The Demon in Democracy
Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
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Narrated by:
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Liam Gerrard
About this listen
Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.
In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has, over time, lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet-style brutality.
Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.
©2016 Ryszard Legutko (P)2017 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.
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Without This Book, You Are Uneducated
- By Michael D. Rubin on 10-03-18
By: Ludwig von Mises, and others
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Identity
- The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.
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Robotic narrator
- By Shahin on 09-19-18
By: Francis Fukuyama
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Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
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- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
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Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
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Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
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Philosophy
- Who Needs It
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- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
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Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.
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Deep and provocative
- By Sierra Bravo on 05-21-09
By: Ayn Rand
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Fascism: The Career of a Concept
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What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term's meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word's polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles.
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Refreshing scholarly treatment of a widely misused concept
- By Minister of the Posterior on 01-15-24
By: Paul Gottfried
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The Voice of Reason
- Essays in Objectivist Thought
- By: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
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In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand's life, they reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor.
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Explains Everything Of Today
- By L. Nicholson on 11-20-15
By: Ayn Rand, and others
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A Secular Age
- By: Charles Taylor
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins
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What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we - in the West, at least - largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean - of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
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Needs Guest Narrators for French and German
- By Norman on 06-13-15
By: Charles Taylor
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Propaganda
- The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
- By: Jacques Ellul
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
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From one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century comes a seminal study and critique of propaganda. Taking not only a psychological approach but a sociological approach as well, Jacques Ellul outlines the taxonomy for propaganda and, ultimately, its destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.
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Excellent analysis on the dichotomies of propagandize media
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-21
By: Jacques Ellul
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The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
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Performance
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In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
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Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
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What listeners say about The Demon in Democracy
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- RV Lamberti
- 02-26-20
Excellent, but bleak, political philosophy
A superb and philosophically sophisticated exposition of the problems of liberal democracy. Perhaps too bleak, not in the sense of it being unrealistically bleak, but in the sense of not sufficiently exploring viable paths of political resistance and cultural regeneration. Maybe the author intends this for another work, or it is the task of another author. As someone engaged in practical Polish and EU politics, the core pessimism of the book seems not entirely in keeping with the author's optimism, or at least spirited resistance, revealed by his vocational actions. Nonetheless, a landmark contribution in political philosophy and a novel, and devastating, critique of the dominant Western political paradigm.
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1 person found this helpful
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- sempervirens
- 05-27-18
Slow to start but riveting by the end
The narration is a bit dry, but hey, it’s an extended essay about political and ideological theory. Legutko‘s thesis and observations on modern liberal-democracy are penetrating, fresh, and insightful to those who have ears to hear.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Jeff R. Nyquist
- 07-11-20
Fantastic book
The author’s insights are classical and Christian. He sees the threat to European civilization in exacting terms. The convergence of liberalism and totalitarianism is happening. It will intensify.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Wayne
- 08-02-19
Important book on political philosophy
Polish political philosopher Ryszard Legutko very credibly compares the excesses of communism to those of liberal democracy of the type practiced by the European Union. He finds little to like about either. Legutko's arguments are strong and well documented. THE DEMON IS DEMOCRACY is a must read book for those interested in politics. Unfortunately narration by Liam Gerrard is not a good match for the contents of the book. This book is not a good fit for the audio format due to the very heavy subject matter and the depth of Ryszard Legutko's arguments.
I've written over 2300 reviews of Audible books and have refrained from negative comments about another review. However, the very negative review of this book by Tom S of London literally begs for a response. The review reeks of personal animosity toward the author. My advice to potential listeners of this book is to give the review the credit it deserves and ignore it completely.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Tom S
- 08-10-18
Sore loser
There are real 'demons' or problems in democracy of which I had hoped to learn more. But the book quickly descends into the name dropping often seen to try to add legitimacy to poorly supported claims. The author uses it nonstop to reiterate his ideas, ad nauseum without achieving to make a compelling case.
I thought I'd finish it to see someone else's point but what a waste of time and money.
often his arguments start in a way that look like he has a point but leaves a lingering suspicion. Shortly thereafter, the argument's absurdity is displayed by cherry picked instances at best and outright distortions more usually.
Of course to him, who claims liberal democracy is a homogeneous block opposed to him, it is a quasi dictatorship.
Of course, to him, an academic, all other academics are blind and mindless.
When there is one fool in the room and you see many...
Regarding actual problems of democracy, his complaints would not fill a half page.
He is deeply anti European, claiming there can be no European society, willfully ignoring that not too long ago there was no German or Italian people, that the sense of community came with time and that today an Italian certainly thinks there is an Italian society.
if you are a right wing nutjob on the Alex Jones spectrum, maybe this is your echo chamber, that is if you believe that religious freedom and equality only counts for Christians and that according other religious groups the same right is discriminatory to your privileges then this is your guy. This guy also pretends that women and gays are privileged groups. Removing bigoted discrimination apparently makes those groups privileged rather than treated equal. So if you are a heterosexual man full of complexes that giving the 'weaker sex' the same position as men, worried about a war on you, you might find support here. Just don't try to explain away how the 'strong sex' has anything to fear from being given an equal starting point with the weak.
Oh yeah, if you like beating your wife, this is also for you. The author is outraged at the idea that a government intervene in matters of domestic violence. of course, written with plausible deniability.
I pity this man so thoroughly stuck in the far past by a profound fear of reality and the democracy that shapes it. A reality in which Christianity is less of a priority than in the dark ages. A reality in which he is a sore loser of a democratic process.
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6 people found this helpful