assumption right out the gate. Right societies, as the

95
00:06:12,240 --> 00:06:15,120
supporters of the two regimes, are never tired of repeating,

96
00:06:15,519 --> 00:06:18,839
are not only changing and developing according to a linear pattern,

97
00:06:18,959 --> 00:06:22,680
but also improving. And the most convincing evidence of the improvement,

98
00:06:22,759 --> 00:06:26,480
they add is the rise of communism and liberal democracy,

99
00:06:27,120 --> 00:06:29,600
and even if a society does not become better at

100
00:06:29,639 --> 00:06:33,160
each stage and in each place, it should continue improving,

101
00:06:33,199 --> 00:06:36,680
given the inherent human desire to which both regimes claim

102
00:06:37,120 --> 00:06:42,360
to have found the most satisfactory response. So these both

103
00:06:42,399 --> 00:06:49,079
of these democracy, liberal democracy, and communism, of course have presuppositions.

104
00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:53,720
The communisty of history is well known. The simplest version,

105
00:06:53,800 --> 00:06:57,920
the one that circulated among the great unwashed in people's democracies,

106
00:06:58,160 --> 00:07:01,319
was that communism is bound to prevail everywhere, even in

107
00:07:01,319 --> 00:07:05,000
the capitalist the United States, among our distant African comrades,

108
00:07:05,399 --> 00:07:10,399
and on any other continent. It is in its Marxian vision.

109
00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:13,600
This was expressed in a more complex way. Marx and

110
00:07:13,639 --> 00:07:16,279
his colleagues did not occupy themselves with communism as the

111
00:07:16,279 --> 00:07:19,160
goal of history, and did not deliberate over details of

112
00:07:19,199 --> 00:07:22,560
the communist political machines. To be such a prospect was

113
00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:25,480
too fanciful and vague. What they focused on was an

114
00:07:25,519 --> 00:07:30,120
analysis of capitalism, capitalism and the transition from the present

115
00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:34,480
to the future system. If you listen to Thomas and

116
00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:40,920
My or watch Thomas in my episode with on Hobsmom Hobsbam,

117
00:07:41,519 --> 00:07:48,600
you will probably understand that a little clearer. The description

118
00:07:48,720 --> 00:07:52,480
of the historical process leading to communism has three main versions.

119
00:07:52,600 --> 00:07:56,480
According to the first, socialism slash communism was the final

120
00:07:56,519 --> 00:08:00,000
stage of social development, illuminated by the discovery of Marxist

121
00:08:00,199 --> 00:08:03,920
laws of history. As Engles famously said at Marx's funeral,

122
00:08:04,079 --> 00:08:06,759
just as Darwin discovered the laws of nature, so Marx

123
00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:13,120
discovered the law governing societies. According to these inexorable and

124
00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:17,800
universally binding laws, capitalism would be superseded by socialism due

125
00:08:17,839 --> 00:08:20,800
to the inherent logic of history, just as in nature,

126
00:08:20,839 --> 00:08:24,480
some species had replaced others as a result of innate

127
00:08:24,519 --> 00:08:29,519
process of natural selection. Later on, the liberals sharply attacked

128
00:08:29,519 --> 00:08:32,879
this view. Carl Popper, to give the best known example,

129
00:08:33,279 --> 00:08:36,679
argued in his books on Historicism and too Futalitarianism that

130
00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:40,879
history cannot be an object of a scientific inquiry, and

131
00:08:40,919 --> 00:08:44,720
therefore it is impossible to discover the laws of historical development.

132
00:08:45,159 --> 00:08:47,759
In fact, he said more than that. He claimed that

133
00:08:47,840 --> 00:08:51,519
those who like communists formulate such laws not only commit

134
00:08:51,559 --> 00:08:54,679
a methodological mistake, but also open up the field for

135
00:08:54,759 --> 00:08:58,200
political violence, which they feel free to use in the

136
00:08:58,279 --> 00:09:05,600
name of the future. In communist countries, historical thinking translated

137
00:09:05,639 --> 00:09:10,320
itself into a very simplistic but politically momentous formula. Communism

138
00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:14,200
would prevail everywhere, it was said, but there were countries

139
00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:17,039
that were more or less advanced on the road to it.

140
00:09:17,279 --> 00:09:20,759
The most advanced was, of course, the Soviet Union. The

141
00:09:20,919 --> 00:09:23,720
orthodox disciples of the laws of history thus surmised that

142
00:09:23,799 --> 00:09:26,240
all other countries would have to advance through the same

143
00:09:26,279 --> 00:09:30,399
stages that the Soviet Union did, even though the Soviet

144
00:09:30,519 --> 00:09:34,919
Union from the start was not an industrial powerhouse, which

145
00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:42,759
is kind of a kind of a need there the

146
00:09:42,759 --> 00:09:48,120
most advanced. Okay. Later on, this doctrinary assumption was modified

147
00:09:48,159 --> 00:09:51,639
to allow for some national specificities, which were called the

148
00:09:51,639 --> 00:09:54,919
Polish or the Romanian or the Hungarian roads to communism.

149
00:09:55,240 --> 00:10:01,480
The idea of national specificity of communism came to be

150
00:10:01,559 --> 00:10:04,240
more or less adopted in practice, but never in the

151
00:10:04,279 --> 00:10:08,679
official ideology, because it could have legitimized the unthinkable and

152
00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:13,600
unpardonable act of leaving the socialist camp. This expression is

153
00:10:13,639 --> 00:10:17,679
not the author's irony, but the term then officially used.

154
00:10:18,759 --> 00:10:21,639
The second version of transition from capitalism to communism was

155
00:10:21,679 --> 00:10:24,840
to a conscious human action. The society could be pushed

156
00:10:24,879 --> 00:10:27,639
forward to the next stage of development by the group

157
00:10:28,039 --> 00:10:31,480
that was most aware of its historical role. Who this

158
00:10:31,559 --> 00:10:34,679
group was supposed to be was a hotly discussed issue.

159
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:38,799
The most common response was, of course, the proletariat. Another

160
00:10:38,799 --> 00:10:41,399
possibility was the Communist Party, which was believed to be

161
00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:46,000
the vanguard of the proletariat. Some pointed out the peasants,

162
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:49,440
as in China, where there was no industry and therefore

163
00:10:49,559 --> 00:10:53,000
no working class, no working class. Others, as in the

164
00:10:53,039 --> 00:10:56,720
nineteen sixty eight revolution that shook the Western world, students

165
00:10:56,799 --> 00:11:01,320
and intellectuals, the constitutions of the peace post democracies ascribed

166
00:11:01,320 --> 00:11:03,799
the role to the working people of town and country,

167
00:11:04,440 --> 00:11:09,000
which in practice meant, of course, the communist party. The

168
00:11:09,039 --> 00:11:11,879
third idea for transition to communism, the most complex and

169
00:11:11,919 --> 00:11:16,000
the most difficult to translate into political categories, originated from

170
00:11:16,039 --> 00:11:20,559
specific anthropological assumptions, according to which the historical development of

171
00:11:20,639 --> 00:11:25,320
humanity was toward full self consciousness, which meant the full

172
00:11:25,399 --> 00:11:32,240
realization of human nature. Laisak Kolakowski, in his history of Marxism,

173
00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:36,200
made this insight, which he derived from earlier philosophical sources,

174
00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:39,799
the key to understanding the whole Marxist tradition. Thus, the

175
00:11:39,879 --> 00:11:42,879
quest for communism was not dictated solely by implementing a

176
00:11:42,879 --> 00:11:45,840
specific political plan or simply by a desire to win

177
00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:50,480
the struggle for social justice. All of these strategies sprang

178
00:11:50,559 --> 00:11:53,360
from a deeper source, which was to bring the human

179
00:11:53,399 --> 00:12:00,000
potential to its full flourishing. This humanistic anthropological theory, somewhat

180
00:12:00,080 --> 00:12:03,879
convoluted and expressed in an unintelligible language of German metaphysics,

181
00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:06,960
was to play a significant role in the history of Marxism.

182
00:12:07,480 --> 00:12:09,440
It was dug up from time to time, especially in

183
00:12:09,440 --> 00:12:13,080
the twentieth century when communism transformed itself into a regime

184
00:12:13,120 --> 00:12:16,440
of crime and terror, in order to rehabilitate the movement's

185
00:12:16,519 --> 00:12:20,559
human face and to contrast it in its refined anthropology

186
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:26,080
with Bolshevik socialism. The humanistic thrust was associated with the

187
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:31,360
young Marxis Marxis remaining under the influence of Hegel and

188
00:12:31,480 --> 00:12:35,559
contrasted with the old Marx Engels and Lenin, and indirectly

189
00:12:35,559 --> 00:12:38,559
with the Soviet Union and Communist parties, over which, as

190
00:12:38,600 --> 00:12:41,879
it was argued, the spirits of the old marx Angles

191
00:12:41,879 --> 00:12:47,399
and Lenin presided that these three scenarios were not separated

192
00:12:47,399 --> 00:12:50,159
by Karl Marx, but constituted the three aspects of the

193
00:12:50,159 --> 00:12:55,840
same historical process. There existed laws of history, the laws

194
00:12:55,840 --> 00:13:00,639
that were objectively determining the direction of historical change, executed

195
00:13:00,639 --> 00:13:04,159
through human activities by groups and organizations, such as communist

196
00:13:04,200 --> 00:13:08,519
parties that were increasingly aware of their historical roles. All

197
00:13:08,519 --> 00:13:11,720
of this contributed to the growing self consciousness of humanity

198
00:13:11,799 --> 00:13:15,480
on its road to the fullness of existence. Needless to say,

199
00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:19,159
in the communistic practice, the unity of the three aspects

200
00:13:19,159 --> 00:13:22,919
did not matter, because the interpretation of historicism depended not

201
00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:27,399
on the choice of philosophy but on the current party line.

202
00:13:27,639 --> 00:13:31,879
So you can see that it's confused. They're guessing which

203
00:13:31,919 --> 00:13:33,639
one of these is going to work best for where

204
00:13:33,639 --> 00:13:39,159
we are. The concept of communism as the culmination of

205
00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:43,200
history was not a mere succession of political regimes. History

206
00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:46,320
covered the entirety of human experience, including human nature, the

207
00:13:46,399 --> 00:13:50,840
human minds, social relations, law institutions, and even science and art.

208
00:13:51,240 --> 00:13:54,159
The group that took responsibility for change was clearly at

209
00:13:54,159 --> 00:13:57,600
the beginning a partisan group, almost marginal in the context

210
00:13:57,759 --> 00:14:01,679
of the then existing political system, but in the process

211
00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:04,559
of approaching the final stage of history, was growing in

212
00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:08,360
importance and finally became the only political actor capable of

213
00:14:08,399 --> 00:14:12,919
pulling together and transforming whether gradually or radically, peacefully or

214
00:14:12,919 --> 00:14:17,240
by force, everyone in everything, thus elevating the human species

215
00:14:17,279 --> 00:14:22,159
to new, previously unknown levels. A segment, party or faction

216
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:25,399
from some point in history was granted the status of

217
00:14:25,440 --> 00:14:28,360
the midwife, an architect of the whole. In the short

218
00:14:28,360 --> 00:14:32,559
stretch of one society Russian, Polish, German, and in the

219
00:14:32,600 --> 00:14:37,799
long haul of the whole of humanity start with one country,

220
00:14:37,840 --> 00:14:41,360
and then it just the dominoes starts to fall in

221
00:14:41,399 --> 00:14:44,320
other countries when they see what's happening in that country,

222
00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:50,000
or as was the case in what became in the

223
00:14:50,039 --> 00:14:55,519
Soviet Union, was they would go looking for satellites that

224
00:14:55,720 --> 00:14:58,879
were ready, that were ready for their influence, that they

225
00:14:58,879 --> 00:15:06,840
could influence within they're manufacturing and their weapons, things like that.

226
00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:12,759
From the perspective of historicism, any opposition to this process

227
00:15:12,840 --> 00:15:17,960
was extremely harmful to humanity and inconceivably stupid. So when

228
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:22,320
Thomas seven seven seven says that all of the twentieth

229
00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:28,240
century was a dialogue with Marxism, that comes from this

230
00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:33,240
attitude that from this perspective of historicism, any opposition to

231
00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:38,399
this process was extremely harmful to humanity and inconceivably stupid.

232
00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:45,639
While these Marxist movements were going on, even our in

233
00:15:45,679 --> 00:15:51,360
the United States, our intellectuals, our academics were arguing that

234
00:15:51,399 --> 00:15:55,559
this is what this is where we were headed, this

235
00:15:55,679 --> 00:15:59,320
is what we needed. And in many places it wasn't

236
00:15:59,360 --> 00:16:04,840
a conversation if you'd understand what I'm saying. What the

237
00:16:04,879 --> 00:16:08,879
what the enemy of progress defended was by definition hopelessly parochial,

238
00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:14,720
limited to one class, decadent, anachronistic, historically outdated, and degenerate.

239
00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:16,960
Sooner or later it had to give way to something

240
00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:21,240
that was universal, necessary, and inclusive of the whole of humanity.

241
00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:24,120
It was obvious to any open mind that history had

242
00:16:24,159 --> 00:16:27,039
to grant victory to communists, and that they and that

243
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:29,720
all they had to do was wait patiently for the

244
00:16:29,759 --> 00:16:38,000
signs of impending victory. Communist artists and intellectuals produced countless treatises, novels, films,

245
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:40,960
and plays showing how the New Times condemned the enemies

246
00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:43,720
of communism to the dustbin of history, and how the

247
00:16:43,879 --> 00:16:46,919
armies of socialism marched to their final victory. For an

248
00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:49,240
average citizen of a communist country, it was enough to

249
00:16:49,240 --> 00:16:51,080
take a look at a newspaper or turn on the

250
00:16:51,159 --> 00:16:57,000
radio to be convinced of this implacable truth. When you

251
00:16:57,600 --> 00:17:01,519
when you believe, when you have this, this ideology that

252
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:08,359
is going to basically create a utopia for mankind, how

253
00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:16,240
do you not it's just a given that everybody that

254
00:17:16,599 --> 00:17:20,680
this is going to happen everywhere. And if you're in

255
00:17:21,519 --> 00:17:26,319
a country like the Soviet Union, of course your newspapers,

256
00:17:26,559 --> 00:17:29,480
that's all they're going to they're going to be promoting

257
00:17:29,519 --> 00:17:33,359
that as truth. And they will be talking about other

258
00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:37,200
countries like the United States as completely decadent and how

259
00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:43,319
they treat their minorities and things like that. And yet,

260
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:46,880
despite the ardent belief in historical inevitability, the longtime prospect

261
00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:49,319
of the advent of socialism for the entire race, at

262
00:17:49,319 --> 00:17:52,279
some point drifted far away, so far that it seems

263
00:17:52,319 --> 00:17:56,720
to be taken into serious It ceased to be seriously

264
00:17:57,240 --> 00:18:02,359
taken into consideration. Might indeed eventually admit that communism was right,

265
00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:05,759
but the signs of its conquest were increasingly weaker. The

266
00:18:05,799 --> 00:18:08,440
World Revolution was not coming, and in fact was not

267
00:18:08,519 --> 00:18:11,680
even close. The failure of spreading the flame of the

268
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:15,279
Bolshevik Revolution to Western Europe closed a certain chapter in

269
00:18:15,319 --> 00:18:21,200
the communist narrative. The idea of bestowing the blessings of

270
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:24,799
communism on all people on earth was thus abandoned. Instead,

271
00:18:24,839 --> 00:18:27,079
the Party doubled its efforts in the countries that were

272
00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:30,519
lucky enough to find themselves in a communist orbit. The

273
00:18:30,559 --> 00:18:32,880
success of the new order depended on the rate and

274
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,799
extent of penetration of communism in all areas of life.

275
00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:40,200
In more concrete terms, it meant, amongst others, that the

276
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:43,440
entire society had to be transformed into a communist society,

277
00:18:43,519 --> 00:18:47,000
with all communities and institutions controlled by the Communist Party,

278
00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:51,839
the sole maker and arbiter of socialist standards. We in

279
00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,799
Poland had a socialist society, socialist schools and universities, a

280
00:18:55,839 --> 00:18:59,960
socialist family, socialist morality, and for some time even socialist

281
00:19:00,279 --> 00:19:04,440
art and socialist realism. In the socialist motherland, we had

282
00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:07,440
the socialist economy, in which people worked in a system

283
00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:13,920
that took the form of a socialist competition. What did

284
00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:16,799
such language mean in practice? First of all, it was

285
00:19:16,799 --> 00:19:19,759
a signal that everything and everyone was involved in building

286
00:19:19,799 --> 00:19:23,160
socialism and that it was not possible to evade this task.

287
00:19:23,799 --> 00:19:26,880
The person who dodged the duty could reasonably be suspected

288
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:31,680
of stupidity or bad intentions, and usually of both. Even

289
00:19:31,720 --> 00:19:35,720
relatively independent organizations, and these were few, had to submit

290
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:39,359
regular declarations to prove that they participated in work according

291
00:19:39,359 --> 00:19:41,640
to the best of their abilities, and that they certainly

292
00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:45,759
appreciated the value of the project. Sometimes this meant, especially

293
00:19:45,759 --> 00:19:49,119
in the beginning, a radical restructuring that would change everything

294
00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:52,440
and not leave anything as it was before. Such was

295
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:56,440
the experience of the universities, schools and all organizations that,

296
00:19:57,680 --> 00:20:00,519
when restructured in accordance with the nature of the communist system,

297
00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:03,839
lost their heritage and acquired a new function and a

298
00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:10,319
new identity. By now, anyone should know that part of communism.

299
00:20:11,079 --> 00:20:16,119
If everything is going to become about communism, anything that

300
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:22,319
is not about communism, like your your religious belief, your

301
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:28,279
family loyalty, your loyalty to anything, has to be abandoned,

302
00:20:28,359 --> 00:20:33,119
has to be destroyed, and you must adopt the new identity.

303
00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:37,519
For a long time, building socialism was presented as a

304
00:20:37,640 --> 00:20:41,559
race against capitalism in bourgeois society. The more socialists we

305
00:20:41,599 --> 00:20:44,839
made ourselves, the less we were capitalists bourgeois, and thus

306
00:20:44,839 --> 00:20:48,279
our ranking in the race improved. Later on, the race

307
00:20:48,359 --> 00:20:52,079
rhetoric subsided because of the leadership's weakened self confidence and

308
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:56,759
the decreasing chances of success. What remained, however, was a habit,

309
00:20:57,240 --> 00:20:59,920
even though only verbal, to oppose all that was capital

310
00:21:00,319 --> 00:21:06,440
in bourgeois because and this message was transmitted with paralyzing monotony, Communism,

311
00:21:06,519 --> 00:21:10,960
in one form or another, was always our destiny. For

312
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,480
all of us living in the camp of socialist countries,

313
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:18,759
history was already determined. The reconstruction of old bourgeois structures

314
00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:21,440
could not be expected, because the eggs from the omelet

315
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:25,480
had the eggs from which the omelet was made had

316
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:28,960
disappeared long ago. Rather, one had to look for a

317
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:31,559
place in the new communist structures and adapt them to

318
00:21:31,599 --> 00:21:36,319
the elementary requirements of reason. Even if capitalist bourgeois elements

319
00:21:36,319 --> 00:21:39,079
were to appear from time to time as necessary concessions

320
00:21:39,079 --> 00:21:42,160
in order to save the country from a dramatic disaster,

321
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:47,400
they still had to have a socialist label. Part two.

322
00:21:49,079 --> 00:21:52,559
Liberal democracy does not have, and never had, an official

323
00:21:52,599 --> 00:21:55,839
concept of history that can be attributed to a particular author.

324
00:21:56,559 --> 00:22:02,240
It does not have its Marx, Lenin or Lukx. Nevertheless,

325
00:22:02,359 --> 00:22:05,920
from the very beginning, the liberals and the democrats made

326
00:22:06,079 --> 00:22:08,599
use of a typical historical pattern by which they were

327
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:11,960
easily recognized, and which often appeared not only in the

328
00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:16,119
variety of general opinions they formulated, but also, on a

329
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:21,200
less abstract level, in popular beliefs and stereotypes professed to

330
00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:25,759
be a representation of liberal thinking and mass circulation. According

331
00:22:25,759 --> 00:22:27,559
to this view, the history of the world, in the

332
00:22:27,599 --> 00:22:30,319
case of liberalism, was the history of the struggle for

333
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:33,960
freedom against enemies who were different at various stages of history,

334
00:22:34,559 --> 00:22:37,799
but who perpetually fought against the idea of freedom itself,

335
00:22:38,039 --> 00:22:40,680
and in the case of democracy, the history of a

336
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:44,039
people's continuing struggle for power against forces that kept them

337
00:22:44,079 --> 00:22:49,640
submissive for centuries. Both of these political currents, liberal and democratic,

338
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:54,240
had therefore one enemy, a widely understood tyranny, which in

339
00:22:54,319 --> 00:22:57,720
the long history of humanity assumed a variety of additional

340
00:22:57,839 --> 00:23:01,880
distinctive costumes. Every now and then it was a monarchy,

341
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:05,400
often the Church, and at other times an oligarchy. The

342
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:08,480
main enemy of freedom was portrayed in various ways in

343
00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:12,480
different countries and different traditions. As John Stuart Mill wrote

344
00:23:12,519 --> 00:23:16,319
in The Passage. In the Passage opening his essay on Liberty.

345
00:23:16,759 --> 00:23:20,039
The struggle between liberty and authority is the most conspicuous

346
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:23,799
feature of history since the earliest times known to us.

347
00:23:25,839 --> 00:23:28,720
In England, at some point there emerged a Whig concept

348
00:23:28,759 --> 00:23:32,279
of history that was to portray the country's basic, dramatic

349
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:36,039
political history. According to this view, the history of British

350
00:23:36,079 --> 00:23:41,119
civilization was a progressing expansion of freedom and its legal safeguards,

351
00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:44,119
and the disappearance into the past of bad practices of

352
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:48,359
autocracy or arbitrary authority beyond the control of the people

353
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:52,759
in parliament. More specifically, the history of England could be presented,

354
00:23:53,079 --> 00:23:55,960
as has been done many times, as a narrative of

355
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,519
the emergence of parliament and creation of a constitutional monarchy

356
00:24:00,039 --> 00:24:03,599
with a particular legal system sanctioning it. But the Whake

357
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,440
view of history of Great Britain deserves a broader look.

358
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,480
There were also authors who treated it as a basic

359
00:24:09,559 --> 00:24:13,279
libertarian model of development. If one was going to introduce

360
00:24:13,319 --> 00:24:16,960
the idea of freedom to Western civilization, then, as they claimed,

361
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:20,119
the most clearly expressed representation of the idea of freedom

362
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,720
at its most mature, the one most rooted in law,

363
00:24:22,839 --> 00:24:27,240
institutions and customs, and in freedom mechanisms themselves was revealed

364
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,240
in the history of England. Such were the feelings of

365
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:36,400
numerous Angliphiles, from the Enlightenment thinkers to Friedrich Hayek. Naturally,

366
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,359
a question arises of what was supposed to happen and

367
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:42,000
what would happen at the end of history when freedom

368
00:24:42,039 --> 00:24:46,160
would claim victory over tyranny. There were millions of people

369
00:24:46,519 --> 00:24:51,960
communism there. For millions of people, communism offered a rousing

370
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:56,559
but actual quite vague vision. Under communism, people were promised

371
00:24:56,559 --> 00:24:58,519
to have a lot of time off from work, to

372
00:24:58,559 --> 00:25:01,599
be free from alienation, to find employment that was rewarding

373
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,960
and fulfilling, and to have the means of production socialized,

374
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,599
which would result in each person receiving according to his needs.

375
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:12,400
What all that was supposed to mean in more specific terms,

376
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:17,640
nobody knew. When Soviet communism emerged. Some said that, in fact,

377
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:20,599
it was precisely the system that the socialist profits had

378
00:25:20,599 --> 00:25:25,279
in mind. Others categorically opposed this opinion, claiming that communism

379
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:29,319
was a terrible perversion of genuine socialism, while still others

380
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:32,480
argued that the Soviet regime was merely a transitional phase,

381
00:25:33,079 --> 00:25:36,759
somewhat unpleasant, yet necessary leading to the future realization of

382
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:41,519
Soviet ideals of socialist ideals. Given the vague notions of

383
00:25:41,559 --> 00:25:44,480
what true socialism was supposed to be, each of these

384
00:25:44,519 --> 00:25:48,039
assessments was right to some extent. So you see what's

385
00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:54,839
happening here is if you have no general vision of

386
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,279
what socialism is supposed to be, and you have you

387
00:25:58,319 --> 00:26:01,680
can't even figure out even look at your ideal, which

388
00:26:01,759 --> 00:26:04,599
is the Soviet Union, and figure out are they in

389
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:10,319
the transitional phase? Are they? Where are they? Then it's

390
00:26:10,319 --> 00:26:12,240
hard to even know what it is, or to how

391
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:14,640
to run it, or to know what path you're on,

392
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,519
or if you have an end goal. If you have

393
00:26:17,559 --> 00:26:19,039
an end goal, you have to know where you are.

394
00:26:21,759 --> 00:26:24,480
The liberal vision, although less thrilling to hearts and minds,

395
00:26:24,519 --> 00:26:27,880
was a bit more concrete. The impetus of liberalism was

396
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,920
understood to lie in its cooperative feature, which was to

397
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,720
bring the human race to a higher stage of development

398
00:26:34,279 --> 00:26:38,079
than called the age of commerce. The era of conflicts,

399
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:40,759
wars and violence, it was claims, was coming to an

400
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:44,839
end and the period of cooperation, prosperity and progress was near.

401
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,519
In short, the liberal era was the era of peace. This,

402
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,079
in any case, was the way of thinking one could

403
00:26:52,079 --> 00:26:56,799
find in Adam Smith, Friedrich Bastiat, and other classical liberals.

404
00:26:57,279 --> 00:27:00,240
It does not sound particularly grand or original today, but

405
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,359
we should remember that war was a ubiquitous experience then,

406
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:06,319
and thus the prospect the peace of peace appeared tempting,

407
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,599
if almost unrealistic, and the theories that justified it had

408
00:27:10,599 --> 00:27:16,440
to appear exciting in their boldness. In a famous essay,

409
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,640
Emmanuel Kant wrote about the advent of the era of

410
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:24,119
perpetual peace among the republics. What is interesting, however, is that,

411
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:28,000
according to Kant, the blessed era could and actually should

412
00:27:28,079 --> 00:27:32,880
be preceded by a phase of enlightened absolutism. Authors such

413
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:36,079
as Spinosa, who wrote favorably about democracy, made the praise

414
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:42,720
conditional on people's first meeting high intellectual and moral requirements.

415
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:52,359
That's something that we high intellectual and moral requirements. It's

416
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:57,200
pretty much been read out of our culture, right. We

417
00:27:57,279 --> 00:28:01,160
don't promote the most intellectual, We promote the ones that

418
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:09,359
are the most deserving. Morality is subjective. What does morality

419
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:11,960
even have to do? Why would we care if the

420
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:15,960
president of the United States was moral or not, as

421
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:21,440
long as he can do the job that started with

422
00:28:21,519 --> 00:28:28,759
Clinton very openly. They believed, and it was fairly widespread

423
00:28:28,839 --> 00:28:32,240
view at the time, that tyranny, despotism, and other anachronistic

424
00:28:32,319 --> 00:28:36,119
regimes hindered the development of human capacity, stopping in at

425
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:40,400
the early stages of dependency and helplessness. Following the removal

426
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,759
of such regimes, work was to begin, partly resulting from

427
00:28:43,839 --> 00:28:47,200
spontaneous internal desire for self improvement in the mind, and

428
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,119
partly imposed by the enlightened rulers, that in the end

429
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:54,680
would generate and improve society composed of better and more

430
00:28:54,799 --> 00:29:01,240
rational individuals. A comparison between the liberal democratic concept of

431
00:29:02,279 --> 00:29:05,799
the history and that of communism shows a commonality of

432
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,319
argument as well as of images of the historical process.

433
00:29:10,359 --> 00:29:13,759
Three common threads occurring in Marx's work have their counterparts.

434
00:29:13,799 --> 00:29:17,200
In the liberal and democratic tradition. There is a belief

435
00:29:17,279 --> 00:29:21,599
in the unilateralism of history, leading inevitably and triumphantly to

436
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,599
the iror perpetual peace, or in other terms, to the

437
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:28,400
refinement of commerce and cooperation that humanity will reach due

438
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:33,000
to the victory of freedom over tyranny. Another is the

439
00:29:33,039 --> 00:29:36,640
equivalent of deliberate human action, albeit not run by the

440
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:40,680
party but by active entrepreneurs and all types of freedom fighters,

441
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:44,640
as well as to distinguish minority groups, elites and enlightened

442
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:49,559
rulers who will prepare humanity until now apathetic, enslaved, and

443
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:55,119
ignorant for the new reality. The third topic, mankind's achieving

444
00:29:55,279 --> 00:30:00,000
maturity and intellectual independence, is usually described in simpler languag

445
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:02,799
which than the German romantic used by the young Karl

446
00:30:02,839 --> 00:30:05,440
Marx and amounts to a promise of a modern society

447
00:30:05,519 --> 00:30:13,480
liberated from ignorance and superstition. Part three. Over the past

448
00:30:13,519 --> 00:30:16,039
one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, the concepts

449
00:30:16,079 --> 00:30:21,559
of communism, liberalism, and democracy evolved under the pressures of reality.

450
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,200
It seems beyond doubt, however, that the first two views

451
00:30:25,599 --> 00:30:28,200
that history has a unilateral pattern and that a better

452
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:31,240
world is shaped by conscious human activity, are still very

453
00:30:31,279 --> 00:30:34,599
much present in the modern political mind. That first sentence

454
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:37,319
is really important. Over the past one hundred and fifty

455
00:30:37,359 --> 00:30:40,079
or two hundred years, the concepts of communism, liberalism, and

456
00:30:40,119 --> 00:30:47,480
democracy evolved under the pressures of reality. Ideologically, you have

457
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:54,480
all these kind of theories libertarianism, classical liberals, even national

458
00:30:54,519 --> 00:31:01,000
socialism and communism, and all of these things start out

459
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:06,720
in a lab. It start out free from the air,

460
00:31:07,559 --> 00:31:14,160
free from contamination. But once they start to are implemented

461
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:17,640
and start to evolve under the pressures of reality, they're

462
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:20,440
not going to look like what was dreamed up from

463
00:31:20,519 --> 00:31:27,039
the beginning. That's something that you have to get in

464
00:31:27,119 --> 00:31:28,680
your head. And as soon as I got it in

465
00:31:28,759 --> 00:31:33,839
my head, mostly from reading like James Burnham, then you

466
00:31:34,039 --> 00:31:38,200
just realize, well, what do you what's most important? What's

467
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:43,839
the most important ideology? As usually it's the ideology that's

468
00:31:43,839 --> 00:31:47,200
closest to you, and it's closest to your community, and

469
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:50,920
it's who you are and where you came from. It's

470
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,680
the language you share, it's the culture you share, it

471
00:31:53,799 --> 00:31:58,960
is the history you share. Those that's what's most important.

472
00:31:59,119 --> 00:32:03,759
And will they eve under the pressures of reality? Yeah, yeah,

473
00:32:03,839 --> 00:32:10,240
But they they're eternal and their real their real life.

474
00:32:10,359 --> 00:32:12,559
They're not something that was drawn up in a lab.

475
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:20,559
They actually evolved under the pressures of reality, not from

476
00:32:20,799 --> 00:32:27,279
some grand vision of who we are, but from the

477
00:32:27,319 --> 00:32:33,200
reality of who we are. Of course, few people talk

478
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,359
of the laws of history today, mainly because this quasi

479
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,839
scientific language lost its appeal in an age when the

480
00:32:39,839 --> 00:32:44,200
concept of science changed Nevertheless, both the communists and liberal

481
00:32:44,279 --> 00:32:47,480
Democrats have always upheld and continued upheld the view that

482
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,960
history is on their side. Whoever thought that the collapse

483
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:54,000
of the Soviet system should have done away with the

484
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:59,559
belief of the inevitability of socialism was disappointed. This belief

485
00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:02,440
is a long as ever in the past, practices of socialism,

486
00:33:02,519 --> 00:33:06,200
whether Soviet or Western, are well appreciated, not because they

487
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,200
were beneficial in themselves, but because they are still believed

488
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:16,200
to have represented the correct direction of social change. One

489
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,400
can observe a similar mindset among the liberal Democrats, who

490
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,880
are also deeply convinced that they represent both the inherent

491
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:28,200
dynamics of social development and a natural tendency in human aspirations.

492
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:33,119
Both the communists and liberal Democrats, while praising what is

493
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:37,079
inevitable and objectively necessary in history, praise at the same

494
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:41,720
time the free activities of parties, associations, community groups, and

495
00:33:41,839 --> 00:33:45,440
organizations in which, as they believe, what is inevitable and

496
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:50,400
objectively necessary reveals itself. Both speak fondly of the people

497
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,079
and large social movements, while at the same time, like

498
00:33:54,119 --> 00:33:58,519
the Enlightenment philosophers, have no qualms in ruthlessly breaking social

499
00:33:58,559 --> 00:34:06,599
spontaneity and order to accelerate social reconstruction. What is social sponsaneity?

500
00:34:08,559 --> 00:34:14,840
It something that evolves naturally among groups. And what have

501
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:18,719
we seen in this country? What have we seen under

502
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:26,559
our republican representative republican form of government? There comes times

503
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:32,159
when people called social engineers seek to destroy that sponsor,

504
00:34:32,519 --> 00:34:40,599
that social identity, that social cohesion that has formed organically,

505
00:34:42,639 --> 00:34:45,079
and sorts of destroy it so that they can reform

506
00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:50,840
it in the way they think best. Admittedly, for the

507
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,840
liberal Democrats, combination of the two threads is intellectually more

508
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,960
awkward than for socialists. The very idea of liberal democracy

509
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,239
should presuppose to freedom of action, which means every man

510
00:35:02,519 --> 00:35:05,280
in every group or party should be given a free

511
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,960
choice of what they want to pursue. And yet the letter,

512
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,639
the spirit, and the practice of the liberal democratic doctrine

513
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:16,039
is far more restrictive. So long as society pursues the

514
00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:19,559
path of modernization, it must follow the path whereby the

515
00:35:19,599 --> 00:35:23,679
programs of action and targets. Programs of action and targets

516
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:28,880
other than liberal democratic lose their legitimacy. The need for

517
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,440
building a liberal democratic society thus implies to withdrawal of

518
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,800
the guarantee of freedom for those whose actions and interests

519
00:35:36,039 --> 00:35:39,159
are said to be hostile to what the liberal Democrats

520
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:49,760
conceive as the cause of freedom. How much do the

521
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:57,400
people who promote this the hardest hate Christianity, hate the family,

522
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:05,320
hate gender norms, whatever their vision is, whatever the And

523
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:11,159
when he says liberal Democrats, he's not talking about the

524
00:36:11,199 --> 00:36:15,440
Democrat party in our country. He's not talking about progressivism.

525
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:21,480
He's talking about classical liberalism. He's talking about liberalism in

526
00:36:21,639 --> 00:36:29,639
all its forms. In order to if you say, oh, well,

527
00:36:29,679 --> 00:36:33,320
I mean, everybody should be allowed to do what they want,

528
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:36,320
and you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody

529
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:42,119
else and everything, well that's that doesn't exist. Everything is

530
00:36:42,159 --> 00:36:44,840
going to affect if you have a town of people

531
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,000
and twenty percent of them decide. If you have a

532
00:36:48,159 --> 00:36:51,639
town of a thousand people and everything is peaceful, and

533
00:36:52,159 --> 00:36:55,360
you know, things start going bad economically, and you know

534
00:36:55,400 --> 00:37:01,239
twenty percent of the women are prostituting, there are people

535
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,840
who will tell you that that's not going to affect

536
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:11,079
the society at all, or they'll tell you, yeah, it'll

537
00:37:11,119 --> 00:37:14,000
affect the society. But so what, as long as nobody

538
00:37:14,079 --> 00:37:18,440
is getting hurt, as long as nobody's property or person

539
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:24,400
is being disturbed. Thus, the adoption of the historical preference

540
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:28,079
of liberal democracy makes the resulting conclusion analogous to that

541
00:37:28,199 --> 00:37:31,519
which the communists drew from the belief in the historical

542
00:37:31,559 --> 00:37:35,239
privilege of their system. Everything that exists in society must

543
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,480
become liberal democratic over time and be imbued with the

544
00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:43,639
spirit of the system, as once when all major designations

545
00:37:43,639 --> 00:37:47,519
had to be preceded by the adjective socialists or communists.

546
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,920
So now everything should be liberal democratic or liberal democratic.

547
00:37:52,119 --> 00:37:55,920
And this labeling almost automatically gives a recipient a status

548
00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:01,280
of credibility and respectability. Conversely, a few a refusal to

549
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:06,119
use such a designation, or even worse and an ostentatious

550
00:38:06,199 --> 00:38:10,800
rejection of it, condemn one to moral degradation, merciless criticism,

551
00:38:11,079 --> 00:38:20,960
and ultimately historical annihilation. That goes for republic representative reform

552
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,440
of public republic too. Okay, what did what did our

553
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:31,599
representative reform of public become? It was voting right, and

554
00:38:31,639 --> 00:38:35,559
you go along, and what happens, Well, times are changing.

555
00:38:35,639 --> 00:38:39,079
We have to let more people vote. Yeah. Ahead of

556
00:38:39,079 --> 00:38:43,239
this conversation with someone the other day and they you know,

557
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,199
they said that they were fighting. You know that Trump

558
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,679
was fighting for conservative values and I said, great, so

559
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:53,760
he's a leftist and he the person asked, how are

560
00:38:54,159 --> 00:38:57,119
how are conservative? You know? And then I asked him,

561
00:38:57,119 --> 00:38:58,960
I said what are you fighting for? And he said,

562
00:38:59,159 --> 00:39:02,159
I'm fighting for the the values that the founders of

563
00:39:02,199 --> 00:39:04,880
the country. And I said, okay, so you want white

564
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:12,159
European rule and you want only white landowners mail to vote.

565
00:39:15,079 --> 00:39:18,400
And you know, there wasn't any pushback because this person

566
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:24,239
is a thinking person. They're struggling, they're questioning their priors

567
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:30,519
and realized immediately that yeah, pretty much conservatism is in

568
00:39:30,559 --> 00:39:36,440
this country is just basically Civil rights era liberalism. But

569
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:38,280
they want to still want to go to church, be

570
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:45,880
able to go to church. That's it. That's it. It's

571
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:51,280
all leftism. They don't get it. They don't get that.

572
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:55,639
And where does that lead? Where are we? Why did

573
00:39:55,679 --> 00:40:01,679
Donald Trump get elected? Countries emerging from communism provided striking

574
00:40:01,679 --> 00:40:06,199
evidence in this regard. Belief in the normalcy of liberal democracy,

575
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,280
or in other words, the view that this system delineates

576
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:13,159
the only accepted course and method of organizing collective life

577
00:40:13,639 --> 00:40:17,639
is particularly strong. A corollarily being a corollary being that

578
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,360
in the line of development the United States and Western

579
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:23,760
Europe or at the forefront, while we the East Europeans,

580
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:28,639
are in the back. The optimal process should progress in

581
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,039
a manner in which the countries in the back catch

582
00:40:31,119 --> 00:40:35,599
up with those at the front, repeating their experiences, implementing

583
00:40:35,679 --> 00:40:41,679
their solutions, and struggling with the same challenges. Not surprisingly,

584
00:40:42,039 --> 00:40:47,119
there immediately emerged a group of self proclaimed eloquent accouches

585
00:40:47,599 --> 00:40:50,280
of the new system who from let me look that

586
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:55,960
up real quick. My apologies, I should have done this prior,

587
00:40:56,159 --> 00:41:03,880
but I did not. It is a it's a male midwife.

588
00:41:04,159 --> 00:41:08,360
That's pretty remarkable, so let me start that again. Not surprisingly,

589
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:12,519
they immediately emerged a group of self proclaimed eloquent male

590
00:41:12,639 --> 00:41:16,039
midwives of the new system, who, from the position of

591
00:41:16,039 --> 00:41:19,960
the enlightened few, took upon themselves a duty to indicate

592
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,800
the direction of change and to infuse a new liberal

593
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:29,119
democratic awareness into anachronistic minds. They were, one would be

594
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:33,440
tempted to say, the Kantian Prussian kings of liberal democracy,

595
00:41:34,039 --> 00:41:39,119
fortunately devoid of a comparable power, but undoubtedly perceiving themselves

596
00:41:39,119 --> 00:41:42,840
to have a similar role as pioneers of the enlightened future.

597
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:48,360
In their view today, also consciously or unconsciously professed by millions,

598
00:41:49,079 --> 00:41:52,440
the political system should permeate every section of public and

599
00:41:52,519 --> 00:41:56,920
private life. Analogously to the view of the erstwhile male

600
00:41:57,039 --> 00:42:01,079
midwives of the communist system. Not only should the state

601
00:42:01,079 --> 00:42:05,480
in the economy be liberal democratic or liberal democratic, but

602
00:42:05,599 --> 00:42:12,039
the entire society as well, including ethics and mores, family, churches, schools, universities,

603
00:42:12,079 --> 00:42:20,119
community organizations, culture, and even human sentiments and aspirations the people.

604
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:24,360
Structures thoughts that exist outside the liberal democratic pattern are

605
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:28,400
deemed outdated, backward looking useless, but at the same time

606
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:33,840
extremely dangerous as preserving the remnants of old authoritarianisms. Some

607
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,000
may still be tolerated for some time, but as anyone

608
00:42:37,119 --> 00:42:39,960
with a minimum of intelligence is believed to know, sooner

609
00:42:40,079 --> 00:42:42,639
or later they will end up in the dust bin

610
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:49,480
of history. Because progress needs because we're progressing, we're progressing,

611
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:53,199
we're getting better, and all we need is the right

612
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:57,760
economics to do it. All we need is the right

613
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,079
form of leadership to do it, or all we need

614
00:43:01,199 --> 00:43:05,679
is no leadership at all to do it, as long

615
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:13,159
as it's liberal and democratic. Because, believe me, even in

616
00:43:13,199 --> 00:43:20,880
my former anarco capitalist self, everyone's going to have to agree.

617
00:43:21,119 --> 00:43:24,000
Anyone who speaks out is going to be looked down upon,

618
00:43:24,199 --> 00:43:28,360
is going to be marginalized, is going to suffer some

619
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:35,719
kind of, as has been described, some kind of shame,

620
00:43:36,039 --> 00:43:42,199
some kind of ostracism from the group because you don't

621
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:46,880
believe like we do, and we're going to keep this

622
00:43:47,119 --> 00:43:53,519
like this, whether you like it or not. Their continued

623
00:43:53,559 --> 00:43:56,599
existence will most likely threaten the liberal democratic process, and

624
00:43:56,639 --> 00:43:59,400
therefore they should be treated with the harshness they deserve.

625
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,880
Once one sends one's opponents to the dust pint in history,

626
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:09,719
any debate with them becomes super superfluous. Why waste time,

627
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,760
they think, arguing with someone whom the march of history

628
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:17,360
condemned to nothingness and oblivion. Why should anyone seriously enter

629
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:19,719
into a debate with the opponent who represents what is

630
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:24,199
historically indefensible and what will sooner or later perish. People

631
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:28,000
who are not there are people's you know, there's still

632
00:44:28,039 --> 00:44:31,119
people out there who want to live around people who

633
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:37,400
look and sound like them. These I thought we'd put

634
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:44,119
those people in the dustbin of history. Ugh. People who

635
00:44:44,119 --> 00:44:47,039
are not liberal democrats are to be condemned, laughed at,

636
00:44:47,079 --> 00:44:50,599
and repelled not debated. Debating with them is like debating

637
00:44:50,599 --> 00:44:55,360
with alchemist or geocentrists. Again, an analogy with communism immediately

638
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:59,760
comes to mind. The opponents of communism, example, those who

639
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,400
will leads free market to be superior to planned economy,

640
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,519
where it best enemies to be crushed or laughing stocks

641
00:45:05,519 --> 00:45:09,199
to be humiliated. How else could any reasonable soul react

642
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:14,440
to such anachronistic, dangerous ravings of a deluded mind. Nowadays,

643
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,000
if you're like, well, I don't want either a free

644
00:45:17,079 --> 00:45:21,039
market or a planned economy, both sides look at you

645
00:45:21,119 --> 00:45:26,440
like you're insane. After all, in a liberal democracy, everyone

646
00:45:26,519 --> 00:45:29,599
knows and only a fuller fanatic can deny that. Sooner

647
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,719
or later, a family will have to liberalize or democratize,

648
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,559
which means that the paternal authority has to crumble. The

649
00:45:35,639 --> 00:45:39,400
children will quickly liberate themselves from the parental tutelage, and

650
00:45:39,559 --> 00:45:45,559
family relationships will increasingly become negotiatory and less authoritarian. These

651
00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:49,360
are the inevitable consequences of the civilizational and political development,

652
00:45:50,199 --> 00:45:54,199
giving people more and more opportunities for independence. Moreover, these

653
00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:58,239
processes are essentially beneficial because they enhance equality and freedom

654
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,920
in the world. There is no legitimate reason to defend

655
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,519
the traditional family. The very name evokes the smell of mothballs,

656
00:46:05,679 --> 00:46:08,639
and whoever does it is self condemned to a losing position,

657
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:13,719
and an addition, perpetrates harm by delaying the process of change.

658
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:17,079
The traditional family was after all part of the old despotism.

659
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:22,800
With its demise, the despotic system loses its base. You

660
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:29,960
get that the traditional system, the traditional family was after

661
00:46:30,039 --> 00:46:35,039
all part of the despotism. With its demise the despotic base,

662
00:46:35,559 --> 00:46:42,480
the despotic system loses its base. The liberalization and democratization

663
00:46:42,599 --> 00:46:46,199
of the family are therefore to be supported wholeheartedly and energetically,

664
00:46:46,519 --> 00:46:49,679
mainly by appropriate legislation that will give children more power,

665
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:53,280
for example, allowing increasingly younger girls to have abortions without

666
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,599
parental consent, or providing children with legal instruments to combat

667
00:46:56,639 --> 00:46:59,320
their claims against their parents, or depriving parents of their

668
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,679
rights and transferring those rights to the government and the courts.

669
00:47:03,679 --> 00:47:07,000
I mean this is he wrote this before the whole

670
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:09,159
transgender thing blew up, But I'm sure that would have

671
00:47:09,159 --> 00:47:14,599
been in there sometimes. To be sure, these things can

672
00:47:14,679 --> 00:47:17,719
lead to excessive measures perpetrated by the state law and

673
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,760
public opinion. But the general tendency is good and there

674
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:25,159
is no turning back from it. Similarly, in a liberal democracy,

675
00:47:25,199 --> 00:47:27,360
everyone knows and only a full or a fanatic and

676
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:30,360
deny that schools have to become more and more liberal

677
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:34,000
and democratic for the same reasons. Again, this inevitable process

678
00:47:34,039 --> 00:47:36,800
requires that the state, the law, and public opinion harshly

679
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,760
counteract against all stragglers, those who are trying to put

680
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,440
a stick in the spokes of progress. Dreamers who imagine

681
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:45,559
that in the twenty first century we can return to

682
00:47:45,599 --> 00:47:48,519
the school as it existed in the nineteenth Pasts who

683
00:47:48,559 --> 00:47:50,760
want to build an old time museum in the forward

684
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:54,840
rushing world, and so on and so forth. Similar reasoning

685
00:47:54,840 --> 00:48:00,599
can be applied to churches, communities, and associations. Result, liberal

686
00:48:00,679 --> 00:48:04,840
democracy has become an all permeating system. There is no,

687
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:08,440
or in any case cannot be, any segment of reality

688
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,280
that would be art, that would be arguably and acceptably

689
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:15,239
non liberal democratic. Whatever happens in school must follow the

690
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:19,039
same patterns in politics. In politics, the same patterns in art,

691
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:21,920
and in art, the same pattern as in the economy,

692
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,440
the same problems, the same mechanisms, the same type of thinking,

693
00:48:25,599 --> 00:48:29,039
the same language, the same habits. Just as in real socialism,

694
00:48:29,119 --> 00:48:31,800
so in real democracy it is difficult to find some

695
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:38,639
non doctrinal, doctrinal slice of the world, a non doctrinal image, narrative, tone,

696
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:41,239
or thought. And for those who do not believe that

697
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,880
this would have anything to do, anything would be apply.

698
00:48:46,199 --> 00:48:50,440
In a society such as you know you do you

699
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:56,000
like a libertarian society, Let a bunch of traad families

700
00:48:56,039 --> 00:48:59,800
start getting together and building, building their own community and

701
00:49:00,159 --> 00:49:05,559
deciding and having people watch the pushback, because you'll have

702
00:49:05,639 --> 00:49:08,400
pushback from people who, if they start building a community,

703
00:49:08,639 --> 00:49:11,880
will start thinking that they're looking to build political power,

704
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,880
or they're willing to or they're trying to create their

705
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:20,199
own state. And see what happens. See if you don't

706
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:28,079
feel like you're threatened, you will, because eventually they will,

707
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:31,719
because people will start coming for them. People will start

708
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,840
threatening them. People will start saying that they're they're not

709
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:38,960
following the same they're not following the same path as us,

710
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:43,480
and that they may start influencing other people, and they'll

711
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:45,960
start going after them. When they start going after them,

712
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:49,000
they're going to seek to protect themselves. And the best

713
00:49:49,039 --> 00:49:53,840
way to protect yourself is to build a state is

714
00:49:53,880 --> 00:50:01,199
to create a government to protect yourself, which is why

715
00:50:02,519 --> 00:50:08,880
anarchism can't work. In a way, liberal democracy presents a

716
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:15,079
somewhat more insidious ideological mystification than communism. Under communism, it

717
00:50:15,119 --> 00:50:17,400
was clear that communism was to prevail in every cell

718
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:20,199
of social life, and that the Communist party was empowered

719
00:50:20,199 --> 00:50:22,920
with the instruments of brutal coercion and propaganda to get

720
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:26,480
the job done. Under liberal democracy, such official guardians of

721
00:50:26,519 --> 00:50:31,280
constitutional doctrine do not exist, which paradoxically makes the overarching

722
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:34,039
nature of the system less tangible, but at the same

723
00:50:34,079 --> 00:50:38,199
time more profound and difficult to reverse. It is the

724
00:50:38,199 --> 00:50:42,239
people themselves who have eventually come to accept, often on

725
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:46,559
a pre intellectual level, that eliminating the institutions incompatible with

726
00:50:46,639 --> 00:50:53,280
liberal democratic principles constitutes a wise and necessary step. Forty

727
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,559
years ago, at the time when the period of liberal

728
00:50:56,599 --> 00:51:00,920
democratic monopoly was fast approaching, Daniel Bell the Popular Social

729
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,079
Writers set forth the thesis that a modern society is

730
00:51:04,159 --> 00:51:08,639
characterized by the disjunction of three realms social, economic, and political.

731
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,360
They develop so, he claimed, at different rates, have different

732
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:16,760
dynamics and purposes, and are subject to different mechanisms and influences.

733
00:51:17,519 --> 00:51:21,840
This image of structural diversity that Bell saw coming was attractive,

734
00:51:22,119 --> 00:51:25,119
or rather would have been attractive if true, But the

735
00:51:25,119 --> 00:51:29,480
opposite happened. No gisjunction occurred. Rather, everything came to be

736
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:34,440
joined under the liberal democratic formula the economy, politics, and society,

737
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:41,800
and as it turns out culture Part four. The very

738
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:44,840
idea of the political regimes come into being through historical

739
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:48,079
necessity must seem dubious, not to say ludicrous, to any

740
00:51:48,159 --> 00:51:53,719
sane mind. Unquestionably, an infinite number of additional parameters, including

741
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:57,760
yet unknown and unexpected ones, may change the direction of history.

742
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,199
Even if one is deeply attached to libal democracy, one

743
00:52:01,199 --> 00:52:03,760
should always keep in mind that there are many worthy

744
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:08,400
goals inconsistent with the movements, mechanisms, and traditions, that a

745
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,760
lot of people can or should pursue, because they enrich

746
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:18,599
our experience and have accompanied human strivings since time immemorial. Besides,

747
00:52:18,639 --> 00:52:21,800
once we grant and the liberal Democrats usually do, that

748
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:27,000
progress has been made possible by humans incessant pursuit of creativity, inventiveness,

749
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,840
power of imagination, and freedom of thought, and that these

750
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,039
qualities have often changed the course of history. Why should

751
00:52:33,039 --> 00:52:35,679
we all of a sudden acquiesce to a complacent notion

752
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:38,320
that the same qualities cannot lead us beyond the liberal

753
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:43,400
democraphic horizon. The so called Hegelian sting, or to put

754
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:47,599
it simply, veneration of historical necessity, has been well described,

755
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:54,199
mainly by Syslot Mislos in The Captive Mind, which analyzes

756
00:52:54,360 --> 00:53:03,719
mechanisms of the communist servility of Polish intellectuals. The author himself,

757
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:06,159
let it be noted, was likewise massively stung, and for

758
00:53:06,159 --> 00:53:09,480
the rest of his life struggled painfully with the vicisitudes

759
00:53:09,519 --> 00:53:14,000
of historicism, which he never entirely abandoned. The manner of

760
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:17,159
thinking that made artisan intellectuals scouts out to the communist

761
00:53:17,199 --> 00:53:20,639
creed and subsequently to invest all their intellectual and artistic

762
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:28,079
capital to legitimize as atrocities which Milosch recreated accurately captures

763
00:53:28,119 --> 00:53:31,400
an important, if not the entire, aspect of the treason

764
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:37,159
of the intelligentsia into ittalitarian systems. It seems that the

765
00:53:37,159 --> 00:53:40,480
idolatry of liberal democracy which nowadays we observe among the

766
00:53:40,519 --> 00:53:44,159
same groups that so easily succumbed to its totalitarian temptation.

767
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:49,760
Their angry rejection of even the slightest criticism. They're inadvertent

768
00:53:49,920 --> 00:53:53,280
acceptance of the obvious maladies of the system, their silencing

769
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:56,360
of dissenters, their absolute support for them. Monopoly of one

770
00:53:56,400 --> 00:53:59,679
ideology and one political system are part of the same

771
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:04,280
disease to which apparently intellectuals and artists are particularly susceptible.

772
00:54:05,119 --> 00:54:08,639
It thus seems that the mental enslavement described by Milosh

773
00:54:09,599 --> 00:54:13,280
was not a single occurrence occasioned by a short lived

774
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:18,000
infatuation with communism, but an inherent handicap of the modern mind.

775
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:22,679
One can imagine two opposing mindsets represented by two attitudes,

776
00:54:23,079 --> 00:54:25,320
that of an old man and that of a younger.

777
00:54:25,679 --> 00:54:28,360
The old man, with his rich experience, is likely to

778
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:32,079
be wary of further fundamental changes, perceiving them to be

779
00:54:32,159 --> 00:54:36,639
an ever recurrent symptom of immaturity. The youngster, full of energy,

780
00:54:36,639 --> 00:54:39,760
will enthusiastically get involved in changing the world for the

781
00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:41,880
better according to the plan that he believes to be

782
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:45,519
superior to all previous ones. The old man will prefer

783
00:54:45,599 --> 00:54:50,320
to remain meditative, prompting young people to learn from the

784
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:54,079
older and wiser, calling for humility, prudence, and discretion. The

785
00:54:54,119 --> 00:54:57,079
youngster is active, happy to instruct others, full of pride

786
00:54:57,119 --> 00:55:00,400
and his responses bold in action, dreaming of trans discretion

787
00:55:00,519 --> 00:55:03,599
and admiring it in others. The old man will be

788
00:55:03,599 --> 00:55:06,320
inclined to think that everything has already been done. The

789
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:09,800
young man believes that he, himself, society, and perhaps even

790
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:14,400
humanity are currently facing a unique opportunity in history. The

791
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:16,239
old man will be guided by the image of a

792
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,239
golden age. Everything used to be better until a lasting

793
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:22,719
and deepening decline that most likely stems from corruption of

794
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:25,639
human nature. The youngster looks into the future and believes

795
00:55:25,639 --> 00:55:27,639
that all the best things for the human racer yet

796
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:31,840
to come, in that the history of humanity, despite occasional calamities,

797
00:55:32,199 --> 00:55:35,119
shows a steady progress. The old man is balanced in

798
00:55:35,159 --> 00:55:38,519
his reactions and assessments, looking for the appropriate courses of

799
00:55:38,599 --> 00:55:41,719
action in the world, which, according to him, was founded

800
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:46,360
on human error, ignorance, poor recognition and reality, and premature ventures.

801
00:55:47,679 --> 00:55:51,719
The youngster has an excitable nature, moving from desperation to euphoria,

802
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:58,360
eagerly identifying numerous enemies whose destruction he valuably advocates, and

803
00:55:58,519 --> 00:56:02,320
equally happy to engage in collaborative activities with others because

804
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:05,760
he believes the world is full of rational people. The

805
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:08,400
old man says that, given the weaknesses of the human race,

806
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:12,639
institutions and communities, family, schools, and churches should be protected

807
00:56:12,679 --> 00:56:15,159
because over the centuries they have proven themselves to be

808
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:19,039
tools to tame humans' evil inclinations. The young man will

809
00:56:19,119 --> 00:56:21,760
argue that such institutions and communities needs to be radically

810
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:24,599
exposed to light, air it out, and transformed because they

811
00:56:24,599 --> 00:56:28,199
are fossils of past injustices. The old man is a

812
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:31,519
loner who believes that only such an attitude as his

813
00:56:31,679 --> 00:56:35,000
can protect the integrity of the mind. The youngster eagerly

814
00:56:35,119 --> 00:56:39,679
joins the herd, enjoying the uproar, mobilization, and direct action.

815
00:56:41,159 --> 00:56:44,480
So here we have contrasting in where's the the one

816
00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:47,360
that meant the most to me? The old man says that,

817
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:51,519
given the weaknesses of the human race, institutions and communities, families, schools,

818
00:56:51,519 --> 00:56:55,320
and churches should be protected because over the centuries they

819
00:56:55,320 --> 00:57:00,639
have proven themselves to be tools to tame human evil inclinations. Yes, families, schools,

820
00:57:00,679 --> 00:57:05,159
and churches keep people grounded, keep people together, keep people

821
00:57:05,199 --> 00:57:10,639
as part of a group. It is individualism, as we

822
00:57:12,119 --> 00:57:19,679
learned from the last book, true believer. Individualism is what

823
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:29,280
causes breakdowns and inevitably the reaction to go back to collectivism,

824
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:33,559
to the families, the schools, and the churches, because it's

825
00:57:33,599 --> 00:57:35,960
not that they're getting it wrong. It's not that they

826
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:39,559
haven't just come up with the right formula yet, but

827
00:57:39,639 --> 00:57:42,840
the right formula was there all along. Families, schools, and

828
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:49,320
churches for centuries have been used to tame humans' evil inclinations.

829
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:57,000
Can you argue against that? When in light of this

830
00:57:57,119 --> 00:57:59,400
dichotomy we take a look at the modern mind, we

831
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:03,559
might say, the risk of simplification, that it resembles that

832
00:58:03,599 --> 00:58:06,119
of a youngster much more than that of an old man.

833
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:10,599
This mind, equipped with a variety of assumptions and technical means,

834
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:14,480
ventured a huge attempt to reform knowledge, society, and individual people.

835
00:58:15,039 --> 00:58:17,599
The most obvious of his assumptions is that the purpose

836
00:58:17,599 --> 00:58:20,320
of man's existence in the world is to change things.

837
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:25,719
The youngster, relative relevant to his age, arms this assumption

838
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:35,559
with arrogance, self indulgence, and irresponsibility. See the Hoffer would

839
00:58:35,639 --> 00:58:39,519
say that the youngster is just somebody who he can't make.

840
00:58:39,559 --> 00:58:42,440
He doesn't see that he can make it as an individual,

841
00:58:43,079 --> 00:58:50,199
so he's going to go join a group no, no,

842
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:55,519
more more or less. He's if he's going to join

843
00:58:55,559 --> 00:58:59,159
a group, it's going to be one that seeks to

844
00:58:59,199 --> 00:59:04,039
tear down Yeah, the tear down the from a left standpoint,

845
00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:07,480
in a in a society such as this, in a

846
00:59:07,559 --> 00:59:10,679
society such as ours, he's going to join a group

847
00:59:10,719 --> 00:59:14,599
that's going to seek to tear down the past. And

848
00:59:14,639 --> 00:59:16,760
the way you can see that that is what this

849
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:20,639
society that we are in is is anytime one pops

850
00:59:20,719 --> 00:59:27,039
up that talks about restoring the past, they are called Nazis,

851
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:40,599
reactionaries backwards. Every every phrase that has phobe has phobe

852
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:50,159
at the end of it. Yeah, yu, groups or what

853
00:59:50,280 --> 00:59:56,960
protects us groups are what protects society and liberal democracy

854
00:59:57,760 --> 01:00:03,679
classical liberalism seeks to break down those groups, even though

855
01:00:03,719 --> 01:00:05,800
they might say, no, we're okay with those groups. As

856
01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:09,880
long as you're not hurting anyone else, The individuals will

857
01:00:09,880 --> 01:00:16,679
eventually come for them. That's just history, and how are

858
01:00:16,679 --> 01:00:22,679
you going to stop people from doing it? The socialist

859
01:00:22,679 --> 01:00:25,440
and a liberal democrat interpretation of history is typical of

860
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:28,840
a youngster's. It delivers the promise of great transformation. It

861
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:33,920
is bold, absolute, simplistic, easily stimulated by optimistic projects. It

862
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:36,400
is only natural that so many intellectuals have been at

863
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:39,199
the service of this promise, at least since the Renaissance era,

864
01:00:39,639 --> 01:00:43,679
worshiping revolutions and plans for new ones to the younger.

865
01:00:43,760 --> 01:00:47,320
Communism once represented itself as the greatest, most comprehensive, and

866
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:50,880
most sublime idea for such a transformation. Another idea at

867
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:53,920
the time was fascism, which was close to socialism in

868
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:57,760
style at least, and appeared in several national versions, of

869
01:00:57,800 --> 01:01:01,360
which the Italian interpretation won the greats to claim as

870
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:07,199
a manifestation of youth. The parliamentary systems were not so

871
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:11,440
exalted as part of various national traditions and institutions. They

872
01:01:11,480 --> 01:01:14,000
preserved their common sense and fared well at a time

873
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:17,360
when half the world had gone mad for communism fascism

874
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:21,159
in German national socialism, and surrendered to bloody excesses with

875
01:01:21,239 --> 01:01:23,320
the approval of the masses in a large part of

876
01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:27,039
the elites. At some point, however, when they became the

877
01:01:27,039 --> 01:01:31,719
model of democracy and liberal democracy, everything changed. Suddenly. It

878
01:01:31,760 --> 01:01:35,119
turned out that liberal democracy was the global pioneer of progress,

879
01:01:35,199 --> 01:01:38,719
and that it, rather than its predecessors or competitors, was

880
01:01:38,760 --> 01:01:41,519
to bring humanity to a stage of development that had

881
01:01:41,559 --> 01:01:46,639
only been dreamed of for centuries, and intellectual and a

882
01:01:46,719 --> 01:01:51,039
liberal democracy faces a similar dilemma to that to the

883
01:01:51,079 --> 01:01:54,599
one that once troubled his fellow socialists. Whether to join

884
01:01:54,639 --> 01:01:57,599
the vast torrent of history or to remain on the sidelines,

885
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:00,800
To continue to be a vigorous youngster transfer forming the world,

886
01:02:01,159 --> 01:02:03,159
or to change into a grumpy old man who does

887
01:02:03,199 --> 01:02:06,639
not like much and whose wisdom has little social effect.

888
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:09,800
For many, the choice turned out to be not so

889
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:13,280
difficult after all. Moving with the flow the socialist and

890
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:18,039
liberal democrat gives an intellectual more gives an intellectual more power,

891
01:02:18,400 --> 01:02:20,559
or at least an illusion of it. He feels like

892
01:02:20,599 --> 01:02:23,840
a part of a powerful global machine of transformation. He

893
01:02:23,880 --> 01:02:26,679
not only understands the process of change better than others

894
01:02:26,719 --> 01:02:29,360
and knows how to organize the world, but also, by

895
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:33,920
looking at the surrounding reality, can easily diagnose which phenomenon, communities,

896
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:38,000
and institutions will disappear and when resisting will have to

897
01:02:38,039 --> 01:02:41,199
be eliminated for the sake of the future. Therefore, he

898
01:02:41,280 --> 01:02:44,880
reacts with indignant pity toward anyone who wants to stop

899
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,679
the unstoppable. He indulges in a favorite occupation of the youngster,

900
01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:51,360
to criticize what is in the name of what will be,

901
01:02:52,000 --> 01:02:55,000
but what a large part of humanity, less perceptive and

902
01:02:55,079 --> 01:02:59,719
less intellectual intelligent than himself fails to see. The youngster

903
01:03:00,039 --> 01:03:03,280
it committed to his liberal democracy is, however, somewhat different

904
01:03:03,320 --> 01:03:07,119
from his communist comrade. Communism was entirely a figur into

905
01:03:07,159 --> 01:03:09,599
the imagination of theorists who put it in practice as

906
01:03:09,639 --> 01:03:12,920
a big and brutal experiment against the will of the majority,

907
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:16,199
while liberal democracy is no invention, but a system that

908
01:03:16,280 --> 01:03:19,119
boasts an impressive track record and has grown out of

909
01:03:19,119 --> 01:03:31,239
the community commute. That word is killing me community cumul

910
01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:36,760
cumulative experience of generations. I guess to the point where

911
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:38,960
I'm reading, where I'm reading so much and words just

912
01:03:39,679 --> 01:03:43,800
disappear on me. At a time when death camps, gulag's

913
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:47,079
five year plans, and political police regimes are created, many

914
01:03:47,119 --> 01:03:51,920
Western countries preserved that which is difficult to overestimate and

915
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:57,760
always worth defending, parliamentarism and a multi party system and

916
01:03:57,800 --> 01:04:01,159
the rule of law. This youngster, however, fails to notice

917
01:04:01,159 --> 01:04:03,519
that at some point the system, or rather the arrangement

918
01:04:03,559 --> 01:04:08,280
of systems covering many variants, become haughty, dogmatic, and dedicated

919
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:11,679
not so much to facilitating the resolution of political conflicts

920
01:04:12,039 --> 01:04:16,440
as to transforming society and human nature. It lost its

921
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:19,960
prior restraint and caution, created powerful tools to influence every

922
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:23,239
aspect of life, and set in motion institutions and laws,

923
01:04:23,599 --> 01:04:28,440
frequently yielding to the temptations to count conduct ideological warfare

924
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:33,960
against disobedient citizens and groups. Falling into a trap of

925
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:37,639
increasing self glorification, the system begins to define itself more

926
01:04:37,679 --> 01:04:41,639
and more against its supposed opposition, all sorts of nonliberal

927
01:04:41,679 --> 01:04:45,480
and non democratic enemies, whose elimination was considered a necessary

928
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:49,920
condition to achieve the next level of ideological purity. The

929
01:04:50,039 --> 01:04:55,039
multi party system was gradually losing its pluralistic character, parliamentarism

930
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:58,000
was becoming a vehicle of tyranny in the hands of

931
01:04:58,039 --> 01:05:02,719
ideological of theological constitute of majority, and the role of

932
01:05:02,800 --> 01:05:08,239
law was changing into judicial arbitrariness. Thus, the youngster's mind,

933
01:05:08,960 --> 01:05:13,880
in its previous embodiment, had flirted with communism canal without

934
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:17,880
any resistance, transfer its affections to liberal democracy, finding in

935
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:20,679
it a source of similar ecstasy, but reassurance that this

936
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:24,119
system had never resorted and never would resort to the

937
01:05:24,199 --> 01:05:28,440
drastic measures known from the history of communism. Confident in

938
01:05:28,480 --> 01:05:32,199
the humanistic values of his new liberal democratic creed, he

939
01:05:32,280 --> 01:05:36,440
infuses the old political institutions with new energy and injects

940
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:40,639
them with new ideological content, while remaining notoriously unaware that

941
01:05:40,719 --> 01:05:44,239
under new circumstances, these institutions are no longer what they

942
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:48,920
once were, and that they now serve a new purpose.

943
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:57,039
I think I'll stop right there. So, yeah, I hope

944
01:05:57,079 --> 01:05:59,440
you're enjoying this so far. A lot of this he

945
01:05:59,679 --> 01:06:06,719
writes and such, probably because he's I don't know. This

946
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:09,559
was written in Polish originally, I believe, and then it

947
01:06:09,599 --> 01:06:12,960
was translated, and I think it's very he writes in

948
01:06:13,000 --> 01:06:15,719
a way that's very easy. I think a lot of

949
01:06:15,760 --> 01:06:19,079
the first part where he's talking about communism basically some

950
01:06:19,079 --> 01:06:21,199
people can get lost. But once you get past that,

951
01:06:22,239 --> 01:06:24,800
you start to see exactly where he's going with it.

952
01:06:25,440 --> 01:06:29,079
And believe me, this gets it gets more and more

953
01:06:29,119 --> 01:06:30,639
where you're just your eyes are going to be open

954
01:06:30,679 --> 01:06:32,920
to Oh yeah, how could I not see this before?

955
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:38,480
So yeah, that's it. I'll be back for part two

956
01:06:38,480 --> 01:06:40,920
in a couple of days. Thank you for tuning in.

957
01:06:41,639 --> 01:06:42,719
Take care by