The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

by Ryszard Legutko

Even the American system, which today is regarded as the exemplary embodiment of representative democracy, was established as a hybrid construction.

Even in the twentieth century, approximately up to the Thirties, this hybrid view of political regimes was still quite widespread, although the word “democracy” started making its rapid career, becoming not just a description but also the norm.

With time, it has become a common practice, unfortunately rather ridiculous, to compliment certain political conducts and actions as democratic and condemn others as undemocratic.

when a politician is criticized for being undemocratic because in the parliament he disobeys the speaker and refuses to yield the floor, one cannot but laugh. This is a democratic behavior in its purest form, invented in a democracy and having a very long tradition in a democratic history.

the concept of a hybrid system known as a mixed regime had played a creative role in political thought and practice,

In several decades, this approach to political systems not only completely disappeared from the public consciousness, but was also marginalized by political science. The word “republic” is used today only in the sense of the form of government and any attempts to extend its meaning and to restore its former scope provoke the irritation of political scientists.

Politicians are equally reluctant to use the word “republic” because people tend to associate it with some form of oppressive statism.

They definitely prefer the word ...

taught to associate with freedom, openness,...

republic has a higher internal diversity than a l...

Liberal democracy is more restrictive, being strongly correlated with egalitarian principles that are quite wrongly believed to generate diversity.

The opposite is true: egalitarianism does not tolerate aristocratic and monarchical tendencies, not only in the political structures of the state (which might be understandable), but in any other area of public life. And

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill wrote how freedom was threatened after the fall of traditional autocracies,

the process of democratization

more profound control of the mind of an ...

which would open the space for individual disobedience...

Ortega y Gasset advocated some form of aristocratic liberalism, also as a counterweight to a stage of democratizati...

“I know no country in which there is less independence of mind and less genuine freedom of thought than in America,” wrote Tocqueville

but rather the pressure to remove from one’s mind everything that a democratic society did not give a stamp of legitimacy.

rampant democratization

unification of thinking

antihierarchical co...

and infuse some

The favorite quote with which Rousseau was said to seal his fate as a totalitarian comes

that the general will is entitled to coerce the individual will to obey because such action constitutes “coercion to freedom.”

aristocratic liberalism.

democratization of liberalism.

Liberalism did not diversify democracy because it was a different type of liberalism than the one the American Founding Fathers, Tocqueville, and Ortega hoped for:

but egalitarian,

because the original idea of liberalism was ind...

cooperate through a system of contracts.

there emerged people voicing demands called rights and acting within the scope of organized groups.

state in liberal democracy ceased to be an institution pursuing the common good, but became a hostage of groups that

The state, more and more involved in the process of supporting group aspirations,

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.

adjusting morality and social mores drastically to guarantee equality.

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.

was the citizens themselves, both as individuals and as members of the privilege-seeking groups.

despite this somewhat cynical view of today’s politics and political institutions, the faith in the absolute superiority of liberal democracy remains unshaken.

nowhere seen more clearly than in the European Union. The

culminating emanation of “European values,”

final stage of the history of the Eur...

EU propaganda has it that the ongoing political debate in Europe for two and a half thousand years has come to an end and that Europeans have finally resolved all major political problems, not

Hegel

The communist politicians resorted to the same device: they also categorically brushed away any suggestion that the system had an inherent weakness, and kept busy convincing the citizens that a constant struggle with the permanent crisis only confirmed the system’s superiority.

As we recall, liberal democracy was said to differ from a totalitarian democracy in one crucial respect: in the former the citizens could not be “coerced to be free.”

over the last decades is an emergence of a kind of liberal-democratic general will.

liberal-democratic general will

The liberal-democratic general will reaches the area that Rousseau never dreamt of—language, gestures, and thoughts.

Through people’s actions and minds this will ruthlessly imposes liberal-democratic patterns on everything and everyone, including those who should firmly stand for alternative proposals.

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.