Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to
explain something right now. If you support me through substack
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that
you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll
be able to listen to the episodes through there. If
you support me through subscribe, star gum Road, or on
my website directly, I will send you a link where
you can download the file and you can listen to
it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support
everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. It allows
me to basically put out an episode every day now,
and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate.
I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two
even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you,
So thank you for the support. Head on over to
Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, Forward slash Support and
do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to part four of my reading of Raizard Legut
goes demon in Democracy. We left off right in the
middle of chapter two let's finish up chapter two today,
shall we? All right, let's do this. But churchill statement
can also have another interpretation. Democracy is not good, but
a better system has not been invented. To many people today,
this sentence is unquestionably true, but it is patently false.
Of course, a better system was invented, and it happened
conceptually in antiquity as a result of a long debate
about the best political regime. It first appeared in Plato's
late works and was further developed by Aristotle. The argument
of the ancient thinkers was simple, and it rose from
an accurate observation, well grounded in political experience, that most
regimes are defective by being one sided, that is, by
going too much in one direction, determined by the specificity
of the group that exerts the predominant influence in the
functioning of the system. This observation, one could say, anticipated
Churchill's view, or rather that Churchill's view reiterated in a
slightly changed form the classical insight. The ancients distinguished three
basic types of regimes monarchy one man rule, oligarchy called
sometimes aristocracy, minority rule, and democracy majority rule. They regarded
each of them as good in some aspects and deficients
in others. Each system, then, while being superior to the alternatives,
was also inferior to them. For example, the advantage of
the monarchy was that it was simplified, that it simplified
the decision making process and gave it greater consistency. Its disadvantage,
among other things, was the danger of tyranny. The advantage
of oligarchy was its educational elitism, and its disadvantage a
possible subordination of the public interest to that of a
minority group. The advantage of democracy was its representativeness and
its disadvantages anarchy and factionalism. A possible solution of the
problem of one sided us was to mix the three types.
One could therefore devise a political structure that combined monarchy, oligarchy,
and democracy in such a way that each would foster
the advantages and neutralize the disadvantages of the others. We
would then have, for example, a democratic representativeness, but at
the same time, some oligarchic aristocratic institutions that would perform
a form of elitism, as well as some form of
monarchy guaranteeing the efficiency of governance. Such combination depended on
the ingenuity of the policy peticians and the character of
a particular society, and could produce a variety of hybrid
political forms. Once this role referred to this mixed regime,
he used the term res publica. This was the beginning
of a very important republican tradition in Western civilization. In
its modern versions, republicanism moved along complex paths, sometimes losing
the original meaning, especially when used solely as a shorthand
for revolutionary anti monarchism, but the main message given to
it by the ancients was often preserved. The political community
organized as republic was a structure containing various elements, one
being a democratic component. Even the American system, which today
is regarded as the exemplary embodiment of representative democracy, was
established as a hybrid constructionism. Some of the founding fathers
regarded it as a major problem, how to limit the
rule of the demos and secure the proper role of
the aristocratic element, whose responsibility would be the defense and
propagation of ethical and political virtues. That's the job of
the elite. The aristocrats. Tokeville contemplated a similar problem, which
seemed to him even more pressing, considering that he saw
the advents of democracy as irresistible in the new times
that we're approaching, It then became a matter of utmost
urgency to inject some aristocratic spirit into an ever more
egalitarian society. Even in the twentieth century, approximately up to
the thirties, this hybrid view of political regimes was still
quite widespread, although the word democracy started making it his
rapid career, becoming not just a description but also the norm.
What World War One gave us Intentionally, in my opinion,
this meant moving away from thinking about political reat in
terms of pros and cons to the idolatry of one
type of political arrangement whose flaws were systematically disregarded. But
simon has become a common practice, unfortunately rather ridiculous, to
complement certain political conducts and actions as democratic and condemn
others as undemocratic. Sometimes such labeling may be quite amusing,
but its funny side escapes most observers. So when a
politician is criticized for being undemocratic because in the parliament
he disobeys the speaker and refuses to yield the floor,
one cannot but laugh. This is a democratic behavior in
its purest form, invented in a democracy and having a
very long tradition in a democratic history at any rate.
Before it disappeared giving way to the idolatry of democracy,
the concept of a hybrid system known as a mixed
regime had played a creative role in political thought and practice,
as it prevented the politicians from falling into util topianism.
There was no one combination model, and the particular political
arrangements reflected national traditions, usually dating from pre democratic times.
Given that France post revolutionary was considered a republic, just
like England and the Netherlands, despite the last two formerly
being monarchies, and the United States to a certain degree,
the republican formula allowed for a considerable diversity political experimentation
and a great number of innovations that combined modern elements
with traditional ones at various levels of public life. In
several decades, this approach to political systems not only completely
disappeared from the public consciousness, but was also marginalized by
political science. The word republic is used today only in
the sense of the form of government, and any attempts
to extend its meaning and to restore its former scope
provoke the irritation of political scientists. So you're free to
use the term republic. Yours is not free to practice
to set up to govern as a republic. Politicians are
equally reluctant to use the word republic because people tend
to associate it with some form of oppressive statism, People's
Republic of China, the Democratic Republic of North Korea, Yiada.
They definitely prefer the word democracy, which they have been
taught to associate with freedom, openness, and diversity. These associations
are wrong, of course, because a republic has a higher
internal diversity than a liberal democracy, also incorporating undemocratic institutions,
for example, aristocratic and monarchical, and satisfying non democratic sensibilities.
Liberal democracy is more restrictive, being strongly correlated with egalitarian
principles that are quite wrongly believed to generate diversity. The
opposite is true. Egalitarianism does not tolerate aristocratic and monarchical tendencies,
not only in the political structures of the state, which
might be understandable, but in any other area of public life.
Get that mark that down. Egalitarianism does not tolerate aristocratic
and monarchical tendencies, not only in the political structures of
the state, which might be understandable, but in any other
area of public life. So when aristocrac when you have
an institution that may be aristocratic and monarchical, let's say
the Church, that can't be tolerated, and yet liberal democracy,
being the single most homogenizing force in the modern world,
creates the illusion that it alone stands for social differentiation.
A liberal democratic man surrenders to the illusion he believes,
quite wrongly, that he has managed to make his inner
self more and more intrinsically diversified, and therefore, while imprinting
his ideas on the world around him, he cherishes a
reassuring conviction that though that through him, the world also
becomes more diversified. But since in fact he himself dramatically
loses his sensitivity to diversity, he is utterly unable to
see how, by his influence, the world around him slowly
submerges in an ever more stifling uniformity. The consequences of
this version of churchill saying are similar to those of
the socialist doctrine the system is not subject to any criticism.
In practical terms, this means that one cannot move away
from liberal democracy in any aspect or area of life.
Just as one could not move away from socialism in
any aspect or area. And even if such a retreat
were actually happening by accident or under the pressure of circumstances,
one must not admit it or call it a retreat,
or even speak or think of it in a way
that would suggest a deviation from the liberal democratic model.
Not allowed to talk about the failures, folks. The failures
are just progress, and these people just need to be
able to fix what they've screwed up. Five. There is
a possible counter argument to this. One can say that
modern Western political countries are actually hybrid regimes, despite the
fact that they are called democracies. Their mixed character is
well expressed by the name itself as liberal democracies. They
are combinations of liberalism and democracy, which, it can be argued,
further retains the original specificity of the mixed regime, although
modified in the court with modern realities. But is it
indeed the case? Is liberal democracy a mixed regime? We
do not know exactly when the term liberal democracy entered
into a wider usage, but it certainly happened fairly recently.
In the mid nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill wrote how
freedom was threatened after the fall of traditional autocracies, particularly
by the process of democratization, through which a society gained
an indirect but more profound control of the mind of
an individual. He argued that a possible countervailing force to
this dangerous tendency was liberalism, which would open the space
for individual disobedience and eccentricity. In the twentieth century, or
Tega Egassette advocated some form of aristocratic liberalism, also as
a counterweight to a stage of democratization that he called
a mass society. In short, it was obvious for a
long time time that liberalism and democracy point in two
opposite directions and generate incompatible attitudes. Combining them looked therefore
like an enterprise well worth undertaking. The establishment of democracy
seems to require an urgent counteraction, more so because democracy,
has pointed out by such shrewd observers as Toqueville and Ortega,
was something more than a mechanism for the peaceful transfer
of power. It had also an ability to change the
whole mindset of society by depriving it of all intellectual
and psychological impulses, all social habits and aspirations. However, creative
and valuable that did not conform to democratic practices. Those
writers used a different language and faced a different political
reality than the ancient philosophers, but expressed similar concerns, notably
arguing that democracy tends to enslave people's minds through methods
that are not easily legible and controllable, yet no less profit.
This is quote. I know no country in which there
is less independence of mind and less genuine freedom of
thought than in America, wrote Chokeville in his Democracy in America.
And when he spoke about limitations on freedom, he did
not mean the legal constraints to express one's ideas, but
rather the pressure to remove from one's mind everything that
a democratic society did not give a stamp of legitimacy.
Think about it. Today, anything that's outside the box of
the regime is immediately attacked. It's called fascism, it's called stalitarianism.
It's a threat, and it's a threat to be put down.
The regime thinks that having to show an ID to
vote is undemocratic. Therefore and racists somehow. Therefore, if you say,
you know, everyone really should have an ID to vote,
you're a democratic and even racist. The aridity of the
democratic mind could be discerned and deplored at the same time,
because classical education was still in force, providing an outside,
non democratic perspective of evaluation. People educated on Aristotle, Plutarch,
and Cicero could not help but notice that rampant democratization
was accompanied by the unification of thinking that was a
direct offshoot of an anti hierarchical conformity so typical of
the democratic man. It might seem, therefore, and it did
seem to people such as Mill and Tookeville, that liberalism
functions as a vehicle of an aristocratic factor along the
lines previously indicated by the ancients. By introducing more individual freedom,
liberalism could reawaken strong desires for high aspirations and infuse
some life into the omnipresent pressure of mediocrity. A wave
of liberalism was to encourage an attitude of eccentricity, which
Mill hoped would stimulate the human spirit to search for
the new and the extraordinary. Putting democracy and liberalism together
seemed a most promising idea. Democracy ensured the overall balance
of the entire political order, while liberalism was responsible for
enriching the society with individual aspirations to improve things, supporting
a human desire for creativity and for change, for adventure,
on and on. The concept of liberal democracy, understood as
the mix of democracy and liberalism, is usually explained by
contrasting it with the totalitarian democracy. The latter term was
popularized by Jacob Jacob Talmon, who coined it while analyzing
the philosoph of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The favorite quote with
which Rousseau was said to seal his fate as the
totalitarian comes from the Social Contract, from the passage in
which he wrote that the general will is entitled to
coerce the individual will to obey, because such action constitutes
coercion to freedom quote unquote coercion to freedom. The expression
is unfortunate, indeed that the idea behind it is more
complex than most critics of Rousseau admit. In any case,
for Atalman and subsequent other authors, totalitarian democracy is one
in which, in principle, the conflict between the state and
the individual should not exist, and the events of such
a conflict, the state has the moral duty to coerce
the individual to obey. The people with liberal sensitivity rejected
this possibility with indignation asserting quite rightly that it defies
the most elementary assumption that freedom and coercion are exclusive. Thus,
from the onset, the liberals emphasized a principle considered unchallengeable
that in liberal democracy man must not be coerced to freedom,
because the decision is not of the government, the church,
the nation, or any community, but of the man himself.
Of course, the republican democracy, as developed in America and
later in Europe, never resembled Rousseau's quasi totalitarian system, at
least in its structural mechanism. They were not ruled by
the general will, but by political parties and factions, which
Rousseau would have considered the exact antithesis of his conception.
When Tokeville, Ortega and others postulated introducing a more libertarian
element in democracy, they were less concerned with the political
structure of democracy, but more with its social and cultural content.
What they feared was the tyranny of sentiment and opinion
and the general gravitation of a democratic society towards conformist mediocrity.
Although the introduction of civil liberties, the Bill of Rights,
and various legal guarantees could sometimes but not always create
a barrier against the concentration of political power. This was
not really a response to the dangers of democracy that
were so accurately identified by the representatives of what I called,
for want of a better term, aristocratic liberalism. Six. When
we look at the changes in liberal democratic societies, especially
in recent decades, at a time when the republican model
lost its impact, we see what actually happened was not
so much the introduction of liberalism into the democracy, but
the democratization of liberalism. The effect proved to be the
opposite of the expected divergent elements such as the democratic
and the aristocratic, where one would offset the weakness of
the other, were not incorporated in to one system. Liberalism
did not diversify democracy because it was a different type
of liberalism than the one of the American founding fathers.
Tookeville and Ortega hoped for, not aristocratic but egalitarian, and
as such it reinforced what it should what it should
have moderated. This should not have been a surprise, because
the original idea of liberalism was indeed egalitarian. Isn't it great?
How well he writes, and how simple it is? Where
I just feel like reading and it's like well, what
am I going to comments on. I'm just gonna agree
with him. I mean, I may have some points here
and everything to make and maybe relates to something in
the modern day or out of history, but this all
makes sense. This all makes so much sense, and it's
so simple that you know, well, the starting position of
liberalism and at the same time a final perspective is
a hypothetical situation in which relative, independent units cooperate through
a system of contracts. The democratization turned liberalism into a
doctrine in which the primary agents were no longer individuals,
but groups and the institutions of the democratic state. Instead
of individuals striving for the enrichment of social capital with
new ideas and aspirations, there emerged people voicing demands called
rights and acting within the scope of organized groups. These
groups subsequently petitioned state institutions and exerted pressure on them
to change legislation and political practices. Over time, they began
to affect judicial decisions by the courts, demanding legal acceptance
of their position and acquired privileges. In the final outcome,
the state and liberal democracy ceased to be an institution
pursuing the common good, but became a hostage of groups
that treated it solely as an instrument of change securing
their interests. I don't even know whether I agree. I
don't think I agree with the state being the state
of liberal democracy, being an institution pursuing the common good.
But you could see how it just becomes a vehicle
for special interests that doesn't even need to be explained.
We even have things called NGOs non gencized, I mean
non governmental organizations. The state, more and more involved in
the process of supporting group aspirations, largely lost its general
republican character and turned into a conglomerate of the social, economic, cultural,
and other policy programs enacted and imposed through democratic procedures.
This in turn meant that the state had to take
over more and more specific responsibilities, far beyond the normal
operations of the state apparatus. As the new expectations of
the groups had more and more to do with their
status and social recognition, the traditional means of the state
policy were no longer sufficient. It became necessary to intervene
deeply into the social substance where the roots of status
and recognition resided, either through direct political action or indirectly
by changing the laws, making appropriate judicial decisions, and adjusting
morality and social moras drastically to guarantee equality. Politics is
not downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from power. Understand
that anyone who's saying that politics is downstream from culture
does not understand power, does not understand what Luguco wrote
right here, the state represents armed with the rhetoric of
anti discrimination felt it was the state representatives armed with
the rhetoric of anti discrimination, felt it was their duty
to regulate matters for that, for far too long had
remained unregulated, which often meant giving privileges to certain groups
and taking them away from others. Once the liberal democracy
became established, those who in the past had complained about
the growth of the communist state and compared it with
a glorious example of the asceticism of a liberal state
could invoke such contrast no longer. The liberal democratic state,
still more effective than a communist state, slowly and steadily
underwent a similar expansion and likewise deeply intruded in the
lives of its citizens. However, while the communist states spread
an intrusive interference had their source in the determination of
the authorities, who, in order to survive had to impose
forcefully more and more controls of social spontaneity in a
liberal democratic state. The source of this growing intrusion was
the citizens themselves, both as individuals and as members of
privilege seeking groups. With the democratization of liberalism, the state
unleashed a drive for hyperactivity by those groups, which in
turn resulted in the hyperactivity of political and legal institutions.
The government, the courts, and the legislative bodies were under
constant pressure to continue their policy of distributing further privileges
and granting further rights. Politicians soon discovered that giving way
to this pressure, or even preempting it was there was
to their advantage, because the continuation of the policy of
equality was the best method to acquire electoral votes, to
secure democratic legitimacy, and to stay in power. Thus a
peculiar race began. On the one hand, the groups were
inventing more and more effective means to influence the policies
of the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, and on the other, politicians, lawmakers,
and judges were increasingly involved in a competition to see
which would be the best provider of the new privileges
and rights to those groups. A growing number of group
claims required new legislative and judicial decisions, new roles of
all sorts to impose the existing law and to provide
it with new and even more up to date interpretations.
The legislatures and the court struggled tirelessly with the new
political reality, and often assume the initiatives themselves in order
to strengthen and legitimize their political role. Reversing this process
was impossible. Withdrawal of the state from some areas would
entail reducing the activity of the government, ministers, local officials, parliamentarians,
provincial and regional governors, and others. And such a thing
could not and is not to be permitted, because in
democratic politics it is in nobody's interest. The democratic mechanism
itself was created not to limit political activity, but to
keep it going at an ever higher speed, restless acting
and reacting, amending and modifying, initiating and taking over, responding
to new challenges, and challenging others. All of these have
been perceived by politicians, society, and the media as the
proper conduct according to which the man of politics is
to be evaluated. Man Naturally, it is sometimes difficult to
see the relationship between the interests of a particular group
and those of the state. Due to the constant activity
of the politicians and political institutions, the state that does
not engage in a flurry of activity or effectively convince
its citizens that it will vigorously hustle and bustle to
ensure better conditions for specific groups quickly passes into the
hands of new parties or new trustees of political power.
The slogan to change and reform is repeated during every election,
regardless of the economic and political situation. Oftentimes the changes
are superficial and unnecessary. They complicate simple things, replace better
with worse, or lesser evil with a greater one. But
everyone feels the urge to act, even if the activity
is phony. They just have to appear to be doing something,
because this is all about progress. This is all about improvement.
This is all about a goal that changes constantly and
you never reach it there and you have special interest
groups that come in and go, well, we can't achieve
that goal unless we're given this, And politicians are willing
to start a committee to look into that because it
not only increases their power, but it increases the need
for them. It is also typical of our time that
the growth of the state does not go along with
belief as exhibited in the past miraculous power. The state
has ceased to be associated with great hopes and is
no longer viewed as a political object of worship. Rather,
it appears that with its growing influence and progressive taking
on of new responsibilities, the state has lost the respect
of its citizens. Demands directed at the state are nowadays
expressed in a tone of exasperation and angry impatience, rather
than with belief in its charitable omnipotence. It can be
considered a paradox that a liberal democratic man expects more
and more from the state that he values less and less.
That's I mean. That is pretty much people who vote
for Democrat who vote for Democrats because of the Gibbs.
That's it right there. They care nothing about the state,
They don't value it in the least. They wouldn't even
vote if it wasn't for Gibbs. And yet, surprisingly, despite
this somewhat cynical view of today's politics and political institutions,
the faith in the absolute superiority of liberal democracy remains unshaken.
The coalescing of liberal and democratic institutions that we observe today,
which contributes to the notion that liberal democracy has no alternative,
is nowhere seen more clearly than in the European Union.
The current EU doctrine explicitly states that it is the
ultimate system, a culminating emanation of European values, a final
stage of history of the European peoples, worthy of absolute
protection and praise. The countries that break loose to the
process of the politicians who express reservations, no matter how timidly,
are immediately subject to disproportionately harsh criticism. EU propaganda that
has has it that the ongoing political debate in Europe
for two and a half thousand years has come to
an end, and that Europeans have finally resolved all major
political problems, not only on an intellectual level or at
the level of the institutions across not only on an
intellectual level or at the level of the institutions across
the continent and globally, the U has become the highest
arbiter of engaging all political developments in the world, and,
as the Soviet Union once did, the hope of the
oppressed peoples of all continents just put a nice new
wrapper on it. Not surprisingly, the EU has become a
major regulating power in Europe, and its politicians proudly state
that they are responsible for seventy percent of the national legislation.
This legislation is mostly a necessary in view of the
majority of the citizens, but necessary from the perspective of
the European institutions. It confirms their power, regardless of whether
it is beneficial for the people or not. The process
of legislation involves vast numbers of people, organizations and committees,
and thus creates a colossal army, preparing the ground for
subsequent legislation and so far very effectively neutralizing any critics.
All this is submerged in a sea of propaganda and ideology.
Every piece of legislative regulation is presented not as a
simple organizational or administrative decision, but as a step towards
something great for which we, the Europeans should be grateful.
Every directive, Council, document, resolution or report of the European
Parliament must be accompanied by a boastful rhetoric proclaiming it
to be another irresistible proof of the coming victory of
the European project is about you know, want to be
the last the first one to stop clapping with Stalin.
With these people, you can never stop clapping. Even what
seems to be an obvious failure is presented as a
resounding success. The year twenty twenty eleven, in which the
eurosystem collapsed was, in the words of the President of Europe,
that is, the President of the Council, the anis horribilious,
and my latinus so about the annus horribilius, which he added,
in the future will be considered the Annis mirabilis. The
communist politicians resorted to the same device. They also categorically
brushed away any suggestion that the system had an inherent weakness,
and kept busy convincing the citizens that a constant struggle
with the permanent crisis only confirmed the system's superiority. Seven
taken for granted that liberal democracy is an ultimate political solution,
had another consequence, perhaps more disconcerting than others, because it
contradicted a fund the mental assumption of the liberal democratic doctrine.
As we recall, liberal democracy was said to differ from
its utalitarian democracy in one crucial respect. In the former,
the citizens could not be coerced to be free. It
appears however, that the regime has not only been persistently
violating this principle exhibit, but exhibiting a powerful tendency to
go in the opposite direction. What we have been observing
over the last decades is an emergence of a kind
of liberal democratic general will. Whether the meaning of the
term itself is identical with that used by Rousseau is
of negligible significance. The fact is that we have been
more and more exposed to an overwhelming liberal democratic omnipresence
which seems independent of the will of individuals, to which
they humbly submit and which they perceive is compatible with
their innermost feelings. Reminds me of ted Kay's over socialzation.
This will permeates public and private lives, emanates from the media, advertising, films,
theater and visual arts, expresses itself through common wisdom and
persistently brazen stereotypes, though educational curricula from kindergarten, from kindergartens
to universities, and through works of art. This liberal democratic
general will. This liberal democratic general will does not recognize
geographical or political borders, and although it does not have
a control center or an executive body, it seems to
move forward relentlessly and to conquer new territories, as if
under a single, well structured and well organized command following
a superbly devised strategy. Legislatures that are free, independent and
accountable only to voters make laws and accordance with its requirements,
and the judges even more free, more independent, and accountable
to no one issue adjudications as its most faithful servants.
The liberal democratic general will reaches the area that Rousseau
never dreamed of. Language, gestures and thoughts, remember Orwell wrote
nineteen eighty four. In nineteen forty eight, he wasn't talking
about the Soviet Union. He was describing what he thought
England would become through people's actions and minds. This will ruthlessly,
This will ruthlessly imposes liberal democratic patterns on everything and everyone,
including those who should firmly stand for alternative proposals. The
socialists and communists, while defending their position or trying to
prove that they are more democratic and liberal than the
liberal Democrats, more open, pluralistic, tolerant, inclusive, and enthusiastically devoted
to entitlements of individuals and groups, more feminist minded and
non discriminatory. The conservatives, who in principles should oppose. The
socialists and liberal Democrats quite sincerely argue that they too
are open, pluralistic, tolerant and inclusive, dedicated to the entitlements
of individuals and groups, nondiscriminatory, and even supportive of the
claims of feminists and homosexual activists. All in all, the
liberal Democrats, the socialists, and the conservatives are unanimous in
their condemnations. They condemn racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, intolerance, and
all the other sins listed in the Liberal Democratic catechism,
while also participating in an unimaginable stretching of the meaning
of these concepts and depriving them of any explanatory power.
So if you see people who especially groups that advocate
for absolute freedom, decrying racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, intolerance, if
you see them decrying it, even if they say, well,
we don't want to make a law against it, just
remember where the spirit of that comes from. All thoughts
in all modes of linguistic expression are moving within the
circle of the same cliches, slogans, spells, ideas and arguments.
All are involved in the grand design of which those
who think and speak are not the authors, but with
whose authorship they deeply identify, or in case of doubt
from which they do not find strength or reasons enough
to distance themselves. The grand Design, its supporters say, should
be implemented at all costs, because it is believed to
bring with itself freedom, autonomy, tolerance, pluralism, and all other
liberal democratic treasures. Therefore, all barriers that block its coming
can and must be broken down, also for the benefit
of those who put up these barriers. If abortion means freedom,
then we should raise the consciousness of those who think differently,
force doctors to support this freedom, and silence priests so
they do not interfere with it. If same sex marriage
means freedom, we should then compel its opponents to accept
it in silence fools who may have doubts about it.
If political correctness is a necessity of life in the
liberal democratic society, than imposing it is after all, nothing
else but a measure of its emancipation. For all the
groups that manage to capture this liberal phraseology and the
logic that underlies it, such as homosexuals and feminists, have
exerted a disproportionate influence on the government, to the extent
that the state institutions, including the courts, have taken upon
themselves the task of breaking the resistance of less conscious
and more stubborn groups, that is, of coercing them to freedom.
We're we're back to Rousseau. When they seek to break
you of if you're against gay marriage, if you're against abortion,
they're coercing you, or they're trying to convince you or
to shame you. This is coercion to freedom. They're forcing
you to be free. So obvious. Right today, those who
write and speak not only face more limitations than they
used to, but all the institutions and communities that traditionally
stood in the way of this coercion to freedom are
being dismantled. As in all utopias, so in a liberal democracy,
it is believed that the irrational residues of the past
should be removed. Over the last few decades, we have
observed legislation that has been passed in the name of
freedom and of liberal democracy, but which led with little
social resistance, to a considerable limitation of freedom. Parody and
quota regulations are a case in point. Although they are
typical egalitarian measures and as such inherently inimical to freedom,
they have been largely accepted as a political imperative of
a liberal society. One cannot nowadays appoint an executive or
elected representatives, be it in politics, business, or art, without
a prior selection according to sex, ethnicity, or some other
non relevant criterion. Another type of legislation extremely dangerous and
also illustrating coercions of freedom, relates to what has been
called hate speech, and still another two domestic violence. These
phrases tend to incriminate more and more acts of conduct
and of speech, allowing for further drastic intervention by the
government and courts in family life, the media, public institutions,
and schools. When such laws were being passed in some
European countries some time ago, an immediate reaction was far
from favorable. Many people in institutions, especially in the United States,
voiced an opinion that such measures were Orwellian in nature,
in the sense that the libertarian rhetoric was used to
cover up coercion, making people believe that freedom is slavery
and slavery is freedom. Oh, those libertarians just the best dupes.
They come up with ideas and phrases, and people in
power just steal them and mangle them and turn them
into something else. Oh, thank you so much libertarians. Later on,
the adjective orwellian was dropped, and more and more countries,
including the United States, adopted similar regulations spontaneously carried by
the general will, with more and more support by the people,
or those who claimed to claim to represent the people's will. Anyhow,
the citizens did not protest, probably having been convinced that
they were witnessing a global civilization of freedom in the making.
A similar pressure is exerted on education in general, the
result being a rigorous conformity of thought and conduct, all
naturally in the name of empowerment of students and teachers. Consequently, teachers,
like parents, can do less and less, although most of
them probably think that the changes are inevitable and that
never before did they enjoy so much freedom. Their real
power has been shifting to government officials, who, ostensibly, in
order to empower young people, decide how their minds should
be formed, free from the potential subversive influence of teachers
and parents. But then, both teachers and parents have ceased
to rebel because over time they have become part of
the great universal liberal democratic will, bragging about their sincere
and deep devotion to it. This is what we call
the postwar consensus or the Boomer truth. Regime, coercion, and
spontaneity overlap in an almost perfect symbios and if there
is still someone who has not resigned himselves to it,
he will soon be called to order by the government
and the courts. The universities are undergoing the same process,
which is most unfortunate because they were regarded for centuries
as free industries of the human mind. Today any such
belief is clearly in discord with zealoich. Today any such
belief is clearly in discord with reality. The entire education
process has been systematically standardized to make it as close
as possible to the liberal democratic model, in which group
rights are carefully watched. Detailed verification and appeal procedures have
been established, and the principle of equality is increasingly more
influential in academic community relations. The humanities and social sciences
have long since declared a keen interest in participating in
the process of liberal democratic changes, and are vigorously supported
in their actions by ministries of education, political associations, and
supranational institutions. The liberal democratic jargon which so painfully dominates
political life also invaded academic life, which slowly became a
reflection of the entire public sphere. Universities are increasingly eager
to introduce the liberal democratic regime, which makes the vast
majority of academics convinced that they operate an institution that
enjoys the greatest freedom in its history, but in fact
freedom is in retreat. The emergence of liberal democracy at
educational institutions led, as elsewhere, to considerable restrictions of the
very liberty and that universities enjoyed previously. These developments are
undermining a long and admirable academic tradition. Of course, in
the post communist countries, not much was left to be undermined,
because the old regime managed to deal with the academic
tradition very effectively, with no small participation of the academics themselves.
Remnants of tradition were occasionally still invoked as a weapon
against the excessive intrusion of the communist government. Whatever else
remained of the old days was white cleaned by the
new order. In an age of an increasing number of rights,
continuous group demands, equality and officially hunted deviations from the
established political line. Academic tradition did not stand the chance.
The universities began to resemble businesses on the other hand,
and liberal democratic political structures on the other on one hand,
and liberal democratic political destruction structures on the other. Let
us note here the disappearance of the academic eccentric, a
well known personality for central centuries, almost inseparably associated with
the academic tradition and its peculiar atmosphere of the freedom
of inquiry and inimitable relations between teachers and students. It
is not only the ominous presence of political correctness that
makes the life of a dissonant unbearable. The functioning of
the university itself has become so heavily controlled by procedures, rules,
and regulations that all deviations from the routine are strictly controlled.
If the legendary professors of old, whose unconventional behavior persists
in real or imaginary stories to this very day, suddenly
by some miracle managed to find themselves at today's universities,
they would soon be coerced to submission or disposed of
as unruly troublemakers. The coercions of freedom also occurs in
the supernatural supernational institutions, and particularly in the European Union, which,
as I previously noted, considers itself the ultimate product of
the liberal democratic idea. Its coercid policies are not something
that happens by accident. They derive from the heart of
the European Union and from the logic of integration as
it is conceived today. European institutions are supposed to represent
European society, which theoretically seems understandable. The problem is that
the EU institutions exist, whereas European society does not. Such
a society will, we are told, come into existence sometime
in the future. But this belief is a part of
the EU creed, for which evidence is, to say the
least shaky, because people like their culture. But once we
accept the basic premise that the existing institutions may act
for and in the name of the society that is
believed to emerge in the future, we give them extraordinary powers,
far exceeding those that are granted within the framework of
an ordinary society. Those institutions tend to ignore the rules
followed in nation states, whose governments cannot ignore them because
they are answerable to real societies with real identities and loyalties,
not to some fictional future future of future Abelia. Yeah,
that's a good word. The European institutions ignore these rules
out of the conviction that they that by doing so,
they represent what serve European society's best and what those
societies really want, even if they are temporarily deluded by
the unreason of national particularisms. The European Union, in other words,
believes itself to be a vanguard in relation to the
rest of the population ahead of them and recognizing what
is real and what is fictional, and that, on their belief,
it is pursuing a goal whose value the public will
understand only in the future. A popular EU maxim that
is striking in its stupidity but repeated as a sign
of great wisdom is that integration is like riding a bicycle.
You have to keep going otherwise you will fall. It
thus assumes that two groups exist in the EU, one
that knows the final goal and that it is imperative
for the whole process to be carried out, and one
that is not cognizant of the final goal, does not
understand it and rejects it to the detriment of itself
and others. This second group represents resistance, and this resistance
must be overcome for the sake of the whole, something
the group will thoroughly understand over time when it gets
over its own peculiarity and comprehends the full benefits of integration.
Here we encounter a replication of the well known pattern
found in the theory and practice of communism. On the
one hand, there is a party which knows the ultimate
all of socialism, identifies with it completely, and understands the
need for its existence. On the other are the real
people who are not fully awake of, not fully aware
of what is good for them, and who should be
firmly guided toward the final goal despite their posed resistance.
The emergence of such a pattern of thought and practice
at the European level, for example, on the occasion of
explicitly and unjustly forcing the Lisbon Treaty on all societies,
shows that the coercion to freedom has gone very far,
so far that it has eliminated several retreat mechanisms. There
is no indication that the EU will break up with
these self destructive and demoralizing practices. The EU mind, yes,
there is such a thing generated such a mental habit
that every descent is considered a blasphemous assault in the
very idea of the European Union and the noble principles
that constitute it. Just as in socialism, every descent was
an incomprehensible act of treason that did not deserve to
be left unpunished. The European Union has become the guardian
of all diseases of the super national liberal democracy, while
itself being the most vivid illustration of these diseases. It
is diseases it has led its institutions actions that human
minds to such a level of dogmatization that any future
remedial movements aimed at restoring freedom and reason will have
conflicted with it to a higher or lesser degree, in
the course of which the EU itself will increasingly sentence
itself to play the role of the encion regime. It
is hard to imagine that, while producing such so much
regulatory power, the EU would suddenly dismantle it and comes
to the conclusion that integrational abstinence would better serve peace
and cooperation than the coercion to freedom. The emergence of
such beliefs in the EU sphere would encourage a European
pers droika something that the European Union might not survive, right,
And that's the end of chapter two. If you take
away anything from this, the concept of coercions of freedom.
I think that is one of the most insightful things
from chapter two and insightful things of this book. And
it's something that you can I think you can even
explain it to your normy family. They should be able
to understand what it means. Now we know that they'll
be like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense and
the next day and do not care anything about it,
but okay someday. So that's it. I'll be back with
part five and we'll start chapter three in a couple
of days and until then, to carry yourselves. See you
and thanks for tuning in.