“The other side knows no compromise, and they aim to marginalize those who still represent the conservative cause. In the current political climate, the conservatives stand contra mundum. Two practical conclusions follow from this: first, the conservatives should not let the other side divide them and should try to form a solid international alliance; second, they must build conservative institutions sufficiently robust to survive the destructive offensives of the Left (something Poland's Law and Justice failed to do).”
I have concluded this decades ago and why I am an anti-Regime Trump supporter. Case in point.
‘’If we reduce intellectual and artistic differences to politics and partisanship – as it has been happening for some time now – then ultimately it is also political power, not truth or beauty, which settles every controversy.”
I have attempted to use this argument with my left friends that are artists and true intellectuals to no avail. Their totalitarian drift seems to be a personality/brain wiring construct that supersedes consideration of truth and fact for what better supports their very own condition. Frankly, I see them as flawed thinkers… people afflicted with a lack of intellectual honesty and little emotional self-control. I have come to the conclusion that democracy is flawed in that they are the very people unqualified to rule, but that so crave power to control others they end up exploiting democratic systems to secure power. The rest of us need to awaken to the NEED to defeat them at the ballot box and to ensure they don’t infiltrate and take over key institutions like education and the media.
We need to stop accepting the non-serious and absurd. We need to stop treating it as respectful and worthy of debate. We need to brand those that hold theses views as being in need of cognitive behavior therapy.
Lastly, I see this as a problem having so advanced society to female dominance. It has never happened in history. Vulnerable narcissism has exploded and it seems the primary explanation for the political and social chaos we all feel. The wrapping of their ideological absurdism and destruction in a feminine shroud causes too many of the rest of us owning traditional chivalrous tendencies to back down… especially with their effective media mob power to brand us as misogynists. I ignore that and repeat that I support complete gender equality so I will debate females as I would any male. We cannot allow this praying of a victim card while they passive-agressivly kill.
Thanks so much for publishing the interview with Professor Legutko; his analysis is sadly so true. The West has many bumpy years ahead. Niech żyje Polska!
If we had listened to the Poles and other Eastern Europeans for many centuries, and I’m thinking for example of the Council of Constance in 1414, much bloodshed and tragedy in Western Europe and the world would have been averted. I’ve always been puzzled by the curiously condescending attitude of Western Europeans to Eastern Europeans (I’m thinking especially of the Polish, Czechs, Hungarians and Ukrainians). It’s an unjustified position that cannot survive direct contact with the intellectually brilliant and spiritually profound thought and culture of Eastern Europe. We ignore their wisdom at our peril.
This is an incredibly long essay. For normal mortars who are not retired yet could there be an introductory abstract/summary on what are findings/conclusions?
What is this price? I honestly want to know the aim. What is the end goal for the masses?
Also, I wonder how many of these managerial elite know they will be used until power is so concentrated they will be burned at the stake, so to say. I'd bet many who think they are elite now will wish to be as far away from the tyrants as possible if they get their way. And in short order.
Thank you for discussing Legutko, and for interviewing him. He has far greater depth to him than most who are engaged in these issues. The intellectual integrity that it took Legutko, as someone who confronted actually existing Communism in his own life, to nonetheless conceive of the flaws in Liberalism -- which most intellectuals in such societies saw as the truth which would set them free -- is exemplary. One thinks of Solzhenitsyn as an intellectual parallel.
Political leaders like Orban and Fico, and further afield with Putin and Xi, resist portions of what Legutko concedes, in his best-known work, to be the common core of Modernity that is shared by both Liberalism and Communism. This resistance would seem to be the "conservatism" that Legutko references throughout the interview. But what is the goal of such selective resistance? What is its internal consistency? As he acknowledges in his book, the demon in democracy will not be exorcised until Modernity passes away, and is replaced by a better set of beliefs. What purpose, then, in focusing on political action within the context of EU institutions, or their analogues elsewhere?
If you're fighting a delaying action in the face of a superior force, what is the objective? If you aren't covering someone else's maneuver -- or their withdrawal -- your efforts are futile. If the delaying force is covering a maneuver, well, then, let's wargame that concept of operations. If a withdrawal, then we must determine the terrain to which we are falling back. And if our backs are to the sea, then we'd better start building some boats.
If, on the other hand, our assessment is that in the long term, the enemy force cannot sustain itself, then perhaps we would be well advised to refrain from prolonged engagements -- which fix us in place to be targeted and defeated in detail. We should even be willing to consider partisan tactics and la guerrilla. Sometimes these are the subtlety by which the weak overcome the strong.
It would seem that Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, today Poland, perhaps eventually Hungary and Russia, show us the end of the opposite course.
Legutko's words "Today’s liberalism has already identified far more enemies and thought crimes than the communists did" are striking or perhaps staggering is a better descriptor. If last week's State of the Union is any indicator, we are there America, we are there...
I'm going to re-read The Demon In Democracy. I had forgotten this phrase: "... our awareness that we were always surrounded by non-reality, i.e., artifacts fabricated by the propaganda machine, whose aim was to prevent us from seeing reality as it was." This precisely describes the cultural atmosphere in the US. It started long ago of course. Think of billboards. We have no TV, we limit the internet, we homeschool; my children found out about "LGBT" and "racism", among other non-reality phenomena, from billboards put up by the city (!) celebrating / denouncing them. There is no escaping it. We must just defend what we have. I was heartened to read a recent article from Chris Rufo in City Journal about his determination to create a "miniature world" for his children. That's what we are doing, too, way down south. To hell with people who decry "living in a bubble." Better to live in a bubble of reality than in a big, borderless world of non-reality!
Very interesting, i'm definitely going to have to read this guys books.
I liked how torn he was between optimism and pessimism. I feel the same. Often more pessimistic though; to me it's like how do you not see what's happening and be totally opposed to it, and conclude that you have to support Trump and those like him to counter it? I suppose the answer might be that they're watching 'state media' in essence, who do not allow them to see other arguments from their own.
Thanks for this.
“The other side knows no compromise, and they aim to marginalize those who still represent the conservative cause. In the current political climate, the conservatives stand contra mundum. Two practical conclusions follow from this: first, the conservatives should not let the other side divide them and should try to form a solid international alliance; second, they must build conservative institutions sufficiently robust to survive the destructive offensives of the Left (something Poland's Law and Justice failed to do).”
I have concluded this decades ago and why I am an anti-Regime Trump supporter. Case in point.
‘’If we reduce intellectual and artistic differences to politics and partisanship – as it has been happening for some time now – then ultimately it is also political power, not truth or beauty, which settles every controversy.”
I have attempted to use this argument with my left friends that are artists and true intellectuals to no avail. Their totalitarian drift seems to be a personality/brain wiring construct that supersedes consideration of truth and fact for what better supports their very own condition. Frankly, I see them as flawed thinkers… people afflicted with a lack of intellectual honesty and little emotional self-control. I have come to the conclusion that democracy is flawed in that they are the very people unqualified to rule, but that so crave power to control others they end up exploiting democratic systems to secure power. The rest of us need to awaken to the NEED to defeat them at the ballot box and to ensure they don’t infiltrate and take over key institutions like education and the media.
We need to stop accepting the non-serious and absurd. We need to stop treating it as respectful and worthy of debate. We need to brand those that hold theses views as being in need of cognitive behavior therapy.
Lastly, I see this as a problem having so advanced society to female dominance. It has never happened in history. Vulnerable narcissism has exploded and it seems the primary explanation for the political and social chaos we all feel. The wrapping of their ideological absurdism and destruction in a feminine shroud causes too many of the rest of us owning traditional chivalrous tendencies to back down… especially with their effective media mob power to brand us as misogynists. I ignore that and repeat that I support complete gender equality so I will debate females as I would any male. We cannot allow this praying of a victim card while they passive-agressivly kill.
Thanks so much for publishing the interview with Professor Legutko; his analysis is sadly so true. The West has many bumpy years ahead. Niech żyje Polska!
If we had listened to the Poles and other Eastern Europeans for many centuries, and I’m thinking for example of the Council of Constance in 1414, much bloodshed and tragedy in Western Europe and the world would have been averted. I’ve always been puzzled by the curiously condescending attitude of Western Europeans to Eastern Europeans (I’m thinking especially of the Polish, Czechs, Hungarians and Ukrainians). It’s an unjustified position that cannot survive direct contact with the intellectually brilliant and spiritually profound thought and culture of Eastern Europe. We ignore their wisdom at our peril.
The persistence of the traditional is our best hope.
This post should be read together with Matt Taibbi's latest, at https://www.racket.news/p/the-dumbest-cover-story-ever .
This is an incredibly long essay. For normal mortars who are not retired yet could there be an introductory abstract/summary on what are findings/conclusions?
For whom is this booklet really written?
;-))
"Nor the price they must pay for it"
What is this price? I honestly want to know the aim. What is the end goal for the masses?
Also, I wonder how many of these managerial elite know they will be used until power is so concentrated they will be burned at the stake, so to say. I'd bet many who think they are elite now will wish to be as far away from the tyrants as possible if they get their way. And in short order.
Thank you for discussing Legutko, and for interviewing him. He has far greater depth to him than most who are engaged in these issues. The intellectual integrity that it took Legutko, as someone who confronted actually existing Communism in his own life, to nonetheless conceive of the flaws in Liberalism -- which most intellectuals in such societies saw as the truth which would set them free -- is exemplary. One thinks of Solzhenitsyn as an intellectual parallel.
Political leaders like Orban and Fico, and further afield with Putin and Xi, resist portions of what Legutko concedes, in his best-known work, to be the common core of Modernity that is shared by both Liberalism and Communism. This resistance would seem to be the "conservatism" that Legutko references throughout the interview. But what is the goal of such selective resistance? What is its internal consistency? As he acknowledges in his book, the demon in democracy will not be exorcised until Modernity passes away, and is replaced by a better set of beliefs. What purpose, then, in focusing on political action within the context of EU institutions, or their analogues elsewhere?
If you're fighting a delaying action in the face of a superior force, what is the objective? If you aren't covering someone else's maneuver -- or their withdrawal -- your efforts are futile. If the delaying force is covering a maneuver, well, then, let's wargame that concept of operations. If a withdrawal, then we must determine the terrain to which we are falling back. And if our backs are to the sea, then we'd better start building some boats.
If, on the other hand, our assessment is that in the long term, the enemy force cannot sustain itself, then perhaps we would be well advised to refrain from prolonged engagements -- which fix us in place to be targeted and defeated in detail. We should even be willing to consider partisan tactics and la guerrilla. Sometimes these are the subtlety by which the weak overcome the strong.
It would seem that Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, today Poland, perhaps eventually Hungary and Russia, show us the end of the opposite course.
Legutko's words "Today’s liberalism has already identified far more enemies and thought crimes than the communists did" are striking or perhaps staggering is a better descriptor. If last week's State of the Union is any indicator, we are there America, we are there...
I'm going to re-read The Demon In Democracy. I had forgotten this phrase: "... our awareness that we were always surrounded by non-reality, i.e., artifacts fabricated by the propaganda machine, whose aim was to prevent us from seeing reality as it was." This precisely describes the cultural atmosphere in the US. It started long ago of course. Think of billboards. We have no TV, we limit the internet, we homeschool; my children found out about "LGBT" and "racism", among other non-reality phenomena, from billboards put up by the city (!) celebrating / denouncing them. There is no escaping it. We must just defend what we have. I was heartened to read a recent article from Chris Rufo in City Journal about his determination to create a "miniature world" for his children. That's what we are doing, too, way down south. To hell with people who decry "living in a bubble." Better to live in a bubble of reality than in a big, borderless world of non-reality!
Very interesting, i'm definitely going to have to read this guys books.
I liked how torn he was between optimism and pessimism. I feel the same. Often more pessimistic though; to me it's like how do you not see what's happening and be totally opposed to it, and conclude that you have to support Trump and those like him to counter it? I suppose the answer might be that they're watching 'state media' in essence, who do not allow them to see other arguments from their own.