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

Leftists Keep Trying Socialism Regardless of its Failure

Why then, if we agree that democracy has its weaknesses, would such weaknesses be reduced by having more democracy? In what way will more democracy reduce, for example, democratic vulgarity, or the cult of mediocrity, or the weakening of social customs and traditions, or the overproduction of legislation, or the omnipresent spirit of partisanship penetrating every aspect of life? If the increasing role of the masses led to the vulgarization of culture, why would placing even greater importance on the same masses lead to culture’s refinement? If democracy introduces yet further groups in the political and legislative process and provides them with the tools to secure their interests through legislation, which, in turn, leads to legislative excesses, then why would the increased number of these groups and their increased influence generate legislative restraint? And so forth, and so on.

Let us note that a similar rhetoric was used in communism. When faced with the notoriously recurring symptoms of decay the system, communist rulers and propagandists euphemistically called them “distortions,” always saying that these resulted from the deviation from socialism and that more genuine socialism was needed to set things right. No empirical experience could support this claim—in fact the opposite seemed truer and trued every day—but evidence usually has little value against a strong political faith.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.54

Why We Are Losing Freedom

It is hard to imagine freedom without classical philosophy and the heritage of antiquity, without Christianity and scholasticism, without different traditions in the philosophy of law and political and social practices, without ancient and modern republicanism, without strong anthropology and ethics of virtues and duties, without Anglo-Saxon and continental conservatism or many other components of the entire Western civilization.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.45

Entertainment is the Left’s Identity

For important reasons liberal democracy and entertainment found enthusiastic allies in each other. Entertainment became the most obvious and direct manifestation of freedom that liberalism offered humanity and, at the same time, the most tangible confirmation of the dominant status of the democratic man and his tastes. To be sure, his dominance was larger, deeper, and more consequential and by no means exhausted itself in an inner necessity to have fun. And yet the omnipresence of entertainment was something by which the democratic man became easily recognized: it was his trademark, his coat of arms, his—so to speak—symbolic identity card.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.37

Our Culture is Living in an Alternate Reality

In today’s world entertainment is not just a pastime or style, but a substance that permeates everything: schools and universities, upbringing of children, intellectual life, art, morality, and religion. It has become dear to the hearts of students, professors, entrepreneurs, journalists, engineers, scientists, writers, even priests. Entertainment imposes itself psychologically, intellectually, socially, and also, strange as it might sound, spiritually. A failure to provide human endeavors—even the most noble ones—with an entertaining wrapping is today unthinkable and borders on sin.

The modern sense of entertainment increasingly resembles what Pascal long ago called divertissement: that is, an activity…that separates us from the seriousness of existence and fills this existence with false content. Divertissement is thus not only being entertained in the ordinary sense of the word, but living and acting within artificial rules that organize our lives, setting conventional and mostly trivial goals which we pursue, getting involved in disputes and competitions, aspiring to honors-making careers, and doing everything that would turn our thoughts away from fundamental existential matters. By escaping the questions of the ultimate meaning of our own lives, or of human life in general, our minds slowly get used to that fictitious reality, which we take for the real one, and are lured by its attractions.

The difference between Pascal’s divertissement and today’s entertainment—or rather, having fun, as it has become customary to say—is that the modern man, no matter how much a desire to have fun has captured his soul, knows very well that it is an artificial construction, not the real thing. Whether some other, more objective reality exists is to him a matter of indifference, and if told there is not, he would probably still remain unmoved. Having neutralized all musings about objectivity, the modern man takes pride in his deep involvement in entertainment, which in the absence of other objective references he considers natural.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.36-37

Invented “Dignity”

Since the issue of the [1948] Universal Declaration [of Human Rights], dignity has no longer been about obligation, but about claims and entitlements. The new dignity did not oblige people to strive for any moral merits or deserts; it allowed them to submit whatever claims they wished, and to justify these claims by referring to a dignity that they possessed by the mere fact of being born, without any moral achievement or effort. A person who desired to achieve the satisfaction of a pig was thus equally entitled to appeal to dignity to justify his goals as another who tried to follow the path of Socrates, and each time, for a pig and for a Socrates, this was the same dignity. A right to be a pig and a right to be a Socrates were, in fact, equal and stemmed from the same moral (or rather nonmoral, as the new dignity practically broke off with morality) source.

Having armed himself with rights, modern man found himself in a most comfortable situation with no precedent: he no longer had to justify his claims and actions as long as he qualified them as rights. Regardless of what demands he would make on the basis of those rights and for what purpose he would use them, he did not and, in fact, could not lose his dignity, which he had acquired for life simply by being born human. And since having this dignity carried no obligation to do anything particularly good or worthy, he could, while constantly invoking it, make claims that were increasingly more absurd and demand justification for ever more questionable activities. Sinking more and more into arrogant vulgarity, he could argue that this vulgarity not only did not contradict his inborn dignity, but it could even, by a stretch of the imagination, be treated as some sort of an achievement. After all, can a dignity that is inborn and constitutes the essence of humanness, generate anything that would be essentially undignified and nonhuman?

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.33

Being Lured to the Common and Mediocre

Man, feeling secure and enjoying the increasingly abundant benefits of a modern civilization, was slowly releasing himself from the compelling pressure of strict and demanding rules derived from religion and classical ethics. He was no longer in the mood to embark on a painful and uncertain journey to higher goals…. 

The gradual process in which the higher aspirations were being replaced by the lower tells us, no doubt, something about human nature: namely, that unless met with strong resistance or an attractive inspiration it shows a powerful tendency to be lured by the common and the mediocre. “Common,” indeed, has ceased to be a word of disapproval in a liberal-democratic rhetoric, or rather, has ceased to be used at all. When so much is common, nothing really is. This change is but a small signal of corruption of basic categories by which for centuries people described and evaluated their conduct.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.30, 31.

Questions Rendering Darwinism Useless

If the Theory of Evolution has so much evidence backing it up, then why are critics so heavily assaulted with ad hominem attacks? How does one account for the times when proponents of Darwinism made forgeries? (Examples would include Piltdown Man and the Archaeoraptor.)  Why are there contradictory results when geologists use dating methods? How does one account for the fact that humans have characteristics that provide no advantages for survival such as music and religion? Why do living organisms have symmetry? Where did all the elements originate? How does one account for their precise design? When and where did compounds come into being? (Many compounds must have came into existence as compounds because interaction between elements is relatively scarce.) Which elements and compounds were included in the primordial soup? Where did gravity and energy come from? Why are babies still born helpless? How could the precise, natural process of blood clotting arise from blind, unguided chance? These are only some of the countless questions that render Darwinism useless.

Jesse L., Why I Reject Darwinism As Science

When You Lower Standards

Lowering the requirements is a process that has no end. Once people become used to disqualifying certain standards as too high, impractical, or unnecessary, it is only a matter of time before natural inertia takes its course and even the new lowered standards are deemed unacceptable. One can look at the history of liberal democracy as a gradual sliding down from the high to the low, from the refined to the coarse. Quite often a step down has been welcomed as a refreshing, natural, and healthy, and indeed it sometimes was. But whatever the merits of this process of simplification, it too often brought vulgarity to language, behavior, education, and moral rules. The growing vulgarity of form was particularly striking, especially in the last decades, moving away from sophistication and decorum. A liberal-democratic man refused to learn these artificial and awkward arrangements, the usefulness of which seemed to him at first doubtful, and soon—null. He felt he had no time for them, apparently believing that their absence would make life easier and more enjoyable. In their place he established new criteria: ease, practicality, usefulness, pleasure, convenience, and immediate gratification, the combination of which turned out be a deadly weapon against the old social forms. The old customs crumbled, and so did rules of propriety, a sense of decorum, a respect for hierarchy. 

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg. 29-30.

Inevitable Consequences of Liberal Democracy

In a liberal democracy everyone knows—and only a fool or a fanatic can deny—that sooner or later a family will have to liberalize of democratize, which means that the parental authority has to crumble, the children will quickly liberate themselves from the parental tutelage, and family relationships will increasingly become more negotiatory and less authoritarian. These are the inevitable consequences of the civilizational and political development, giving people more and more opportunities for independence; moreover, these processes are essentially beneficial because they enhance equality and freedom in the world. Thus there is no legitimate reason to defend the traditional family—the very name evokes the smell of mothballs—and whoever does it is self-condemned to a losing proposition and in addition perpetrates harm by delaying the old despotism: with its demise the despotic system loses its base. The liberalism and democratization of the familiar therefore to be supported—wholeheartedly and energetically—mainly be appropriate legislation that will give children more power: for example, allowing increasingly younger girls to have abortions without parental consent, or providing children with legal instruments to combat their claims against their parents, or depriving parents of their rights and transferring those rights to the government and the courts. …

In a liberal democracy everyone knows—and only a fool or a fanatic can deny—that schools have to become more and more liberal and democratic for the same reasons. Again, this inevitable process requires that the state, the law, and public opinion harshly counteract against all stragglers—those who are trying to put a stick in the spokes of progress, dreamers who imagine that in the twenty-first century we can return to the school as it existed in the nineteenth, pests who want to build an old-time museum in the forward-rushing world. And so on, and so forth. Similar reasoning can be applied to churches, communities, associations.

As a result, liberal democracy has become an all-permeating system. … Whatever happens in school must follow the same pattern as in politics, in politics the same pattern as in art, and in art the same pattern as in the economy: the same language, the same habits. Just as in real socialism, so in real democracy it is difficult to find some nondoctrinal slice of the world, a nondoctrinal image, narrative, tone, or thought.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg. 21-22

The Political Desires of the Left

In their view, today also consciously or unconsciously professed by millions, the political system should permeate every section of public and private life, analogously to the view of the erstwhile accoucheurs of the communist system. Not only should the state and the economy be liberal, democratic, or liberal-democratic, but the entire society as well, including ethics and mores, family, churches, schools, universities, community organizations, culture, and even human sentiments and aspirations. The people, structures, thoughts that exist outside the liberal-democratic pattern are deemed outdated, backward-looking, useless, but at the same time extremely dangerous as preserving the remnants of old authoritarianisms. Some may still be tolerated for some time, but as anyone with a minimum of intelligence is believed to know, sooner or later they will end up in the dustbin of history. Their continued existent will most likely threaten the liberal-democratic progress and therefore they should be treated with the harshness they deserve.

Once one sends one’s opponents to the dustbin of history, any debate with them becomes superfluous. Why waste time, they think, arguing with someone whom the march of history condemned to nothingness and oblivion? Why should anyone seriously enter into a debate with the opponent who represents what is historically indefensible and what will sooner or later perish? People who are not liberal democrats are to be condemned, laughed at, and repelled, not debated. Debating with them is like debating with alchemists or geocentrists.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg. 20-21.

Nothing True About Evolution

Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, anything that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence.  I tried it on members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and eventually one person said, “I do know one thing—it ought not be taught in high school.”

Colon Patterson (Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History), keynote address to the American Museum of Natural History, 11/5/81.

Socialist “Modernization”

Both communism and liberal democracy are regimes whose intent is to change for the better. They are—to use the current jargon—modernization projects. Both are nourished by the belief that the world cannot be tolerated as it is and that it should be changed: that the old should be replaced with the new. Both systems strongly and—so to speak—impatiently intrude into the social fabric and both justify their intrusion with the argument that it leads to the improvement of the state of affairs by “modernizing” it.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.5-6

Liberal Democracy Is Like Communism

[H]e is able to demonstrate that liberal democracy, as it has developed in recent decades, shares a number of alarming features with communism. Both are utopian and look forward to “an end of history” where their systems will prevail as a permanent status quo. Both are historicist and insist that history is inevitably moving in their directions. Both therefore require that all social institutions—family, churches, private associations—must conform to liberal-democratic rules in their internal functioning. Because that is not so at present, both are devoted to social engineering to bring about this transformation. And because such engineering is naturally resisted, albeit slowly and in a confused way, both are engaged in a never-ending struggle against enemies of society (superstition, tradition, the past, intolerance, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, etc., etc). In short, like Marxism before it, liberal democracy is becoming an all-encompassing ideology that, behind a veil of tolerance, brooks little or no disagreement.

John O’Sullivan, Forward to Ryszard Legutko’s book, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. 

The Punishment of God

That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt the germs of the disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a masquerade, the license of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.

Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz

Leftists Will Abuse You for Your Beliefs

I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Democracy Keeps People in Perpetual Childhood

I think then that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain . . .  I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. . . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.  That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Rage of the Snowflakes

A toxic combination of identity politics, an increasing tendency to perceive campus problems as medical problems, and altered parenting styles has produced a student body intent on ridding their environment of any ideas deemed threatening. This requires the bastardization of language. Though the mainstream media portrays campuses as extraordinarily unsafe, the crime rate at most U.S. universities is far below the national average (not counting underage drinking). But the perceived danger has called forth a new vocabulary, with “vulnerable” students demanding “safe spaces” to protect them from the unknown. The label “vulnerable,” first used by U.S. media to refer to university students in 1991, appeared 1,407 times in indexed publications in 2015-16. The “remarkable increase in allusions to the vulnerability of students,” [Frank] Furedi writes, “provides a striking illustration of an important transformation of the way that university students are represented and perceived.”

Students and their bureaucratic campus allies demand protection in a variety of ways. “Safe spaces”—like vulnerability, a term that has proliferated and broadened in meaning in recent years—allow students to avoid viewpoints with which they disagree. … Combating “microaggressions,” meanwhile, provides cover for restricting the most innocent speech, if “marginalized” students interpret it (regardless of intent) as hurtful. Students obsessed with identity politics perceive “slights as a form of victimisation” and employ “rhetoric that continually reminds the world of [their] victim status.” …

Campus social life is an easy target for adherents of this new, infantilized order. Harvard’s senior administration recently resolved to penalize students for joining off-campus, private, single-sex social clubs—a policy enforceable only if students report on their colleagues. … At Bowdoin in early 2016 some students held a tequila-themed birthday party. Moved to act by the “traumatizing” presence of tiny sombreros, the school offered counseling to students “victimized” by the morally offensive “cultural appropriation.” Two student government members who attended the party faced impeachment hearings. Other students had to move out of their dorm. It’s no surprise that some Bowdoin undergraduates informed the Washington Post that the lesson they learned from the affair was to keep their opinions to themselves.

Calls for outright restrictions on campus speech have become common. Writing in Slate, University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner justifies campus speech codes on the grounds that “students today are more like children than adults and need protection.” He contends that speech codes, far from reflecting the ideological agenda of “lefty professors” (although speech codes are almost always targeted at non-leftist speech), are popular because “universities are simply catering to demand in the marketplace for education,” supplying “what most students want.”

Read the whole, thought-provoking article by KC Johnson

Stumbling Blocks

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way a man uses them.

Author Unknown

Do You Protest Evil?

He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Charity?

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

John D. Rockefeller

How Do You React?

Let us realize that what happens round us is largely outside of our control, but that the way we choose to react to it is inside our control.

Edward J. Byng

Do the Task

If a task is once begun, never leave it ’til it’s done.

Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.

Living vs Pretending

When a person uses up all his energy in pretending, he has nothing left for living; and life becomes shallow and tasteless.  A person who pretends not only robs himself of reality, but he keeps himself from growing: his true self is smothered under the false self.

Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Real, pg.35

Perhaps those who pretending to be the opposite sex should heed Wiersbe's wisdom.

"Gay Marriage" Relies on REAL Marriage to Exist

Gay "marriage," taken to its reductio ad absurdum, would terminate in the disappearance of the human race from the face of the Earth.  In weakening the institution of marriage, gay people calling themselves spouses actually endorse the logic of species annihilation.

Moreover, to contend, as same-sex couples do, that they can adopt children or rely on sperm donors merely accentuates the paradox, for they reveal themselves as dependent on precisely the sexual fertility which they forsake and the procreative function they have renounced.  There would be no gays in the absence of the bonded heterosexual couple that rears children and is socially constrained to provide for their future.  There is a debt to be paid in the only way possible: do not insult or damage the institution that gave you existence and continues to sustain it.  The fact often adduced by skeptics that not all heterosexual unions are fertile or permanent is beside the point; the ancestral purpose of marriage as an institution remains intact.

David Solway, The Problem with Gay Marriage

Darwinists’ Assertions Are Not Arguments

An assertion merely states a conclusion; an argument, on the other hand, states the conclusion and then supports it with evidence. Darwinists make assertions, not arguments. There is no empirical or forensic evidence that natural selection can account for new life forms, much less morality. Darwinists simply assert that morals have evolved naturally because they believe man has evolved naturally. And they believe man has evolved naturally, not because they have evidence for such a belief, but because they’ve ruled out intelligent causes in advance. So the Darwinian explanation for morality turns out to be just another “just-so” story based on circular reasoning and false philosophical presuppositions. 

Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pg.191

Evolution Cannot Explain the Immaterial

Darwinism asserts that only materials exist, but materials don’t have morality. How much does hate weigh? Is there an atom for love? What’s the chemical composition of the murder molecule? These questions are meaningless because physical particles are not responsible for morality. If materials are solely responsible for morality, then Hitler had no real moral responsibility for what he did—he just had bad molecules.  This is nonsense, and everyone knows it.  Human thoughts and transcendent moral laws are not material things any more than the laws of logic and mathematics are material things. They are immaterial entities that cannot be weighed or physically measured. As a result, they can’t be explained in material terms by natural selection or any other atheistic means.

Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pg.187

The Destruction Of Culture by the Sexual Revolution

Perhaps the most diabolical instance of progressivism, however, has been the Sexual Revolution launched in the Sixties. It has progressed (= regressed) from miniskirts and premarital sex to gay “marriage” and transgenderism. The Playboy culture and easy availability of condoms were not enough. In fact, they were just the start. The progressivist revolution must devour everything in its path. Its main impediment has been the institution of marriage. The gay “marriage” agenda is not to expand the marriage franchise, but to destroy the family. What makes marriage what it is, is the uniqueness of its participants: one man and one woman covenantally committed to one another before God for a lifetime. To redefine marriage is to destroy it. If just any relationship can be marriage, there can be no marriage.

Desmond Berg, The Progressive’s March Toward God’s Judgment.

Sociology vs Morality

A common mistake of relativists is to confuse behavior with value. That is, they confuse what is with what ought to be. What people do is subject to change, but what they ought to do is not. This is the difference between sociology and morality. Sociology is descriptive; morality is prescriptive.

Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, pg.182

What Pornography Teaches

Porn teaches its consumers that women exist for the pleasure of men and that their purpose is to be degraded and dehumanized for men’s excitement—and that they like it, even if they pretend not to. But this is part of the lie of pornography: many women in porn are there against their will and are being exploited. … The physical, emotional, and psychological damage to the women and children in porn is heartbreaking, but equally insidious is porn’s effect on men and the culture by normalizing the degradation and dehumanization of women. … The prevalence of porn means that people are becoming desensitized to it, and are seeking out ever harsher, more violent, and degrading images. …

Justin Holcomb, Hugh Hefner’s Legacy is Not Harmless

Avoid Porn and Keep the Erotic Bond Between Husband and Wife

In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

Naomi Wolf, “The Porn Myth,” paragraph 11; cited by Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.200.

Be Wise

A good man does not hesitate to own he has been in the wrong. He takes comfort in knowing he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

The Pill and Porn — United to Destroy Marriage

Cheap sex has been mass-produced with the help of two distinctive means that have little to do with each other—the wide uptake of the Pill and mass-produced high-quality pornography—and then made more efficient by communication techniques. They drive the cost of sex down, make real commitment more “expensive” and challenging to navigate, have created a massive slow-down in the development of long-term relationships, especially marriage, put women’s fertility at risk—driving up demand for infertility treatments—and have taken a toll on men’s marriageability. The “pure relationship” regime, which has flourished alongside the dramatic rise in cheap sex, is not nearly so consonant with other long-standing priorities like childrearing and relational stability. But it is becoming the norm in the West—the template for evaluating relationship development. And it has changed how men and women perceive themselves, their sexuality, each other, and the point of relationships. Cheap sex does not make marriage unappealing; it just makes marriage less urgent and more difficult to accomplish.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.193-194

The Sad Decline of Marriage

Young Americans are taking flight from marriage—by avoiding it, delaying it, or exiting it. It should not surprise us, either, since this is cultural lag in action: the uptake of contraceptive technology is slowly undermining long-standing reasons for marrying. And yet we still want to marry, but the difference between needing and wanting marriage is a big one. Cheap sex—that is, the wide availability of sexual access—is arguably diminishing men’s marriageability, since the quest for sex was long a key motivator for men to marry. No more. Cheap sex has transformed modern men (and women), undermined and stalled the marital impulse, and stimulated critics of monogamy, who fail to recognize the goods historically secured by it and polyamory’s reliance on a male-dominated mating market. Despite increasingly unfavorable terms for marriage, men are not going their own way. Once in it, they tend to like marriage. Women, on the other hand, exhibit higher ideals for marriage. They remain far more likely to want out once in. And given their comparative recent economic successes, women are in a better position to leave—and still thrive—than ever before. Marriage has changed, no doubt. Once a staid institution characterized by its functional gain in trade between men and women, it has become a symbol of success shared by two increasingly similar spouses. All of it has thrown organized Christianity—marriage’s biggest supporter—for a lop. Cheap sex, it seems, secularizes. The more traditional ways American Christians think about marriage and family remains distinctive from emerging norms of confluent love for now. Cracks in the foundation, however, are visible.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.191-192

The Value of Education

Education is a companion which no misfortune can decrease, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solar, in society an ornament. It chastens vice, guides virtue, and gives grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

Irish lawyer Charles Phillips, O'Mullan v. M'Korkill (1817)

Historical Marriage vs Polyamory

Historically, getting (monogamously) married meant “getting serious.” It meant hight expectations of one’s proper behavior. The social ties of marriage create interdependent systems of obligation, mutual support, and restraint.  Marriage meant having someone to care for and having someone to take care of you—yes, being interdependent—and these responsibilities and obligations only grew stronger when children entered the family. Non-monogamy flouts such norms, exhibits little constraint, a great deal of “checking in,” and invites partner jealousy and pernicious bugs, all in the pursuit of genital pleasures and perceived “needs.” 

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.184

The Downfalls Of a Poly Society

A poly society will require a more vigilant public health system, a more active security stated to protect its citizens—especially women—and a more aggressive social welfare system, since invested fathers will continue to recede. Misogyny is embedded in polyamory, too, however “ethical” it claims to be. That’s because sexual objectification—the treatment of persons as objects—is unavoidable in a non-monogamous system, especially a modern one characterized less by plural marriage than by the serial circulation of multiple, over-lapping sex partners.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.183

Monogamy Is Foundation to Family

Monogamy also means confidence in the biological link between mother, father, and child, a combination long known to reduce the threat of abuse, violence, and homicide in the household. And monogamy means greater equality—more men and women have the opportunity to meet, marry, save, and invest for the long term, instead of competing (and spending resources, etc.) for others’ available attention. This is why monogamous marriage systems preceded the emergence of democratic institutions in Europe, and the rise of notions like human rights and equality between the sexes. … Monogamy, after all, is disciplined—by definition. No other form of organizing relationships between the sexes does a better job of fostering a fair exchange between the distinctive interests of men and women. Societies that disregard monogamous norms undermine their own long-term interests.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.181

Wisdom and Love

To learn and never be filled is wisdom;

To teach and never be weary is love.

Is Great Diversity Good?

Greater diversity means inevitably that we have less in common, and the more we encourage diversity the less we honor the common good. Any honest and clear-sighted observer should be able to see that diversity is a solvent that dissolves the unity and cohesiveness of a nation—and we should not be deceived into believing that its proponents do not understand the full impact of their advocacy!

Diversity, of course, marches under the banner of tolerance, but is a bastion of intolerance. It enforces its ideological liberalism with an iron fist that is driven by political correctness, the most ingenious (and insidious) device for suppressing freedom of speech and political dissent ever invented.

Edward J. Erler, “Does Diversity Really Unite Us? Citizenship and Immigration,” Imprimis, July/August 2018.

Monogamy is BEST for Society

…monogamous arrangements comprise a historical minority of the globe’s societies, but the vast majority of the more successful and flourishing ones.  Monogamous marriage…fosters savings and economic output, and reduces competition among men for women, which functions to reduce the pool of low-status, risk-oriented, unmarried men. (It reduces competition not through sex-ratio manipulation, but through normative expectations of one partner.) And that, in turn, lowers multiple types of crime, abuse, household conflict, and fosters greater paternal investment in both their work and in their children, who are more apt to enjoy their attention and exhibit notably lower stress levels than in households displaying all manner of outsiders. Speaking of outsiders, a review of data from 69 polygamous societies from around the world failed to reveal a single case where the relationships between a man’s partners or wives could be described as consistently harmonious.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.181-182

Why Liberals Want Gay “Marriage”

When the institution of marriage is compromised; when single mothers proliferate and are even applauded; when children are separated or alienated from their parents; when the bonds of heterosexual intimacy are breached; when gender politics sabotages concord between the sexes; when same-sex couples receive the same rights, privileges, and rewards as child-bearing couples; and when matrimony becomes the prerogative of any group whatsoever with no relation to fecundity or cultural stability, the underpinnings of Western society will inevitably collapse.

This is why Marxism, for example, considers marriage an institution that needs to be destroyed, since procreant marriage with all its attendant responsibilities is the foundation of bourgeois society.  This is why its dissolution or misprision is a prerequisite for the revolutionary socialist state in which the pivotal loyalty of the individual belongs to the sovereign collective, not to the family.  And this is why calling two men or two women in a union "marriage" has been serially championed by the left.

David Solway, The Problem with Gay Marriage