The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

by Ryszard Legutko

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.