The Leftists Hate Free Speech

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”  Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”

From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control, and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing, and proselytization.

Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.

Walter E. Williams, The Fruits of College Indoctrination

Family Is Still the Building Block of Society

The methodical, deliberate redefinitions of terms such as life, gender, marriage, identity, etc. and the replacement of critical institutions, like the family and the faith community, with the government, have created the new normal. Many citizens now look to government programs to fulfill needs and solve problems, releasing them from a sense of personal responsibility or ownership and lessening dependence upon family.

Today, one’s identity is warped into a social construct permitted by some conjured up “right” to reject biology. Marriage, similarly, has been redefined to make a political point instead of its purpose as a key in a healthy society to procreate and provide sustenance and support. These reckless maneuvers borne on the political Left aimed to establish a more “progressive” society are, in fact, resulting in its destruction and material harm to individuals. …

The Left demands “educational equity” in schools but won’t dare touch the facts that children do better when parents are their first teachers, and a home is comprised of a mom and a dad. The “liberated” women of the Left, now even more angry and militant than ever, seem to thrive in the newly defined male persona of either an effeminate and compliant being or excessive in masculinity that translates into violent, oppressive, and sexist behavior. As noted in the June 2014 edition of the Institute for Family Studies, these women, united in their grievances, completely disregard social science that demonstrates “daughters whose fathers have been actively engaged throughout childhood in promoting their academic or athletic achievements and encouraging their self-reliance and assertiveness are more likely to graduate from college and to enter the higher-paying, more demanding jobs traditionally held by males.”

Robin Smith, The Family Is Still the Building Block of Society.

Immigration Can Be a Trojan Horse

The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits. ... The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass....it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. ... To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country...would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.

Alexander Hamilton, Message to Congress, 7 December 1801. Cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.182-183.

Body Problem or Mind Problem?

Does a man who has a healthy arm surgically removed because he doesn't feel it is a rightful part of his body have a body problem or a mind problem? When a man who is fifty-two identifies as a six-year-old girl, does he have a body problem or a mind problem? Does a woman who has anorexia and starves herself to death have a body problem or a mind problem? Just so, when someone who argues that they are transgender and, therefore, contemplating irreversible gender reassignment surgery, we must help them understand that they do not have a body problem, but a mind problem. It goes without saying that there is also a spiritual problem!

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.161

Logical Thinking Is Hindered

When your mind has been so seared by acceptance of evil that you condone amputation of healthy body parts, it's not surprising that your ability to think logically is hindered. If you start with the premise that radical mutilation of the body is an acceptable practice ... you shouldn't be surprised to find it applied in ways that are different, yet equally disturbing.

Joe Carter, "The Diabolic Logic of Transableism," The Gospel Coalition, 6/5/15.

Absurdity is No Longer an Argument

In a culture where reason and common sense no longer carry any weight, absurdity is not longer an argument against anything.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.160

The Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable

There is a "thinkable" and an "unthinkable" in every era. One era is quite certain intellectually and emotionally about what is acceptable. Yet another era decides that these "certainties" are unacceptable and puts another set of values into practice. On a humanistic base, people drift along from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.

Francis Schaeffer, cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.141

The Indoctrination Of the Next Generation

Today’s gay activists have carried the campaign a step further, invading children’s lives by wrapping themselves in the banner of tolerance. It is literally the equivalent of the wolf coming to your door dressed as your grandmother. The radicals in control of the gay establishment want children in their world of moral decay, lack of self-restraint, and moral relativism. Why? How better to truly belong to the majority (when you’re really on the fringe) than by taking possession of the next generation? By targeting children, you can start indoctrinating the next generation with the false construct that gay people deserve special treatment and special laws. How else can the gay establishment actually get society to believe, borrowing from George Orwell, that gay people are indeed more equal than others? Of course, the only way to get that idea accepted is to condition people to a nihilism that forbids morality and judgement.

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong, p.87

The Subtle Enemies

Enemies that come loudly and visibly are usually much easier to fight than those that are undetectable … but the erosion of character, the spoiling of innocent pleasures and the cheapening of life itself that often accompany modern popular culture can occur so subtly that we believe nothing has happened.

Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, pg.xiii.

We Become What We Enjoy Looking At

There is the myth that what we watch doesn’t affect us. However, various studies have shown that violent video games and other media can produce both short-term and long-term aggressive behavior in adolescents and adults; and we hardly need a study to prove the degenerative effects of pornography use on everything from marital relationships to how young people view sex. Why would advertisers spend billions for ads if what we see doesn’t affect our behavior? Let me put it even more strongly: we become what we enjoy looking at.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.124

Liberty Requires Responsibility

Free societies are responsible societies with citizens who are ready, willing, and able to assume personal responsibility.

Os Guinness, Last Call for Liberty

Christianity — A Vital Spiritual Element

Christianity is not just a religion but a vital spiritual element of Western identity, something that allowed Europe to maintain a strong sense of continuity, linking the ancient with the modern and absorbing into itself a variety of intellectual inspirations. By rejecting Christianity—after having marginalized the classical heritage—Europe, and indeed, the entire West not only slides into cultural aridity, a process noticeable for some time, but falls under the smothering monopoly of one ideology whose uniformity is being cleverly concealed by the deafening rhetoric of diversity that has been pouring into people’s minds at all occasions and in all contexts.

Christianity is the last great force that offers a viable alternative to the tediousness of liberal-democratic anthropology. In this respect it is closer to the classical rather than the modern view of human nature. With Christianity being driven out of the main tract, the liberal-democratic man—unchallenged and totally secure in his rule—will become a sole master of today’s imagination, apodictically determining the boundaries of human nature and, at the very outset, disavowing everything that dares to reach beyond his narrow perspective. The only thing he will be capable of doing is occasional, albeit capricious generosity in tolerating some form of dissidence at the far peripheries of his empire.Without a strong competitor the liberal-democratic man will reign over human aspirations like a tyrant. There will appear no one who would dare or be ready, in compliance with the existing rules, to call his reign into question; the rules that exist do not permit such extravagant acts, and a supposition that there might be other rules has long since been discarded as absurd.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.174

Strong Resemblance Between Leftist and Communist Activists

One does not have to be overly acute to see a strong resemblance between a communist activist on the one hand, and a feminist, a homosexual activist, and a liberal-democratic lumpen-intellectual on the other. Their opinions have the same tedious predictability, their arguments are based on similarly crude syllogisms, their styles are similarly vulgar, and their minds are equally dogmatic, unperturbed by any testimony from outside and prone to the same degree of zealousness. On both sides we also see what the Marxists called the unity of theory and practice, which translates into clear language meaning the total subordination of thinking to the ideological precepts of political action; this subordination, instead of being a cause of shame, is proudly held up as an achievement of the new times.

Both sides—communist and liberal democrat—share their dislike, sometimes bordering on hatred, toward the same enemies: the Church and religion, the nation, classical metaphysics, moral conservatism, and the family. Both are unable to mitigate their arrogance toward everything that their ideology despises, and which, in their revolutionary ardor, they seek to remove from the public space and from private lives. Both are fixated on one or two things that they refer to ad nauseam because those things delineate the unbreachable boundaries of their mental horizon. In every sentence from the Leninist and Stalinist catechisms one can replace “proletariat” with “women” or with “homosexuals,” make a few other minor adjustments, and no one will recognize the original source. Both sides desire a better world so badly that in order to have it, they do not hesitate to control the totality of human life—including these aspects that are most personal or intimate. Both, unfortunately, have been successful politically and have taken over the ideological power of institutions, laws, and even something as elusive, but nonetheless important, as political atmosphere. It is true that both—those in the communist countries and those throughout the Western world after the demise of communism—were and still are quite frequently an object of jokes, sometimes quite deadly, but at the same time their presence evoked, and the latter case are still evoking, feelings of fear or at least a sense of the clear message that opposing those people is not safe. Finally, both sides had spectacular victories among the intellectual and artistic elites; this is particularly puzzling because one would think that the people endowed with artistic and intellectual talents would be the first to reject with contempt something whose repulsive primitivism only person with serious mental deficiencies could miss.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.138-139.

The Evil of Egalitarianism

Because egalitarianism weakens communities and thus deprives men of an identity-giving habitat, it creates a vacuum around them. Hence a desire exists for a new identity, this time modern and in line with the spirit of militant egalitarianism. The ideologies fulfill this role perfectly. They organize people's consciousness by providing them with the meaning of life, an individual and collective purpose, an inspiration for further endeavors, and a sense of belonging. With the emergence of ideology the problem of a lonely individual in an egalitarian society no longer exists: feminism makes all women sisters; ;all homosexuals become brothers in struggle; all environmentalists become a part of an international green movement; all advocates of tolerance join the ranks of a universal antifascist crusade, and so on. Once a man joins an ideological group all becomes clear to him and everything falls into place; everything is either right or wrong, correct or incorrect. And this perception soon changes the man himself.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.137

Despotism Needs to be Checked!

When unchecked, despotism meets with no barrier for its self-aggrandizement. This is one of the major reasons why despotism was never effective in traditionally structured societies, where each group, even if situated on a low rung of the social ladder, had considerable autonomy and its own code, hierarchy, and rules of cooperation. Where there are no such groups and no internal differentiation within a society, where there is a social and political vacuum, the despotic power is left as the only form of control. But to be really effective, the despotic control needs something more than sheer terrorism and intimidation. It must supply the people it has deprived of old social environments with a new identity and a new sense of belonging. And this is the role of ideology.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.133

Equality Invites Despotism

To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of society equal, and then to maintain this equality for along period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, “We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.” Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.133

Democracy Will Degenerate to Anarchy

Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

John Adams (1763)

Life, Liberty, and Property Come From God

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Frederic Bastiat

The Mindlessness of the Liberal

The liberal-democratic man, just as his communist counterpart, lives in a world almost totally packed with conventions and interpretations, with very little space for individual initiative. He relies almost exclusively on ready-made formulas, moves within well-known stereotypes of thought and language through which he expresses his feelings of approval and disapproval and justifies his role in a community. The ideology that surrounds him is not only a set of concepts but also a system of mandatory practices: like an erstwhile African savage, he is expected to dance his ritual dances in order to manifest his tribal affiliation through the well-trained gestures and rhythms the village sorcerers taught him so that he could express his enthusiasm for the war his superiors thought it rational to wage against the enemies, or to give his joyful support of peace if this accords with the strategy of the tribe. For him there is no reality apart from that which bears the meaning given to it by the sorcerers. Nothing else exists, and if it does, it is not worth communicating.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.130-131.

Advertising With an Agenda

Today, it is not longer enough to simply advertise a product; the companies feel an irresistible need to attach to it a message that is ideologically correct. Even if this message does not have any commercial function—and it hardly ever does—any occasion is good to prove oneself to be a proponent of the brotherhood of races, a critic of the Church, and a supporter of homosexual marriage. This sycophantic wheedling is practiced by journalists, TV morons, pornographers, athletes, professors, artists, professional groups, and young people already infected with the ideological mass culture.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.121

Sexual Utopia Replaced by Sexual Anarchy

The sexual utopia did not come about, but sex was politicized and became a part of the official agenda of the state and its institutions. The rebels, without a moment’s hesitation, joined the ranks of the political structures and became their functionaries. The consequences of all this, however, were not necessarily quite those that were planned. Once institutionalized and absorbed into the system, sexual freedom permeated law, customs, social practices, schools, educational programs, and public discourse. Since then, the issues of human sexuality, abortion, homosexuality, and so-called reproductive rights have been espoused by the mainstream and begun to be the basic identification marks in liberal-democratic politics. Today, they are supported by the United Nations, the WHO, International tribunals, governments, the parliamentary majority, European institutions, universities, and innumerable think-tanks and non-governmental organizations. Long-haired hippies chanting “make love, not war” have been replaced by today’s politicians, teachers, bureaucrats, and lawyers.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.110-111.

The Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution is arguably the most extreme manifestation of the episodic nature of man. To surrender one’s life to sexual pleasure meant once and for all abandoning any attempt to give one’s existence a unifying meaning; this pleasure is, like no other, related to what is short-lived and ephemeral. Many wise men in the history of European thought consistently warned against the effects of the uncontrolled reign of pleasures over human life. In classical ethics pleasures were feared because they not only do not have a self-mitigating mechanism, but are likely, when unchecked, to do away with external mitigating measures. These warnings were not treated with the seriousness they deserved by modern utilitarians. With the growth of consumerism this fear evaporated. As the new rhetoric of sexual liberation declared the existing limitations on sex consumption unacceptable, the time finally came to push the cult of pleasure to a new low. Free sex was not only pleasure; it also stood for spontaneity against souls technology and productivity; it stood for peace and universal harmony, with no constraints, no domination, no discrimination.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.109-110.

Making Pleasure the Center of Life

Bringing pleasure to the center of life engendered a different image of human nature. Human beings, in this view, no longer think of themselves in terms of the whole of their existence, but in terms of moments and episodes. It could not be otherwise because there is no such thing as the pleasure of life. One can talk about pleasures and pleasant moments that happen in life, and one can even encourage people to collect those pleasures and pleasant moments, the more the better. But the latter strategy, even if successful, does not predetermine whether this or that particular life in its entirety is or is not happy. It may have many pleasant moments, but these do not automatically translate themselves into a unifying moral scenario, nor make a life fulfilled. To have a fulfilling life it is necessary to give it a durable inherent meaning that may very well coexist with having many pleasant moments, but is in no way a result of these moments, no matter how many. One can, of course, construe one's life as a series of episodes, but this must, to a greater or lesser degree, undermine the sense of continuity of existence, in more extreme cases leading to different identifications, each associated with a different episode. But even if our lives are episodic, our selves are not. Hence the life dedicated to the accumulation of pleasures, but lacking an internal unity, will most likely not be a happy life because a human being cannot renounce his unity without negative consequences.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.109.

Behind the Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution was the culmination of growing consumerism in Western societies, which in turn stemmed from the unprecedented prosperity an security that these societies had managed to achieve. Until the 1960s, the growing number of easily available goods did not include sex: this was regulated by existing social practices as well as by the old moral precepts going back to classical ethics. This growing consumerism tended to weaken both social practices and moral precepts, and replaced them with far less demanding and seemingly more natural criteria of a utilitarian kind, pleasure being the principal yardstick to measure the value of human goals. The impressive efficiency of modern civilization accustomed people to expect that their actions would be instantly gratified. Whatever delayed or hindered this gratification  was considered unnatural, repressive, incomprehensible, and in the long run unacceptable.

When we look at this mental change from the perspective of the history of philosophy, we can see in it the final—though, thank God, not yet closed—phase of a long process. From the beginning, pleasure was considered by philosophers to be and important part of the human experience, also having a complicated but powerful relation to morality. For twenty-five centuries the nature of this relationship had been the subject of an engaging and often illuminating debate. This debate unavoidably occasioned the use of other concepts, not identical to that of pleasure but somehow related to it: happiness, fulfillment, flourishing, and a few others. At the end of the day pleasure finally outclassed its rivals.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.108.

What Socialists Really Mean

Socialists cry, “Power to the people,” and raise the clenched fist as they say it.  We all know they really mean “Power over people. Power to the state!”

Margaret Thatcher

Epidemic of Ignorance In America

Basic content knowledge, including broad knowledge of civics, has been withheld from generations of students by our public schools. Instead, students have been fed — both in K-12 and in our universities — a steady diet of increasing resentment for American principles of freedom, tolerance, and constitutional self-governance. The radicalization of American education has been going on for decades.

This cannot be an accident. Those who claim that more government control over our lives will somehow “make us free” — the elites, the ruling classes — are committed to making the rest of us ignorant of what was actually at play in the American Revolution: an awareness that too much power in the hands of too few people is a bad thing. If such knowledge remained common, it would be bad news for the control freaks of the world. This is why they are committed to cultivating ignorance in youth, and then programming them to vote for the ruling class.

Policies of multiculturalism then brought us the insanity of identity politics, which basically erases a person’s individual identity and replaces it with various sorts of pigeon-holing. Students are only permitted to find self-worth through something called “intersectionality,” which scores them based on how many victim points they can claim.

Political correctness is designed to make sure they never question their miseducation, and instead conform to the elitist program from the fear of being socially isolated and academically punished if they show any tendencies towards independent thought. That’s a miserable way to live, so we shouldn’t be surprised that so many college students are going insane. …

The cultivators of ignorance have aimed not simply to destroy America’s national heritage, but also to destroy America’s very compass: the Judeo-Christian principles that form basis of the rule of law, and, therefore, freedom. Without that compass, Americans are set adrift, increasingly answering only to raw emotions of rage, envy, and grievance.

Too many Americans don’t really know what our rights and freedoms mean. They are groping around in the dark and have been programmed to swallow the lie that America was never great. As a result, we are too often dealing with a dumbed-down electorate unable to understand the basic framework of our republic.

They’re unable to understand what it means to govern ourselves, and they’re unable to understand the meaning of true freedom — that one must be free from government restraints in order to find his purpose and live freely. With the loss of this knowledge, and a culture that leads them astray from that birthright, they predictably become less able to think their own thoughts. Those who have completely lost their compass are more inclined to lose their minds in blind rage. And that is, sadly, where too many Americans are.

Stella Morabito, In An America This Ignorant, It’s No Wonder We Struggle To Stay Free

Sexual Promiscuity is Necessary for Socialism to Succeed

The concept [that human sexual impulses had been deleteriously suppressed and if sex was liberated life would be immeasurably nicer] received its revolutionary form from Herbert Marcuse, who back in the 1950s came up with a theory—a mixture of Freudianism and Marxism—explaining how to combine sexual liberation with a political struggle to overthrow the system. His argument was roughly composed of two elements: the first a rather diabolical image of the modern capitalist world, able to repel and neutralize all the revolutionary movements of change; the second, an interpretation of sex as the only power in man and society, inherently subversive and as yet uncontrolled by the powers that be. Hence, the proclamation of sexual liberation was a call to political collective action, and sex itself became the paramount political weapon. For some time, this diagnosis remained unnoticed and was considered by many to be quite silly.  Why would sexual promiscuity be a tool of political struggle? The very idea seemed unworthy of intellectual attention. However, after several years this theory gained great popularity, especially—as is fairly easy to understand—among young people, including the rebellious students on university campuses.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.107-108.

The Politicization of Sex is Necessary for Socialism to Succeed

The stifling intrusiveness of liberal democracy should not come to us as a surprise once we remember its inner dialectic. Liberalism, ass we recall, created a private man and wanted to deliver the vast majority of human race from the burden—unnatural and unnecessary, as liberals thought—of politics. It succeeded in the first task, and failed in the second. Liberalism, indeed, made people private on an unprecedented scale. Yet these people, having discovered the importance of their privacy, did not renounce politics. Hence when a liberal-democratic man became involve in political activities, it was natural that he imbued them with what he regarded to be the closest to him, what he lived for and breathed and what provided him with the reason for being. But these were matters so far regarded as private. The liberal-democratic man politicized his privacy, perhaps his main contribution to the change in thinking about politics. He politicized marriage, family relations, communal life, language. In this he resembled his communists comrade. But his greatest success in this regard, unmatched so far by any competitor, was to politicize the area that seemed to be the most private of all things private, the most intimate of all things intimate and thus the least appropriate to political meddling: the realm of sex.

Obviously the intentions to politicize sex had appeared before in radical programs aimed at fundamental transformation of society, including the destruction of its traditional institutions. Those radicals and revolutionaries who were looking for a better foundation for a better society knew very well that their program must fail unless they managed to do something with the family. This institution was always considered, quite understandably, to be the most serious obstacle to the task of building a new society.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.105-106.

No Such People as “Palestinians”

In order to destroy the impression of the tiny Jewish state’s facing enormous Muslim Arab foes and prevailing, the Soviet KGB (the Soviet Committee for State Security) developed the fiction of an even smaller people, the “Palestinians,” menaced by a well-oiled and ruthless Israeli war machine. In A.D. 134, the Romans had expelled the Jews from Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt and renamed the region Palestine, a name they plucked from the Bible, the name of the Israelites ancient enemies, the Philistines. But never had the name Palestinian referred to anything but a region, not to a people or an ethnicity. In the 1960s, however, the KGB and … Yasir Arafat created both these allegedly oppressed people and the instrument of their freedom, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Robert Spencer, The History of Jihad from Muhammad to ISIS, pg. 309

Tolerance the Last Virtue?

Tolerance is the last virtue of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society that has blatantly, proudly, violated all of the commandments of God, there is one last virtue they insist upon: tolerance for their immorality.

D. James Kennedy

The War of Political Correctness

… In a liberal democracy seemingly everything is permissible, but politically incorrect events immediately trigger an avalanche reaction of resistance: intellectuals protest, journalists on television twist their faces in moral indignation, comedians use the whip of satire, and the lumpen-intelligentsia, delighted with all that indignation, whistle, heckle, stomp their feet, and demand exemplary punishment of the perpetrators. …

The warriors of political correctness thing of themselves in the category of the struggle between David and Goliath. Nothing can be further from the truth. They belong to the mainstream, having all the instruments of power at their disposal. On their side are the courts, both national and international, the UN and its agencies, the European Union with all its institutions, countless media, universities, and public opinion. The illusion they cherish of being a brave minority heroically facing the whole world, false as it is, gives them nevertheless a strange sense of comfort: they feel absolutely safe, being equipped with the most powerful political tools in today’s world but at the same time priding themselves on their courage and decency, which are more formidable the more awesome the image of the enemy becomes.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.104-105

With Liberals, What Is Incidental Must be Treated as Systematic

In both communism and liberal democracy we encounter the same peculiarity: what is incidental is treated as a systematic problem, which really means that whatever happens is systemic and nothing is incidental to the system. It thus becomes natural for true liberal democrats—as it was for true communists—to harass their colleagues because of a causal remark, or a lack of vigilance, or an improper joke, making the lives of unruly individuals difficult by constantly admonishing and creating further regulations and stricter laws. By doing so, the self-proclaimed guardians of purity see themselves as carrying on their shoulders the responsibility for the future of liberal democracy worldwide. If not for their effort and dedication, this great political enterprise, they think, would become fouled, and then—perish the thought. 

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.103

Political Correctness

There is nothing mysterious about [the rise of political correctness].  It is simply a practical consequence of the view that the duty of citizens of the liberal-democratic society is to participate in the great collective enterprise, where everyone cooperates with everyone else at all levels and under all circumstances. I we look at three…examples—family life, a book’s content, and popular jokes—we can see that from the politically correct perspective they are no longer irrelevant trivialities. They illustrate what is absolutely crucial for the entire logic of liberal democracy. Because the logic of this system turns on “dialogue,” “respect,” “equal rights,” “openness,” and “tolerance,” everything is by definition political, and nothing that relates, however remotely, to these notations is trivial, minor, or irrelevant. A slight offensive remark must always be regarded as a manifestation of mortal sin. What seems a barely visible mark on the surface conceals underneath swirling currents of hatred, intolerance, racism, and hegemony. The body responsible for ensuring that these terrible things do not surface is the state, with all the instruments at its disposal. It is the state that should incessantly work to impose and improve cooperation policies by removing all real and potential barriers, creating a favorable legal environment, and reshaping public space and education in such a way that the people’s minds internalize the rules of politically correct thinking.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.100

Multiculturalism Hoax

The word “multiculturalism,” still used today despite numerous criticisms and ridicule, represents yet another hoax that liberal democracy created and that turned out to be surprisingly effective. Both parts of the word misrepresent reality. Multiculturalism is not about culture but about politics. In fact, they should be “polit” (as in “politburo”) rather than “cultur,” and “mono” rather than “multi.”

Many ingredients of the multicultural cake are not ingredients any more but have become the cake itself. Feminism is not the “culture” of feminists or feminist parties or women, but the political platform espoused by governments, the European Union, and many international institutions; the ideology of homosexuality is no longer in the hands of homosexual activists and their organizations but is a major item in national and global agendas. A nation that would dare to entertain any misgivings in this regard or, for example, include wording in its Constitution—as was recently done by the Hungarians—that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, would be subjected to almost worldwide condemnation expressed in the rhetoric of rage and hatred.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.95-96

The Liberal Fraud of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism, an idea that has become extremely popular in recent decades, is nothing more that a program to build a society in which there exist not many cultures, but many political identities attached to many real or, more often, imagined collectives. Multiculturalism encourages what is today called identity politics. This term may be misleading. It has little to do with a defense of the rich fabric of societies and their historically constituted communities, but should be rather seen as a program of politicization of certain groups that could radically change the fabric of society. …

Women, homosexuals, Muslims, ethnic groups are being perceived as, and transformed into, quasi-parties, organized from above by the political or ideological leadership and not possessing other characteristics than those resulting from the struggle for power against other groups and no other identity than that provided by this leadership, allowing no ideological dissent. Whoever is not a member of this quasi-party, even though for some reason—be it sex, birth, or color—he should be included, but stays outside its boundaries or sometimes even opposes it, is the enemy, a sellout, and a traitor. A black American who condemns the absurdity of African-Americanism, regardless of his virtues and achievements, is considered as much a traitor to his race. A woman who rejects feminism for its crude and destructive ideological content is a traitor to the sisterhood.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.95

Liberalism Cannot Live with Traditional Schooling

Just as communism was not possible with families adhering to the feudal-patriarchal system, so liberal democracy is believed to be incomplete and unsuccessful with schools respecting traditional moral and cultural authoritarianism. The arguments are analogous. Just as a person coming from a noncommunist community could not become a full-fledged, dedicated, and efficient citizen of the communist state, so a graduate of a traditional school will never be a faithful and reliable citizen of the liberal-democratic state.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.93

Liberalism—A Doctrine of Power

Liberalism is primarily a doctrine of power, both self-regarding and other-regarding: it aims to limit the power of other agents, and at the same time grants enormous prerogatives for itself. In a sense it is a super-theory of society, logically prior to and—by its own declaration of self-importance—higher than any other. It attributes to itself the right to be more general, more spacious, and more universal than any of its rivals. Its goal is—as the liberals say—to create a general framework within which others will be able to cooperate. The liberals will never voluntarily give up this admittedly highest of political prerogatives to anyone and will never agree to share it. …

In its essence, liberalism is unabashedly aggressive because it is determined to hunt down all nonliberal agents and ideas, which it treats as a threat to itself and to humanity. The organizing principle of liberalism—as in all other philosophies aiming to change the world radically—is therefore dualism, not pluralism.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.77, 78

Communism and Liberal Democracy are Equal

Communism and liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.73

The Liberal Invasion of Universities

The universities are undergoing the same process [of liberal takeover], 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 reality. The entire educational 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 in 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 a liberal-democratic regime, which makes the vast majority of academics convinced that they operate in 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 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 wiped clean 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 a chance. The Universities began to resemble businesses on the one hand and liberal-democratic political structures on the other.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.68-6

The Uglification of America #2

Today, while waiting for some food at a high upscale place, I again noticed not only all the overweight, unattractive people, but the truly laughable hairstyles of some. So many females, including one that had to be sixty or so, with purple or pink dyed hair. So many with uncombed, sloppy hair. Too many with that extra short look that often advertises a hatred of men. And the men with all the shaved heads. Are there that many guys who are going bald now? With so many balding men desperately trying to save what they have, or miraculously grow back what they’ve lost, why do so many even young males just shave it all off completely? Again, even forty years ago, that shaved head look advertised potential criminality. Think Lex Luthor.

Donald Jeffries, The Uglification of America

The Uglification of America #1

One can’t help but notice the absurdly casual, slovenly way most Americans dress now. Not at home. In public. Did anyone envision seeing adults parading around in stores wearing pajama pants? So many men and women just appear to have “punted,” to simply have stopped trying to appear attractive in any way, shape or form. Instead, they slide on their XXL sweat pants, and their XXXL tee shirts, and parade about as proudly as their in-shape ancestors did.

Factor in the gratuitous tattoos that are everywhere now. I see otherwise good-looking young girls with an entire arm, perhaps both arms, completely covered in tattoos. There’s a good reason why, in the past, only pirates and drunken sailors got tattoos. They don’t make anyone look better. And when your skin is mostly camouflaged by ugly conglomerations of ink, it automatically causes others to view you less respectively. Tramp stamps, and all that.

Donald Jeffries, The Uglification of America

Morality From Evolution?

On the contrary, there is not a particle of reliable experimental evidence suggesting that our moral standards are nothing more than random molecule combinations. In fact, it is illogical to the highest degree to equate moral standards with physical adaptations that can evolve in response to environmental conditions. If our moral codes were determined individually by our chromosomal makeup, then how could we reward or condemn the actions of other people? If no distinction is made between mankind and the animal kingdom, then why should we be disgusted when people engage in acts of bestiality? Why not love our pets more than friends and relatives? Why not act uncivilized like wild animals? Why even wear clothing? How does one account for the existence of human reason and free will? Those two truths are regarded as self-evident. These so-called evolutionary explanations are simply imaginary, subjective, hypothetical constructs. It is not coherent philosophy because it is not consonant with the reality of our nature.

Jesse L, The Moral Argument Against Evolution

When Freedom Becomes Slavery and Slavery Becomes Freedom

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 liberty. Parity 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 elect a representative, be it in politics, business, or art, without a prior selection according to sex, ethnicity, or some other nonrelevant criterion. Another type of legislation, extremely dangerous and also illustrating “coercion to freedom,” relates to what has been called “hate speech,” and still another to “domestic violence”; these phrases tend to incriminate more and more acts of conduct and speech, allowing for further drastic intervention by the government and the 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 and institutions—especially in the Untied 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 slavery is freedom and freedom is slavery. Later on, the adjective “Orwellian” was dropped 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 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, teacher, 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. The real power has been shifting to government officials, who—ostensibly ignorer 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 also have become part of the great universal liberal-democratic will, bragging about their sincere and deep devotion to it. Coercion and spontaneity overlap in an almost perfect symbiosis. And if there is still someone who has not resigned himself to it, he will soon be called to order by the government and the courts.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg. 67-68

The Culture That the Socialist Left Has Wrought

The conservatives, who, in principle, 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, non-discriminatory 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 those concepts and depriving them of any explanatory power. All thoughts and 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 supported say, should be implemented at all cost 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 and silence fools who may have doubts about it. If political correctness is a necessity of life in the liberal-democratic society, then imposing it is, after all, nothing else but a measure of its emancipation for all.  The groups that managed 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.

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.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.66-67

Liberalism Degenerates to Socialism Then Communism — Every Time

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 a 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 state’s spread and 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 the privilege-seeking groups.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.62

Identity Group Politics is From Leftists, and is About Control

The starting position of liberalism—and at the same time a final perspective—is a hypothetical situation in which relatively 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 in 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.

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 mores drastically to guarantee equality.  The state representatives, armed with the rhetoric of anti discrimination, felt if was their duty to regulate matters that for too long had remained unregulated, which often means giving privileges to certain groups and taking them away from others.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.61-62