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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone

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back to part eight. In my reading of Reisa Lugutos

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The dmon in Democracy, we are in the middle of

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chapter four and we're in part four and Chapter four

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is called titled ideology, So let's go the ubiquitous ideology

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in the communists and liberal democratic societies drag people farther

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and farther from reality. One of the most unpleasant aspects

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of living under communism was an awareness that we were

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always surrounded by non reality, i e. Artifacts fabricated by

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the propaganda machine whose aim was to prevent us from

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seeing reality as it was. Oftentimes it was a fraud

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or simply a suppression of information about, for example, the

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state of the economy, or who murdered whom at Katyan,

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or what the fraternal parties agreed on during the summit,

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But it was something more sinister than that. The entire

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atmosphere was sultry because we could not free ourselves from

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a feeling that we were living among phantoms in the

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world of illusion, or rather a delusion. Back in twenty twenty,

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when COVID was happening, there was this some of us noticed,

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there was this mass moving back of people going back

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to church, or people who had never been to church

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before going to find churches, and I believe it was

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their way of trying to find where reality was or

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it was a way of looking to something historically that exists,

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did that was real, was something you could see lasted

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for hundreds even thousands of years, and it wasn't. Twenty

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twenty unleashed what could be called fantoms in a world

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of illusion, and I think a lot of people were like,

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I need something, I need a solid foundation, And a

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lot of people decided to abandon their delusions, whether that

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was political ideology or what have you. And what's funny

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is a lot of people make their political ideology into

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their morality. So they saw people leaving their political ideologies

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as abandoning morality, which literally makes no sense. If your

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politics is your morality, you've completely lost the plot. You're

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living in a world of illusion. Among fantoms, people went

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and they tried to find something real or something historic.

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We were surrounded by entities whose reality seemed precarious, but

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whose power of influence was enormous. Party working class revisionists, zionists,

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antisocialist forces, extremist elements, five year plan work, stoppages, forces

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of imperialism, socialist renewal, leading role of the party, fraternal parties,

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domestic export. All these terms and many others impossible to

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translate into English. Were supposed to describe real facts, processes,

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and institutions, but were actually political declarations. It was impossible

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to conduct any serious debate about the real issues because

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the language served to conceal, rather than to reveal. Whoever

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used those keywords automatically gave his consent to this function

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of the language and agreed to take the role of

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participant in a linguistic political ritual, and thereby to declare

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his loyalty. The more participants, the noisier the political rights,

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the more impressive seemed to be the performance of the

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entire political system in the eyes of those whose minds

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are limited by the choice of the official language. If

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you don't openly say no to the ruling political order,

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to the spirit, to an evil spirit of the age,

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to the post war consensus, you're giving it its power.

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You're allowing it to remain powerful. The first step in

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breaking loyalty was to abandon this language in order to

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see the world as it was without the meant a

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mediation of fraudulent words or the false hypothesis that generated

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They generated this eye opening experience of a break with

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the ideological masks and the elation one felt when touching

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the real world was well depicted in Polish literature in

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the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. Whoever lived in the

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atmosphere of those days could not forget this blissful enjoyment

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of speaking, seeing, and feeling the truth, and how after

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years of linguistic deception, it brought a breath of a

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breath of life and a reviving influx of fresh air,

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not only to those who dared to reject the language

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of the ideology, but also eventually to the entire community.

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The mere description of the world sincere and truthful had

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an electrifying effect on people's souls, discovering the richness of

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human experience, bringing back to the memory long forgotten facts,

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the old ideas being revived and restored to their former nobility,

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Recognizing a variety of styles and forms of expression, all

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of these awkward, All of these awakened people from their

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ideological slumber. Many of them also understood that their newly

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rediscovered desire to see the world as it would was

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needed to be preceded by the cleaning away of all

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the contaminating dirt that the decades of ideology had left

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on their souls. The collapse of communism and the entry

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of the liberated countries into the global system of liberal

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democracy was supposed to intensify and consolidate this change. Europe,

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or as it was often said, the West, was believed

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to be founded on objectivism and truth. After all, it

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was there where renowned institutions of research and education had

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flourished for centuries, where free media and free journalists had

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been giving the world at large free and unbiased information,

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where science and technology had been developing an incomparable rate

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and with incomparable successes. And finally, where for decades people

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had been blessed with democracy, that is, a system with

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an unbuilt mechanism that allows different points of view to

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act as correctives to another to one another's one sidedness.

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We thought, or rather we believed, that all these magnificent

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things would be would have been impossible without long and

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institutionalized traditions of respect for the truth and endowing the

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human mind with a desire for objectivity and an inculcated

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aversion to ideology. Those of us who had such high

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hopes were met with disappointment, or met disappointment if the

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reality revealed itself to us. In Eastern Europe, It was

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short lived and without consequences. Very quickly, the world became

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hidden under a new ideological shell, and the people became

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hostage to another version of the new speak, but with

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similar ideological mystifications. Obligatory rituals of loyalty and condemnations were revived,

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this time with a different object of worship and a

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different enemy. The new commissars of the language appeared and

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were given powerful prerogatives, and, just as before, mediocrites assumed

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their self proclaimed authority to track down ideological apostasy and

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condemn the orthodox the unorthodox, all of course, for the

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glory of the new system and the good of the

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new Man media. More refined than under. Communism performed a

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similar function, standing at the forefront of the great transformation,

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leading to a better world and spreading the corruption of

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the language to the entire social organism and all itsels.

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Communism as an ideology, an ideology that you had to

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live every day, that you had to speak, that you

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had to think, that you had to outwardly wear, was

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replaced with another liberalism, simple as that in order to

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be able to give a fairly accurate description of reality,

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one has to be somehow detached from it. And it

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is precisely this condition that the ideology invalidated by transforming

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the majority of people, whether they agreed or not, into

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participants in the World War it itself created. Practically, everyone

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felt coarse not only to take the right side, but

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to reassert his partisanship by surrendering to all the necessary

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language rituals without any critical thought or disarming doubt. The

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person accused of a reactionary attitude under communism could not

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effectively defend himself, because once the accusation was made, it

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disallowed any objection, even the best counter argument to the

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effect that the charge was ill staged and that being

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a reactionary does not mean that one is necessarily wrong,

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just as being a progressive it does not mean that

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one is necessarily right. Only sank the accused person deeper.

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Any such argument was a confirmation of his belonging to

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the reactionary camp, which was clearly reprehensible, if not downright criminal.

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There's that word. What did Thomas say said after Nuremberg?

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Being right wing basically became criminal. Another thing I like

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to point out is he's in Poland, which was behind

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the Iron Curtain. East Germany was behind the Iron curtain.

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If you look at most of the places that were

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behind the Iron curtain, not all of them, definitely Northern Europe.

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When they came out, they were untarnished by what Globalhomo

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had turned into by nineteen ninety one. And you still

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see that today. Poland is still fighting against this liberalism,

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this progressivism taking over same thing in the parts of

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Germany that were under Eastern occupation. When you take into

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consideration Globohomo liberalism, progressivism, this disgusting post war consensus, those

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who were behind the Iron curtain fared better when it

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came down being confronted by it. At least they're holding

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it off. We shall see what the future holds. The

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only option that the defendant had was to admit his

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own guilt and submit a self criticism as self downgrading

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as possible, but even that did not have to be

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accepted if the defendant had the right to answer the

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charges in public, and of course he did not. The

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immediate result was an avalanche of well orchestrated condemnations and

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mass protests, where the indignant engineers, workers and writers shredded

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the insolent reaction into pieces. Today, when someone is accused

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of homophobia. The mere fact of accusation allows no effective reply.

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To defend oneself. By saying that homosexual and heterosexual norms

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are not equal, even if supported by most persuasive arguments,

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only confirms the charge of homophobia. Because the charge itself

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is never a matter of discussion, the only way out

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for the defendant is to submit a self criticism, which

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may or may not be accepted. When the poor daredevil

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is adamant and imprudently answers back, a furious pack of

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enraged lump and intellectuals inevitably trample the careless polemicist into

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the ground. Prudent people but then and now anticipate such

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reactions and made a preemptive move before saying anything reckless.

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Under communism, the best tactic was to start by condemning

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the forces of reaction and praising the socialist progress. Then

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one could risk smuggling in a reasonable, though somewhat audacious statement,

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preferably wrapped in quotations from Marx and Lenin. In a

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liberal democracy, it is best to start with the condemnation

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of homophobia, followed by the praise of the homosexual movement,

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and only then sheepishly include something common sensical, but only

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using the rhetoric of tolerance, human rights and the documents

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issued by the European Parliament in the European Court of Justice.

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Otherwise one invites trouble. Or here it would be the ACLU,

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the ADL, or the Southern Poverty Law Center. The characteristic

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feature of both societies, communists and liberal democrat was that

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a lot of things simply could not be discussed because

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they were unquestionably bad or unquestionably good. Discussing them was

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tantamounts of casting doubts on something whose value had been

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unequivocally determined. Under communism, one could not discuss the merits

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of idealism because by definition it did not have any,

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or the leading role of the party because such a

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role was indubitable, or the good sides of Marxist revisionism

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because the revisionism had only bad sides, or the controversies

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over planned economy because there was nothing on controversial in it,

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any other things that the doctrine declared clearly right or

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clearly wrong. In a liberal democracy, the degree of freedom

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is much larger, but even so it seems to be

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shrinking at a frightening speed. Some concepts are not so

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value loaded that they permit no discussion, only unconditional praise

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or equally unconditional condemnation tolerance, democracy, homophobia, dialogue, hate speech, sexism, pluralism.

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They therefore serve either as a stick to beat those

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who are not docile enough, or the ultimate form of laudation.

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For the majority of people. There is no other way

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but to follow the orthodoxy and to watch one's language.

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Because the power of ideology increases, one should be more

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and more careful about the language one uses. The language

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discipline is the first test for loyalty to the orthodoxy,

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just as the neglect of this discipline is the beginning

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of all evil. The liberal democratic, just as his communist counterpart,

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lives in a world almost totally packed with conventions and interpretations,

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with very little space for individual initiative, he relies almost

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exclusively on ready made formulations, moves within well known stereotypes

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of thought and language through which he expresses his feelings

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of approval and disapproval, and justifies his role in a community.

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The ideology that surrounds him is not only a set

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of concepts, but also a system of mandatory practices. Like

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an erstwhile African savage he is expected to dance his

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ritual dances in order to manifest his tribal affiliation through

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the well trained gestures and rhythms the village sorcerers taught

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him so that he could express his enthusiasm war. So

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he could express his enthusiasm for the war his superiors

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thought it rational to wage against the enemies or to

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give his joyful support of peace, if this accords with

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the strategy of the tribe. For him, there is no

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reality apart from from that which bears the meaning given

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it by the sorcerers. Nothing else exists, and if it does,

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it's not worth communicating. Of course, one can argue that,

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after all, in the entire history of mankind, a large

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part of the human race lived and thought like that.

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They lived in a world already interpreted and thought according

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to the rules created by somebody else. This is when

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you read this, and even myself reading this, that immediately

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comes to mind. It's like, well, I mean, hasn't it

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always been like that? Having societies always been like that?

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He continues, But the liberal democratic society is different from others,

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being closer to a socialist society than to the traditional ones.

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The difference boils down to two things. The first one

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was already mentioned, a society that is ideological, that prides

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itself on having the highest level of emancipation in dependence

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and autonomy and history, which raises the stark contrast between

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the declaration and the reality. The second difference concerns the

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nature of that society. The earlier communities were significantly conventionalized, indeed,

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but mainly by a social custom, not by ideology. Today

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the custom significantly weakens and the ideology takes its place.

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It was actually somebody on Twitter, I think I commented

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yesterday or it was very early this morning. They were

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talking about the free market, and basically all the free

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market is is property rights and natural law. And I said, well,

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that's ideology, and that ideology doesn't exist in reality. And

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he just came back basically repeating the first thing he said.

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And what I said was, there is no natural law.

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Your laws are customary cultural. As soon as you say

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natural law, you're globalizing it. You're turning it into something

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that's for everyone. And as soon as you globalize something,

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it loses its power, it loses its significance, and also

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you lose your sovereignty because now that's for everyone. And

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do you just taking immigration into account stuff we've seen

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about importing Indians to come in here and replace American workers.

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Do we need that? I mean, is do they do?

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If we're looking at a natural law, if we're living

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in a natural law society, Sure there's no problem with

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them coming here. They have the same rights, they're under

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the same laws. They recognize natural law just as you do,

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because natural law is universal. But do they or do

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they recognize cultural and customary laws and custom and customs.

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You can talk about natural law all you want. You

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can believe this is the way it works. But that

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person coming in is coming from a society that doesn't

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have doesn't believe in natural law. They believe in their customs.

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Do their customs match up with what you believe? Well,

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if they don't, you're importing a problem. That's why you

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cannot universalize these things. Therefore, your people, the people who

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assent to it. Why would you force it on somebody

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else when they don't believe in it and will never

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Ortego was right when he said that in the old societies,

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people had customs, proverbs, stories, and sayings. Today they have

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opinions which they quite sincerely believe to be their own.

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What they do not know, however, is that they owe

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these opinions to the ideology that surrounds them, not to

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their independent intellectual efforts. If you're believing in an ideology,

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you are basically abandoning the customs, the proverbs, stories and sayings.

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And you can say, well, that's my ideology. Okay, Well,

297
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understand what the term ideology means, and maybe latch onto customs,

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proverbs and stories and sayings and so in the absence

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of social custom and the hierarchy that such custom usually

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brings about. It is the opinions that today, It is

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opinions that today have become. It is the opinions that

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00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:55,640
today have become the major way of manifesting one's presence

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in the world. It's not your customs that you're your

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00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:04,599
ancestors carried down that you're not allowed to act that way.

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If you act that way, you are going against the

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ideology of the day. If you look at your social

307
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customs and they say they build this hierarchy, no, there's

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a hierarchy in place. It's the president, the vice president,

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Speaker of the House. That's your hierarchy. And if you

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go against that, you're a threat to the ideology. But

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because we live in a democratic society, the surest way

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to achieve that goal is to join a large group

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of people united by having the same opinions. Even if

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such opinions are stereotyped, expressed in terms of deceptive concepts

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and in vulgar language full of stale banality that distorts

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the picture of reality and has a paralyzing effect on

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our faculties of thinking and perceiving, it is enough that

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they are shared by a sufficiently high number of people

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living in the absolutely certainty that these ideas are fresh, innovative, innovative,

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00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:08,079
and controversially feisty, and that their brilliance is worthy of

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the brilliant minds that admitted them. That is why most

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00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:18,440
intellectuals in academia are are paid by the state so

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00:23:18,519 --> 00:23:23,519
that they can have these They have these ideas, this ideology.

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They're passing it on to you. They are seen, they

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are called doctor, they're called professor, So that you look

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upon them as you would was the term appear as

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you would. The hierarchy. They're the higher, they're at the

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top of the hierarchy. You are to believe what comes

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out of their mouths they're teaching you about reality, and

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to go against that, you're going against the smartest people alive.

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You do you think you're smarter than a doctor, You're

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a professor twenty twenty again, Part five. The overwhelming presence

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00:24:09,519 --> 00:24:12,559
of ideology in liberal democratic and communist societies can be

334
00:24:12,559 --> 00:24:17,680
easily explained. The main cause is equality, which both regimes

335
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:19,720
gave a status of the highest value and made a

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regulating principle. Both systems enforced the liquidation through revolutionary means

337
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:32,279
in communism evolutionary in liberal democracy of social hierarchies, customs, traditions,

338
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and practices that had existed prior to the emergence of

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the new political system. You're hearing this right, What the

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00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:50,920
goal of these social hierarchies, custom or the goal of

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the revolutionary means in communism and the evolutionary in liberal democracy. Remember,

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00:25:00,319 --> 00:25:03,200
you need a foundation for you need a firm foundation

343
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for everything. Accept your customs, accept your political order, accept

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your hierarchy. It has to constantly be evolving, and it's

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the way they destroyed the social hierarchies, customs, traditions, and

346
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:33,839
practices that existed prior that your forefathers followed the construction

347
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:36,680
of the communist society was possible only after the government

348
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carried out a planned and brutal destruction of most of

349
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the existing communities and social structures. The new system eliminated

350
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the social classes, ostensibly to create a classless society, which

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in practice meant the dismantling of the entire social fabric communities, organizations, institutions,

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something that Aaron McIntyre talks about all the time. It

353
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had or the church. They had to destroy the fraternal

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organizations because they were a direct threat to them. They

355
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,640
need you to rely upon them, and if you have

356
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a private and a cultural customary safety net, you're not

357
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going to take theirs. You don't see them as the authority.

358
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In Poland, virtually no institution survived, with the exception of

359
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the Catholic Church, and the ones that were formally considered

360
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to be continuations of the former structures, such as schools

361
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and universities, were substantially altered. In the new society, all

362
00:26:43,839 --> 00:26:48,480
people became comrades or citizens, enjoying equal status and sharing

363
00:26:48,559 --> 00:26:54,559
equal concern for the welfare of communism. This equality was

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secured and watched by the Communist Party, which had its

365
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branches and representatives almost in every segment of a sietnxiety,

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00:27:00,759 --> 00:27:04,960
no matter how small. Alongside a new administrative structure, in

367
00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:08,759
a new technocratic and a new tech neocratic hierarchy of directors,

368
00:27:09,079 --> 00:27:13,240
presidents and managers, there existed a parallel network of communist

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community committees and apparatics who controlled the ideological discipline in

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the administration, in the administration and management, setting the goals,

371
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nominating the cadres, and preventing any independent decision making from

372
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emerging universities, to give an example, recreated part of the

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original academic structures, but next to them, and in fact

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above them, there was in each a communist party organization

375
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which made the strategic decisions, supervised academic promotions and the

376
00:27:43,759 --> 00:27:47,519
teaching curricula, and saw to it that the central directives

377
00:27:47,519 --> 00:27:52,960
were followed. One can, of course, raise a counter argument

378
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:56,680
to the effect that communism was essentially anti egalitarian and

379
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:01,079
generated glaring inequalities unparalleled in any other political system of

380
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:04,559
modern times. A member of the party had a far

381
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,079
superior status, and a fellow citizen outside the party, the

382
00:28:08,079 --> 00:28:12,319
top party officials had privileges absolutely and accessible to ordinary workers.

383
00:28:12,839 --> 00:28:16,920
And yet, despite all such examples, egalitarianism and despotism do

384
00:28:17,039 --> 00:28:20,000
not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand

385
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:25,039
to a certain degree. Equality invites despotism because in order

386
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:27,559
to make all members of society equal, and then to

387
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,279
maintain this equality for a long period of time, it

388
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,240
is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power

389
00:28:34,559 --> 00:28:37,240
so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality

390
00:28:37,279 --> 00:28:40,440
in every sector of the society and any aspect of

391
00:28:40,519 --> 00:28:43,759
human life. To paraphrase a well known sentence by one

392
00:28:43,799 --> 00:28:47,720
of Dostoyevsky's characters, we start with absolute equality, and we

393
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:52,279
end up with absolute despotism. Some call it a paradox

394
00:28:52,279 --> 00:28:55,839
of equality. The more equality one wants to introduce, the

395
00:28:55,839 --> 00:28:59,000
more power one must have. The more power one has,

396
00:28:59,119 --> 00:29:02,039
the more one violent relates to principle of equality. The

397
00:29:02,079 --> 00:29:04,839
more one violates the principle of equality, the more one

398
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:10,440
is in a position to make the world egalitarian. But

399
00:29:10,519 --> 00:29:13,759
the root cause of strong correlation between equality and despotism

400
00:29:13,839 --> 00:29:17,079
and communism was of a different kind. In societies that

401
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,319
are disintegrated or whose fabric is destroyed by the revolution,

402
00:29:20,759 --> 00:29:25,119
political power becomes practically the sole organizing force. Such power

403
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:28,279
does not encounter any resistance, as all forms through which

404
00:29:28,279 --> 00:29:32,480
a society normally organizes itself have been wiped out. There

405
00:29:32,519 --> 00:29:37,079
are no traditional hierarchies, no spontaneously developed communities, no historically

406
00:29:37,279 --> 00:29:41,839
entrenched institutions. When unchecked, despotism meets with no barrier for

407
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:48,440
itself aggrandizement. This is one of the major reasons why

408
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:54,039
despotism was never effectively in traditionally structured societies, where each group,

409
00:29:54,359 --> 00:29:56,799
even if situated in a low rung of the social ladder,

410
00:29:57,039 --> 00:30:00,599
had considerable autonomy in its own code, hierarchy and rules

411
00:30:00,599 --> 00:30:12,559
of cooperation. Specifically that immediately calls to mind of feudalism.

412
00:30:13,079 --> 00:30:15,720
Where there are no such groups and no internal differentiation

413
00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:18,799
within a society, where there is a social and political vacuum,

414
00:30:19,039 --> 00:30:22,839
thatotic power is left as the only form of control.

415
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:27,359
But to be really effective, the despotic control needs something

416
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:31,039
more than sheer terror intimidation. It must supply the people

417
00:30:31,119 --> 00:30:34,599
it is deprived of old social environments with a new

418
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,799
identity and a new sense of belonging. And this is

419
00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:43,400
the role of ideology. The communist societies were never made

420
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:46,359
totally egalitarian, although in a country such as Poland it

421
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,640
was difficult to indicate an institution with As I said,

422
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,359
the exception of the Catholic Church that during the first

423
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,400
ten years of the communist regime was sufficiently untouched to

424
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:59,599
provide a protective barrier. Later on, some old structures were

425
00:30:59,599 --> 00:31:03,319
partially reproduced, but the conquests of social egalitarianism came to

426
00:31:03,359 --> 00:31:07,720
be accepted and considered irreversible. The society seemed to have

427
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:11,240
come to a conclusion that equality in itself was a

428
00:31:11,279 --> 00:31:14,400
good thing, and that although the means used by communists

429
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,119
were reprehensible, in the end the country was pushed in

430
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:21,440
the right direction. The learned people argue that equality was modernity,

431
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:25,160
and therefore communists despicable, as they were served the cause

432
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:29,359
of modernization. Well. In light of this new logic, what

433
00:31:29,519 --> 00:31:32,160
had been once thought to be a barbarism was now

434
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,839
viewed as birth pangs of a new society finding its

435
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:39,279
way to modern rationality. The metaphor of birth has another implication.

436
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:43,000
A trend toward more and more equality was one directional,

437
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,680
and the hierarchies that were once dismantled or destroyed could

438
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:49,839
not be rebuilt. A desire to reverse the trend would

439
00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:52,200
be like a desire for a grown man to return

440
00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:57,799
to his mother's womb. It is true that the egalitarian

441
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:02,200
ideology of socialism. Communism sometimes times became an object of

442
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,519
an object of popular jokes, and it's absurd as well

443
00:32:05,559 --> 00:32:09,680
as ferocious aspects were not overlooked yet Yet, the idea

444
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,440
that there could be something inherently wrong with coupling modernization

445
00:32:13,599 --> 00:32:17,200
and egalitarianism, that equality should not be a paramount value.

446
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:24,799
That ideology was often in costly conflict with conflicts with justice, liberty, virtue, beauty,

447
00:32:24,839 --> 00:32:28,200
and other basic moral notions never stayed in the people's

448
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:31,119
minds for long. The value of equality was not only

449
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,599
retained unscathed, but turned out to be a singularly attractive

450
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,599
both as an ethical idea and a rallying call. No

451
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,799
one could legitimately object to the standard of equality, because

452
00:32:41,839 --> 00:32:45,319
no other standard had behind it the authority of history, ethics,

453
00:32:45,319 --> 00:32:48,920
and common sense. To argue that a society should be

454
00:32:49,039 --> 00:32:53,400
organized according to a criterion other than equality seems preposterous.

455
00:32:54,079 --> 00:32:56,960
It was therefore quite understandable that if the communist state

456
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,319
began to criticize from within at some point, the most

457
00:33:00,319 --> 00:33:03,480
convenient platform for criticism was that it failed the test

458
00:33:03,599 --> 00:33:06,680
of equality, the value of which socialism was believed to

459
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:11,319
be the ultimate embodiment but which, unfortunately for reasons that

460
00:33:11,359 --> 00:33:18,400
were never quite clear, betrayed. But egalitarianism was not only

461
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:24,559
the paramount value of communism. Liberal theories, especially although not exclusively,

462
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:27,440
those that made us made use of the concept of

463
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:32,559
the state of nature assume people's primeval equality. Looked at

464
00:33:32,559 --> 00:33:37,119
from this perspective, all social hierarchies become immediately problematic because

465
00:33:37,119 --> 00:33:41,359
they were obviously not natural, and because not natural meant

466
00:33:41,359 --> 00:33:45,000
that they were human constructions. The conclusions any liberal could

467
00:33:45,039 --> 00:33:49,240
draw was that there was nothing sacrosanct about them. They

468
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,640
could take a different form, be improved upon, or, if need,

469
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:57,480
be liquidated all together. All inequalities that exist must therefore

470
00:33:57,559 --> 00:34:01,559
have explicit justification, because as otherwise, there was no reason

471
00:34:01,599 --> 00:34:05,240
for them to be tolerated. Liberalism in the classical version

472
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:09,400
had a clearly anti royalist stance, especially with regard to

473
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:13,719
hereditary monarchy and ancestral institutions, all of which, it was claimed,

474
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:17,719
were based on a mystification, a reference to mysterious origins

475
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:23,440
in the remote past. This strategy of debunking institutions seemingly

476
00:34:23,519 --> 00:34:28,480
ennobled by long history was extended to other social hierarchies, families, schools,

477
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,719
and churches in which one could see from the perspective

478
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,960
of the state of nature hypothesis, variations of political monarchism.

479
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:39,400
And once it was assumed that originally we were all equal,

480
00:34:39,599 --> 00:34:42,639
no matter that originally could have a lot of meanings,

481
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,599
it seemed probable that those inequalities that had emerged in

482
00:34:46,639 --> 00:34:52,519
the course of history must have resulted from subsequent usurpation, fraud, conquest, accident,

483
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:59,239
and other similar reasons. Egalitarian societies have an innate propensity

484
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:02,519
to fall into EA ideologies, and this for at least

485
00:35:02,559 --> 00:35:06,000
two reasons. First, a desire for equality goes hand in

486
00:35:06,039 --> 00:35:10,920
hand with a general mistrust towards social and political arrangements, which,

487
00:35:11,039 --> 00:35:15,519
all when scrutinized carefully enough, may fail the standard. The

488
00:35:15,559 --> 00:35:19,599
feeling of suspicion that they indeed do fail the standard

489
00:35:19,679 --> 00:35:23,360
of equality may take a variety of forms. If someone

490
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,360
climbs to the top of the hierarchy, no matter if

491
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,280
it happened in accordance with the rules agreed upon, he

492
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,000
is likely to suspect that those on the level below

493
00:35:31,079 --> 00:35:33,840
him wish to take his place. Not because this is

494
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,039
logic of competition, but because the mere fact of somebody's

495
00:35:37,079 --> 00:35:41,800
being at the top always offends egalitarian sensibilities of the rest.

496
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:45,639
The question why him and not me is then an

497
00:35:45,679 --> 00:35:49,239
expected reaction of a person with such sensibilities, and the

498
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:54,119
stronger he is, the more painfully acute this question must seem.

499
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,400
Because the suspicion that an unequal distribution of power is

500
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:03,079
immral and illegitimate incre with the progressive victories of egalitarianism,

501
00:36:03,519 --> 00:36:07,639
the struggle for equality has no ending. Equality resembles a

502
00:36:07,679 --> 00:36:11,079
monster with an insatiable appetite, regardless of how much it

503
00:36:11,159 --> 00:36:14,159
has eaten, the more it devours, the hunger it becomes.

504
00:36:14,559 --> 00:36:18,440
It's another thing like I was talking about with how

505
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,719
liberalism is just it's a path, and it's a path

506
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:23,800
that can veer off all over the place. It's not

507
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:30,400
a foundation. They're going for equality. Liberalism is about equality,

508
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:35,079
no matter what anyone wants to tell you, and you're

509
00:36:35,119 --> 00:36:38,559
never going to get there. You're never going to get

510
00:36:38,599 --> 00:36:42,480
to equality, So you just have to keep trying. And

511
00:36:42,559 --> 00:36:47,079
while you do that, you're making You're trying to guide

512
00:36:47,159 --> 00:36:52,079
an engineer society. You're trying to engineer people. And you

513
00:36:52,119 --> 00:36:54,159
can engineer some people, but there are some people that

514
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:56,559
won't be engineered, and there are some people that are

515
00:36:56,599 --> 00:37:00,000
going to want to be the engineers. You see where

516
00:37:00,119 --> 00:37:04,480
that sends up. People might generally agree that they are

517
00:37:04,559 --> 00:37:07,000
all equal before the law, but this does not dispel

518
00:37:07,039 --> 00:37:10,480
the concerns of a dedicated egalitarian, who will argue with

519
00:37:10,559 --> 00:37:13,360
it that this principle is too abstract to be sufficient

520
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:18,320
in every instance. After all, even if we respect equality

521
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,639
before the law, other types of inequality and domination continue

522
00:37:21,679 --> 00:37:24,480
to exist, and their existence is morally repugnant and cannot

523
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,440
be tolerated. He will then add that the persistence of

524
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:31,079
inequality and domination has its origin in their being moored

525
00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:34,119
in people's customs and habits, which, as can be expected,

526
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:38,239
considerably thwarts the principle of equality before the law. But

527
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:43,280
people's conduct, although entrenched in the historically transmitted experience, has

528
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:46,679
always some deeper sources in the ways they think and

529
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:50,119
conceptualized or image of the world. So at a certain moment,

530
00:37:50,119 --> 00:37:53,280
the spirit of mistrust turns to human minds and human thoughts,

531
00:37:53,599 --> 00:37:55,800
which are believed to be the fountain head from which

532
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,400
acceptance of the inequality springs. It is thus a matter

533
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,360
of time before the sting of egalitarian ideology is directed

534
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:06,360
against education, where the minds are shaped against family life

535
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:10,760
and community life, through which human thoughts acquire social durability,

536
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:14,679
against art, language, and science, where they will find more

537
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:21,239
refined expression. The spirit of suspicion will not disappear, because

538
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,159
they there are always newer areas to conquer and deeper

539
00:38:25,199 --> 00:38:29,840
sources of inequality to discover. There is another reason why

540
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:34,199
egalitarian societies take ideology so easily. The experience of communism

541
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,440
is in this respect illuminating. The communists, who destroyed a

542
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:42,800
great number of the constitutive identities that people had been

543
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:47,599
developing for decades, if not centuries, were aware that the

544
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:50,880
need to belong was deeply embedded in human nature, and

545
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:53,119
that the void had to be filled with a new identity.

546
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,760
The process of imposing a new identity on the atomized

547
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:59,800
and uprooted mass of people was much more difficult than

548
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:03,239
they thought, but they achieved some success. For many, the

549
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,880
new communist identity, though appallingly crude, proved adequate enough to

550
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:11,440
make up for a lost sense of belonging and to

551
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:15,719
give a new one sufficiently strong to create millions of

552
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:20,480
communist sympathizers. Those who parted in hope or in despair

553
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:23,559
with the old homeland soon embraced a new one, and

554
00:39:23,639 --> 00:39:26,280
in no time took to heart the rules of the

555
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:30,199
political system, its language, its perverse code of morality, and

556
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:35,400
its assurd mythology. Captured by the imperatives of ideology, they

557
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:39,119
quickly grasped the necessity of being both suspicious and enthusiastic.

558
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,280
They knew they had to sever, if only verbally, all

559
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:45,000
links with tradition, and to fill the empty space in

560
00:39:45,039 --> 00:39:49,599
their souls with the content of the socialist creed Tokeville

561
00:39:50,079 --> 00:39:53,880
brilliantly described the ideological needs of a democratic man. He

562
00:39:54,039 --> 00:39:56,719
was perhaps the first to discover how this relatively simple,

563
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:00,719
pragmatic creature, devoid of impractical grandeur and und efficient in

564
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,880
his activities, is in need of general concepts. This need,

565
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:07,960
he argued, was typical of an egalitarian society, in which

566
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:12,760
people are largely undifferentiated, hardly distinguishable from one another because

567
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:14,880
they think in a similar way, and an accustomed to

568
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:20,320
any complexity of social arrangements or any intellectual ambiguity, ambiguities

569
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:27,280
and ambiguities. Armed with these concepts, they do not want

570
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:32,000
to be bothered with the details of intricacy of Let

571
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,760
me start that again. Armed with these concepts. They do

572
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:37,239
not want to be bothered with the details or intricacies

573
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,000
of the surrounding reality. Neither do they have time for

574
00:40:40,039 --> 00:40:44,920
complicated intellectual operations or a disinterested cultivation of the intellect.

575
00:40:45,519 --> 00:40:48,039
But of course they need an overall picture of the world,

576
00:40:48,079 --> 00:40:51,480
not only for philosophical self confidence, but also as a

577
00:40:51,519 --> 00:40:55,320
source of ultimate justification for their decisions and their convictions.

578
00:40:56,119 --> 00:40:58,519
This is how the democratic man, while thinking of himself

579
00:40:58,559 --> 00:41:04,559
an intellectual independent, almost a quasi Cartesians, as Tokevilt put it,

580
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:07,760
soon transforms himself into a reflection of the social group

581
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,280
in which he lives and submerges deeper and deeper into

582
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:17,679
conformity and anonymity. We see this today, right. People think

583
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:23,599
that they're these incredible thinkers, these incredible independent and intellectual thinkers,

584
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:29,679
Yet they don't have an opinion that disagrees with the

585
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:33,320
person on the news, or the politician, or the regime

586
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:37,559
in charge, or the spirit of the age. The development

587
00:41:37,559 --> 00:41:42,960
of liberal democracy confirmed Tokeville's diagnosis. Because egalitarianism weakens communities

588
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,239
and thus deprives men of an identity giving habitat, it

589
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:49,559
creates a vacuum around them. Hence a desire exists for

590
00:41:49,599 --> 00:41:52,159
a new identity, this time modern and in line with

591
00:41:52,199 --> 00:41:57,119
the spirit of malignant egalitarianism. The ideologies fulfill this role perfectly.

592
00:41:57,159 --> 00:42:01,360
They organize people's consciousness by providing them with the meaning

593
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:04,880
of life and individual and collective purpose and inspiration for

594
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:08,679
further endeavors and a sense of belonging. What is more

595
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:14,440
devious than somebody is looking for purpose in life and

596
00:42:14,519 --> 00:42:18,800
you just hand them the spirit of the age. Here,

597
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:21,880
read this book, and the book is just the spirit

598
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,519
of the age. Go to this school and all you're

599
00:42:24,599 --> 00:42:28,519
learning is the spirit of the age. Watch this person

600
00:42:28,559 --> 00:42:32,039
on TV and all they are is completely one hundred

601
00:42:32,039 --> 00:42:35,000
percent in line with the regime, yet they think they're

602
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:41,079
an individual. It's amazing to me that there are people

603
00:42:41,159 --> 00:42:45,960
out there who completely they believe the same exact thing,

604
00:42:46,599 --> 00:42:51,039
repeat the same exact words and the same phrases, yet

605
00:42:51,079 --> 00:42:59,480
they think they're rebels. That's what liberal democracy, liberalism in

606
00:42:59,559 --> 00:43:05,519
all its flavors does. With the emergence of ideology, the

607
00:43:05,559 --> 00:43:09,320
problem of a lonely individual and egalitarian society no longer exists.

608
00:43:09,719 --> 00:43:13,519
Feminism makes all women's sisters, all homosexualists become brothers in

609
00:43:13,559 --> 00:43:17,239
the struggle, all environmentalists become a part of an international

610
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,440
green movement, All advocates of tolerance join the ranks of

611
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:25,159
the universal anti fascist crusade, and so on. Once a man

612
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:27,760
joins an ideological group, all becomes clear to him and

613
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,920
everything falls into place. Everything is either right or wrong,

614
00:43:31,039 --> 00:43:35,199
correct or incorrect, and this perception soon changes the man himself.

615
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,039
In a liberal democracy, as in communism, ideology not only

616
00:43:39,159 --> 00:43:44,719
characterizes the entirety of individual and collective existence into correct

617
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:48,159
and incorrect, but also imposes on people's minds an imperative

618
00:43:48,199 --> 00:43:51,079
to side with one and be against the other. If

619
00:43:51,119 --> 00:43:53,719
not indeed than in word or at least in thought.

620
00:43:56,559 --> 00:44:00,599
In earlier societies with rich internal structures, differences in loyalty

621
00:44:01,039 --> 00:44:05,639
that an individual could experience occurred quite often. In those

622
00:44:05,679 --> 00:44:08,800
built on ideology, there should be no divided loyalties, and

623
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:12,360
to the ex extent they exist, they are dangerous symptoms

624
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:15,920
of a deadly disease. The ideological correctness is like a

625
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:18,880
pill that, once consumed by a patient, should improve his

626
00:44:19,039 --> 00:44:22,079
organism to such a degree that he must correctly. He

627
00:44:22,639 --> 00:44:27,480
must react correctly whatever circumstances and problems he encounters. His

628
00:44:27,559 --> 00:44:31,679
mind and body become perfectly united, combining intellectual force with

629
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:36,599
quasi physiological reflexes, and the moment this unity has been achieved,

630
00:44:36,599 --> 00:44:39,960
he can no more doubt his wisdom. But because this

631
00:44:40,079 --> 00:44:42,920
wisdom turns out to be in practice overwhelmingly simple, he

632
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:46,159
cannot help believing that whoever resists it must suffer from

633
00:44:46,159 --> 00:44:50,199
some profound malfunction of the mind. I'm reminded of the

634
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:55,519
NPC meme from seven eight years ago. This is how

635
00:44:55,559 --> 00:44:59,800
he get the NPC. One does not have to be

636
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,440
over really acute to see a strong resemblance between a

637
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:05,920
communist activist on the one hand, and a feminist a

638
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:09,840
homosexual activists, and a liberal democratic lump and intellectual on

639
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,559
the other. Their opinions have the same tedious predictability, their

640
00:45:13,679 --> 00:45:17,519
arguments are based on similarly crude syllogisms, their styles are

641
00:45:17,519 --> 00:45:21,800
similarly vulgar, and their minds are equally dogmatic, unperturbed by

642
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:24,719
any testimony from outside, and prone to the same degree

643
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:28,119
of zealousness. On both sides, we also see what the

644
00:45:28,159 --> 00:45:32,079
Marxists called the unity of theory and practice, which translates

645
00:45:32,079 --> 00:45:35,199
into clear language meaning the total subordination of thinking to

646
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:39,760
the ideological precepts of political action. The subordination, instead of

647
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,760
being a cause of shame, is proudly held up in

648
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:46,840
his achievement of the new times. Both sides, communists and

649
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:51,159
liberal democratics, share their dislike, sometimes bordering on hatred, towards

650
00:45:51,159 --> 00:45:56,199
the same enemies, the church and religion, the nation, classical metaphysics,

651
00:45:56,320 --> 00:46:06,400
moral conservatism, and the family. Go ahead, argue, say no,

652
00:46:06,519 --> 00:46:12,559
it's not true. Good luck. Both are unable to mitigate

653
00:46:12,599 --> 00:46:16,199
their arrogance towards everything that their ideology despises and which

654
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:19,360
in their revolutionary ardor they seek to remove from the

655
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:25,000
public space and from public lives. Both are fixated on

656
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,599
one or two things that they refer to ad nauseum,

657
00:46:27,639 --> 00:46:33,199
because those things delineate the unbreachable boundaries of their mental horizon.

658
00:46:35,119 --> 00:46:39,559
That's the thing, the current thing that you latch onto

659
00:46:40,639 --> 00:46:44,000
in every sentence. From the Lendiness and Stalinist catechisms, one

660
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:48,239
can replace proletariat with women or with homosexuals, make few

661
00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:52,039
other minor adjustments, and no one will recognize the original source.

662
00:46:53,159 --> 00:46:55,639
Both sides desire a better world so badly that in

663
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,119
order to have it, they do not hesitate to control

664
00:46:58,199 --> 00:47:01,599
the totality of human life, including these aspects that are

665
00:47:01,599 --> 00:47:06,559
most personal or intimate. Both, unfortunately, have been successfully successful

666
00:47:06,599 --> 00:47:10,920
politically and have taken over the ideological power of institutions, laws,

667
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:16,519
and even something as elusive but nonetheless important as political atmosphere.

668
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:19,920
It is true that both those in the communist countries

669
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:22,280
and those throughout the Western world after the demise of

670
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:26,599
communism were and still are quite frequently an object of jokes,

671
00:47:27,079 --> 00:47:30,519
sometimes quite deadly, but at the same time their presence evoked,

672
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:34,760
and the latter cases are still evoking feelings of fear

673
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:37,440
or at least a sense of the clear message that

674
00:47:37,519 --> 00:47:42,880
opposing those people is not safe. Finally, both sides spectacular

675
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:46,719
victories among the intellectual and artistic elites. This is particularly

676
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,440
puzzling because one would think that the people endowed with

677
00:47:49,559 --> 00:47:52,800
artistic and intellectual talents would be the first to reject

678
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:59,239
with contempt something whose repulsive primitivism. Only persons with serious

679
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:08,280
mental deficioncies could miss. Part six. The collapse of communism

680
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:12,480
played no small part in making the liberal democratic ideology

681
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,519
more impregnable. The end of the Cold War was almost

682
00:48:15,559 --> 00:48:20,039
instantly given an interpretation, and not and not just any interpretation,

683
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,639
no one dared to refute it. Despite its obvious falseness.

684
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,320
According to it, the Soviet Communism that had enslaved many

685
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:31,280
countries in and outside Europe, was finally defeated by the West,

686
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:37,760
which represented the forces of freedom and democracy. Millions of

687
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,599
people thus accepted the image of liberal democracy as the

688
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:44,360
essence of Western civilization, a system of enormous moral and

689
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:50,760
political power and embodiment of the eternal human ideals. By

690
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:58,199
having that war by communism being the enemy when it falls,

691
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:02,559
no matter for what reason, you'd take credit for it falling,

692
00:49:04,519 --> 00:49:11,159
And now you're the hero. You're the winners, obviously are

693
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:18,840
side one the end of history, right, This system turned

694
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,519
out to be stronger than the great, vitalitarian empire, whose

695
00:49:21,519 --> 00:49:26,039
people and citizens have embraced democratic values, made their long

696
00:49:27,079 --> 00:49:29,960
dreamt of vision come true, and could at last go

697
00:49:30,039 --> 00:49:33,000
the liberal democratic way, reclaim their rights and promote the

698
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:38,119
ideals of pluralism and tolerance. This picture is patently false.

699
00:49:40,679 --> 00:49:43,360
First of all, the liberal democratic West did not fight

700
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:46,840
the Soviet Empire, and with few minor exceptions, never had

701
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:50,719
such intentions. The general strategy of the Western countries was

702
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,519
to have good relations with the Soviet Union, even at

703
00:49:53,519 --> 00:49:58,000
a comparatively high price. They recognized the Empire to be

704
00:49:58,039 --> 00:50:00,239
a key player in world politics and part of the

705
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:04,920
political balance on the continent and internationally. Despite occasional heated

706
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:08,840
exchanges with the Soviets, Western europe governments. Western European governments

707
00:50:09,159 --> 00:50:11,199
on both the left and the right, had mixed feelings

708
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:14,159
about anti regime movements in the Soviet blocked countries and

709
00:50:14,199 --> 00:50:18,000
were far from giving them the endorsement they deserved. The

710
00:50:18,039 --> 00:50:21,920
democratic aspirations of the East European peoples posed a risk

711
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:26,880
of destabilization, sometimes to a degree that pushed Europe onto

712
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:30,440
the brink of an international conflict. The Soviets were ready

713
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,360
to defend their interests militarily, as in Hungary and nineteen

714
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:37,760
fifty six in Czechoslovakia in nineteen sixty eight. The Western

715
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,239
Powers were aware of this and could not do anything,

716
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,280
so it was natural for them to avoid such confrontations

717
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:46,159
and not to give too much encouragement to distant activities.

718
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,920
They hoped for a durable, organic stabilization of the communist

719
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:52,559
system and an equally durable and organic rule of the

720
00:50:52,559 --> 00:50:57,039
Soviet Union over its allied satellites. Such a scenario was

721
00:50:57,079 --> 00:51:01,320
far preferable to turmoil in the cause of democracy or

722
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:06,079
human rights, or any other seemingly sacred principles. The sharper

723
00:51:06,159 --> 00:51:09,719
rhetoric and openly anti Soviet policy sometimes demonstrated by the

724
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:13,559
US government irritated the European politicians who thought the American

725
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:18,440
that thought the American politics to be simply immature. If

726
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:20,800
one could imagine the political history of the last six

727
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:23,199
decades without the United States and the political map of

728
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:26,119
the world, and look at communism only through the prism

729
00:51:26,159 --> 00:51:29,159
of the relations between the USSR and Western Europe, it

730
00:51:29,199 --> 00:51:32,079
seems almost certain that Communism would still be thriving and

731
00:51:32,199 --> 00:51:36,000
Poland would continue to be called the Polish People's Republic.

732
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,559
From Europe's point of view, conducting the Cold War, much

733
00:51:39,639 --> 00:51:45,719
less winning it was never a priority. An accommodation between

734
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:48,719
the two parts of Europe was reached at a certain moment,

735
00:51:49,119 --> 00:51:51,360
which to the approval of the political elite and the

736
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,719
convenience of Western societies. Some Communist leaders were believed to

737
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:59,039
have redeeming features, and drop off was found of Whiskey, Gerrick,

738
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:04,760
spoke French, which Kutar invented Gulash communism, whereas certain anti

739
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,679
regime movements seemed less trustworthy, especially those that were too

740
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:12,119
conservative and too vocal about their anti communism. It was

741
00:52:12,199 --> 00:52:15,159
obvious from the beginning that among the Eastern East Europeans

742
00:52:15,199 --> 00:52:19,000
who defied the Communist system that those that were closer

743
00:52:19,039 --> 00:52:22,920
to the left found more sympathy and support. From the

744
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:26,400
point of view of ideology prevalent in Western societies, Communism

745
00:52:26,559 --> 00:52:28,960
obviously did not have a good image, but the image

746
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:32,480
it did was not the worst. It never incited the

747
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:37,559
indignation that fascism did, the latter term, having catapulted to

748
00:52:37,599 --> 00:52:41,199
almost diabolical notoriety and denoting the worst of political evil

749
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:45,440
always placed on the political right. For this reason, anti

750
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:49,599
communism did not require respectability even remotely comparable to that

751
00:52:49,639 --> 00:52:53,239
of anti fascism. In fact, it was never widely respected,

752
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:56,239
either in America or in Western Europe, or eventually in

753
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:59,280
Eastern Europe after the fall of the Old Empire, perhaps

754
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:03,079
the democratic liberals intuitively, since they had a deeper bond,

755
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:06,480
no matter how unclear, with the Communists than with the

756
00:53:06,519 --> 00:53:09,800
anti communists. After nineteen eighty nine, it was obvious what

757
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:14,719
the Western public what the Western public opinion wanted to hear,

758
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:18,440
no matter that the movement the communist system. No wonder

759
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:22,320
that the moment the communist system fell, the anti anti

760
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,840
communists and liberal Democrats immediately started proclaiming their victory in

761
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:28,320
the Cold War, even if it were the war they

762
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:30,800
had done their best to avoid and during which they

763
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:39,199
had scored a pathetic record of appeasement and pusillanimity. Jeez,

764
00:53:40,119 --> 00:53:43,239
I don't remember that one. This is what the Western

765
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:47,000
public opinion expected, and this is what they got. To

766
00:53:47,079 --> 00:53:50,639
make things worse, when the satellite regimes in Eastern Europe crumbled,

767
00:53:50,679 --> 00:53:54,079
the post communist leaders and functionaries got amazingly good reviews

768
00:53:54,119 --> 00:53:57,159
in the West, as opposed to the avowed anti communists,

769
00:53:57,159 --> 00:54:01,599
who were treated far less kindly. Post Communist government, even

770
00:54:01,639 --> 00:54:04,519
the worst, was condemned by the European Union, while the

771
00:54:04,559 --> 00:54:07,599
anti Communist governments the Polish Law and Justice Party and

772
00:54:07,639 --> 00:54:14,440
the Hungarian fide Fides sparked a fury of enormous intensity.

773
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:18,119
To this day, the former and present day Communists are

774
00:54:18,199 --> 00:54:20,760
under the protection of the European Union and the political

775
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:30,880
mainstream it represents. That just tells you everything right. Communism fails,

776
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:35,079
Communists don't disappear, as a matter of fact. I know

777
00:54:35,159 --> 00:54:37,760
for a fact in Romania, when Romania had their first elections.

778
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:42,440
After chad Jescu was as was killed, they just re

779
00:54:42,519 --> 00:54:48,760
elected the communists, the communist leaders previous. No, the West

780
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:54,840
wasn't concerned about the Communists, they were there, guys. They

781
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:57,920
were worried about the anti communists because they were seen

782
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:01,039
as right wing and what is right wing? Ben Since

783
00:55:01,119 --> 00:55:06,800
Nuremberg criminal this false image of opposition groups in the

784
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:11,119
communist countries was disseminated and became a sort of uncontested wisdom.

785
00:55:11,519 --> 00:55:13,639
To be sure, some of the terms of qualification were

786
00:55:13,679 --> 00:55:16,920
partly correct. These groups had been traditionally referred to as

787
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,119
a democratic opposition, which of course accurately captured that what

788
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:25,119
they had striven for a multi party system in free elections.

789
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:29,199
The anti regime dissidents who did not articulate these demands

790
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:34,440
openly kept silent, primarily for tactical not doctrinal reasons. If

791
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:38,159
democracy stands for a multi party system and free elections,

792
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:41,800
then all the members of the anti regime opposition were democrats,

793
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:47,519
but most of them were not democrats in the meaning

794
00:55:47,679 --> 00:55:52,039
attributed to the word today. They certainly did not envisage,

795
00:55:52,760 --> 00:55:56,960
nor were they willing to accept, the democratization of the

796
00:55:57,119 --> 00:56:00,239
entire society with all its segments, and many of them

797
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:03,239
view that changes in today's liberal democratic societies with the

798
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:07,519
mixture of bewilderment and disgust. Another term by which the

799
00:56:07,519 --> 00:56:11,920
opponents of the regime were defined was that of human rights.

800
00:56:12,119 --> 00:56:15,920
They were routinely called human rights fighters, which again was true,

801
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:18,920
but in a narrow and frequently misleading sense. It is

802
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,559
true that they were fighting for freedom, also for freedoms

803
00:56:21,639 --> 00:56:25,719
of speech, of religion, of religion, of research, all of

804
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:28,679
which can indeed be accurately called human rights, not only

805
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:32,920
in terms of the universal declaration of any legislative doc document,

806
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:36,199
but in a more fundamental sense. It is also true

807
00:56:36,199 --> 00:56:39,880
that the anti regime opposition had no qualms about accepting

808
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:42,559
this term, as well as the language in which it functioned,

809
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,679
because by having done so, they obtained a stronger legal

810
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:50,000
justification for their actions and a more efficacious way of

811
00:56:50,039 --> 00:56:54,400
communicating their message to the Western public opinion. But it

812
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:57,039
is no less true that most of them were as

813
00:56:57,119 --> 00:57:00,000
far as one can be from what today goes on

814
00:57:00,159 --> 00:57:02,760
to the label of human rights, which is the arbitrary

815
00:57:02,800 --> 00:57:07,400
claims ideologically motivated made by various political groups in blatant

816
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:12,000
disregard of the common good, generously distributed by the legislatures

817
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,239
and the courts, often contrary to common sense, and usually

818
00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:20,039
detrimentals of public and personal morality. The crucial fact that

819
00:57:20,079 --> 00:57:23,840
has been widely ignored is that what gave the anti

820
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:27,800
regime movements to strongest impetus to resist the seemingly irresistible

821
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:31,440
communist power, and what the communists had tried to eradicate

822
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:34,320
from the very beginning, but to their doom failed, had

823
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:39,960
little to do with liberal democracy. These were patriotism, a

824
00:57:40,039 --> 00:57:44,079
reawakened eternal desire for truth and justice, loyalty to the

825
00:57:44,119 --> 00:57:49,920
imponderables of the national tradition, and a factor of paramount importance, religion.

826
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,880
People rebelled because the regime deprived them of what they

827
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:57,280
held the most precious. Free elections in a multi party

828
00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:01,719
system were mechanisms, very much hoped for, nevertheless simple mechanisms.

829
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,199
But the massive resistance was not in the name of

830
00:58:04,239 --> 00:58:07,639
the mechanism. It was for the ideas this mechanism could

831
00:58:07,679 --> 00:58:12,199
serve to achieve, and those ideas were derived from the

832
00:58:12,239 --> 00:58:15,280
experience of the nation, and in some cases that of

833
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:18,719
a religious community. They had nothing to do with the

834
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:21,360
rights of democratic schools or a rights of legislation that

835
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:23,800
allows tracking of hate speech, or the right of a

836
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:27,199
teenager to have an abortion without parental consent. If the

837
00:58:27,199 --> 00:58:31,199
people who defied communism had been told that told then

838
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:33,559
that their success would lead to all these things, and

839
00:58:33,639 --> 00:58:36,599
all these things would be attributed to their success, they

840
00:58:36,639 --> 00:58:40,760
would have felt betrayed. This not because they were not

841
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:43,280
bright enough to see the consequences of their actions, but

842
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:46,079
on the contrary, because these were the developments their actions

843
00:58:46,119 --> 00:58:51,679
were directed against. Poland's Solidarity movement would not have been

844
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:56,239
possible without its members strong patriotic and religious motivations. These

845
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:58,960
enabled the polls not only to rise in large numbers

846
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:01,920
against the oppressive region, but also to identify the very

847
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:05,440
reasons why they rose against it. These were, among other things,

848
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:09,239
to regimes utter contempt for institutions, laws, norms, and social

849
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:15,679
mores that had both rational and historical justification. It's about

850
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:20,440
historical justification, not natural rights or all our rights come

851
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:26,199
from God. That's not how you structure that's not how

852
00:59:26,199 --> 00:59:33,239
culture is structured. To have freedom meant for the polls

853
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:37,519
not to have a government that would subject these institutions, laws, norms,

854
00:59:37,519 --> 00:59:41,119
and social mores to thoughtless social engineering but this is

855
00:59:41,159 --> 00:59:44,000
precisely what happened when the communist regime was replaced by

856
00:59:44,000 --> 00:59:47,639
the liberal democratic one. The depressing fact was that this

857
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:51,559
sober choice of experience and reason against ideology was not

858
00:59:51,599 --> 00:59:54,360
sufficiently durable to withstand the pressure from the new wave

859
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:58,400
of a new ideology. Intimidated and dispersed, the citizens of

860
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:00,639
the new system turned their backs on the other ideals

861
01:00:00,639 --> 01:00:03,199
and duly admitted that the credit for defeating the old

862
01:00:03,199 --> 01:00:06,559
ideology went not to them and what had really been

863
01:00:06,559 --> 01:00:09,280
close to their hearts and minds, but to the new ideology.

864
01:00:09,679 --> 01:00:13,039
They readily agreed that the liberal democracy, that liberal democracy

865
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:15,159
was the victor, and that it had for a long

866
01:00:15,239 --> 01:00:18,440
time animated people's dreams and given them courage to oppose

867
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:22,559
the most inhumane political system in history. It soon turned

868
01:00:22,559 --> 01:00:25,400
out that the real victor was even more concrete. When

869
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:28,760
browsing the propaganda the materials published by the European Union today,

870
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:32,079
one discovers, to one's astonishment that the actual goal of

871
01:00:32,119 --> 01:00:36,840
the anti regime opposition in communist Europe was European integration

872
01:00:37,079 --> 01:00:41,639
and indirectly the then non existing European Union. As such,

873
01:00:42,599 --> 01:00:46,599
the amazing propaganda success of this strikingly false. Interpretation has

874
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,559
many unpleasant effects. One of them was a widespread the

875
01:00:50,559 --> 01:00:54,199
widespread practice of rewriting history and of projecting the stereotypes

876
01:00:54,239 --> 01:00:57,679
of the present onto the past. One had an impression

877
01:00:57,719 --> 01:01:01,440
that the old ideas suddenly ebbed a way unfairly and

878
01:01:01,519 --> 01:01:07,679
prematurely disowned by their former adherents. Many former opposition activists

879
01:01:07,679 --> 01:01:10,360
were simply embarrassed by what they had believed in the past,

880
01:01:10,679 --> 01:01:13,039
because now these beliefs seemed out of tune with the

881
01:01:13,079 --> 01:01:16,840
new tides of modernity. Even if they were still proud

882
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:19,599
of what they had done, it was now for different reasons,

883
01:01:19,639 --> 01:01:25,039
as the old reasons had lost their appeal. The inevitable

884
01:01:25,039 --> 01:01:27,920
effect was also a reinterpretation of the political drama that

885
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:31,480
had ended with the collapse of the ancient regime. The

886
01:01:31,559 --> 01:01:34,920
old narrative about the national and religious identity, awakened by

887
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:39,280
historical circumstances and by the influence of powerful personalities such

888
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:42,679
as Pope John Paul, had been replaced by a new one,

889
01:01:42,719 --> 01:01:46,199
according to which, predictably, there had been a conflict between

890
01:01:46,199 --> 01:01:49,039
the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This

891
01:01:49,199 --> 01:01:55,679
dichotomy having obviously many analogies progress versus reaction, nationalism versus democracy,

892
01:01:56,079 --> 01:02:00,920
liberalism versus authoritarianism. Who represented the force if darkness was

893
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:04,000
not clear? The candidates to this role changed together with

894
01:02:04,039 --> 01:02:08,119
the evolving of political constellations. What became clear, however, was

895
01:02:08,159 --> 01:02:10,679
that a growing number of people started to believe that

896
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:14,159
the real opposition that had defeated the communist regime was

897
01:02:14,199 --> 01:02:19,079
a pro EU one. It was this group that, together

898
01:02:19,159 --> 01:02:22,079
with Gorbachev, the reformist wings of the Communist Party, that

899
01:02:22,199 --> 01:02:26,719
European institutions, Western governments, and the enlightened European public opinion

900
01:02:27,159 --> 01:02:32,519
pushed Europe toward further unification, more pluralism, and more tolerance.

901
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,679
That's it. That's chapter four, and I'll be back in

902
01:02:38,719 --> 01:02:43,360
a couple days to start on five. We'll finish us up.

903
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:45,800
I think we can probably might be able to do

904
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:50,400
this in two more episodes, So I hope you're enjoying this.

905
01:02:50,519 --> 01:02:54,679
That was a particularly important section that I hope if

906
01:02:55,559 --> 01:02:57,679
any section you want to share out of this to

907
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:02,800
that one chapter part eight of this. All right, that's it,

908
01:03:03,559 --> 01:03:04,800
see you in a few days. Thank you.