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The Demon in Democracy

Ryszard Legutko

National-conservative critique of liberalism

It is a leading national-conservative indictment of liberalism from a post-communist vantage point.

Synopsis

Legutko argues that liberal democracy shares with communism a coercive utopian drive to remake society and stamp out dissent in the name of progress.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Liberal democracy, like the communism it claims to oppose, imposes a single approved worldview and treats those who reject it as enemies of progress.

It charges that liberalism's tolerance masks an intolerant pressure toward ideological conformity.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism.

Reading note

Read it as polemic shaped by the author's experience under both communism and the liberal West.

Best paired with

Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism

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