Legutko, Chp. 1-2

For much of the first 2 chapters, Legutko makes observations that I mostly find validity in. Liberal democracy, much like Marxism, does have its utopian side, at least in current ideology.  After the fall of the Soviety Union, some people did talk of an "End of History", i.e. a final stage of human political development.  Some people do have utopian aspirations for it.

I also like his observation that Westerners are remarkably comfortable with the orthodoxy because we have no obviously official propaganda organs.  We don't have kommissars firing people who refuse to recite the exact prescribed platitudes (for the most part).  Our ideology is enforced in much more subtle ways.  I've heard similar things from other people who grew up in Communist states of Eastern Europe, and not all of them are social conservatives like Legutko.  So there is something going on here, something visible from more than one ideological angle.

And he does acknowledge the unquestionable success of liberal and democratic societies in enabling the prosperity of capitalism.

He also talks about the desire of technocrats to transform and improve societies, and not always in ways that the citizens desire.  I have a certain amount of sympathy here. I've spent countless blog posts bemoaning the impossible social transformations that technocrats want higher education to deliver.  I may not share all of Legutko's bones of contention with technocrats, but I get his point.

And I completely agree with his observation that democracy often values equality to the point of mediocrity, a stance sharply at odds with excellence.  It praises the common and coarse over the high and refined.  It's one of the tensions between a democratic society and educational achievement.  While mass ignorance is hardly consistent with stable democracy, egalitarianism can weaken the best parts of a society.

Of course, he applies his critique at least as much to mass culture and norms of vulgar speech as to educational issues.  And, again, I see his point.  I don't fear pop culture as much as he does (I've noted before the commonalities between the Iliad and modern entertainment, and I think that soulful music celebrates emotion in ways that lift us up, not debase us), but I agree that there's no sharp line between such high popular art and vulgar popular art. (Indeed, vulgar and popular started as synonyms before acquiring different connotations.)

But his denunciation of the vulgar takes us to Trump, and we start to see his incoherence.  The book was published in 2016, so it can't address Trump to any great extent, but Trump is unquestionably vulgar. A reality TV star of gaudy rather than refined tastes, he exemplifies the rich man who still has common roots and low-class insecurities. (Which is ironic when you consider his pedigree.) Trump is, on the one hand, democracy personified in its most vulgar form.  On the other hand, he is the antithesis of what the elite managers of liberal democracies despise.

And it seems that Legutko himself is not always clear about which side of liberal democracy he's lamenting.  Is he lamenting the rule of technocratic elites or the celebration of the vulgar masses?  The technocratic elites definitely, desperately believe themselves to be advocates for the interests of the masses, but they often disagree with masses over what those interests are.  This makes the technocrats democratic in spirit but not always in practice, and liberal in their stated goals (liberation of people from the prejudices and limitations imposed by cultures) but not always in their methods (forced liberation).  Or, at least, they are contradicting themselves by certain definitions of these terms, but perhaps not by all.

He seems to know this.  He seems to be pointing at a contradiction, and I appreciate that. I don't always agree with him, e.g. on gay rights, but I get his point about contradictions. I get that even the blandest, most humble "live and let live" approach to minority rights will founder upon the obstacle of popular prejudice in public education, and the desperate search for a neutral curriculum. Sometimes you simply can't be neutral.  There's really no neutral ground between "This minority group is entitled to the same rights and protections as anyone else, and how they live their lives is none of your business" and "No, they are hurting society."  I say that compromise is impossible not because I want to be strident but because the demands are so fundamentally opposed.

I think he's driving at this, and I respect him for making the point.  I don't share his agenda, but the nature of democracy, its practicality and internal consistency, is a hard problem, and one that is not always easy to see if most people more-or-less agree on a few key fundamentals.  The problems only become apparent if you have a very stark disagreement.  You can't get at hard questions about democracy without some sharp disagreements to illuminate the issue, and that inevitably means hearing from people whose values are fundamentally at odds with yours.  In other words, that means hearing from people whose speech is not value-neutral, on topics where the feasibility of of reasoned disagreement is most in doubt.

If you want to argue from a values standpoint that you should not dignify such views by offering them the use of your (privately owned,, privately funded, etc.) platform, well, you may be right in many contexts.  But an academic department of political science pretty much has to consider such viewpoints to get at the hardest questions concerning the nature and limitations of democracy.  So I get why people at Middlebury invited him and wanted to discuss his ideas.  It's why I'm going to continue reading the rest of his book.

Two other issues come up:
1) Legutko doesn't just claim that liberal democracy has a hard time leaving non-conformists alone (e.g. concerning education of children), he also claims that this is a pathology shared with Marxism but not with all systems. How correct is he?  Maybe there are social orders in which the elites of the capitol city don't care much how parents raise children in the hinterlands, but is there any society in which parents can avoid getting flack for raising their children with values different from those of their neighbors?  Religious minorities throughout the ages have found it hard to raise their kids with their values and customs, and this is why they've tended to either cluster together or else disappear via conversion to the dominant religion.

2) On minority rights, it strikes me that their compatibility with democracy depends on how we construe the demos and its role in governance.  If the demos is merely to decide matters, then popularity will (in practice if not always in theory) be paramount and minorities will lose to majorities.  If, on the other hand, the demos is to be reflected in government, then it seems to me that there is room for protection of minority rights.  Minority representation in government, explicit protection of certain practices or beliefs, set-asides of state jobs, funding formulas that protect districts or provinces with minorities, we see these things implemented in many different systems around the world.  They are not always done with equal efficacy or compassion, and they are often window-dressing, but the very fact that he window-dressing is deemed necessary tells me that there are people who believe it enough that they need to see it to be appeased.