Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
    The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
    The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

    Written by Ryszard Legutko and John O'Sullivan

    Narrated by Liam Gerrard

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades-and he fought with the Polish ant-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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    TranslatorTeresa Adelson
    Release dateAug 22, 2017
    ISBN9781541482203

    Related to The Demon in Democracy

    Related audiobooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Seduction Of Socialism

      Jul 26, 2018

      For the current generation, sometimes referred to as millennials, it appears one thing is more seductive than sex -- and that's socialism. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, winner of a New York Democratic primary, a

      2 min read

    • Article

      Liberalism, More or Less

      Jul 11, 2022

      Liberalism, More or Less
      6 min read

    • Article

      Introduction: Populism, Self-Government, and Liberty

      Aug 4, 2021

      Populist and neoliberal are epithets: anyone who uses one of these terms as a description doesn’t belong to the group being described. The more extreme stand-ins— socialist for the Left and fascist for the Right—are hyperbolic and hackneyed, so popul

      15 min read

    • Article

      Putting Populism in Its Place

      Aug 4, 2021

      On November 8, 2016, the world was stunned by the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America. The fact that roughly 63 million Americans had voted for the host of The Apprentice, a political outsider who vow

      21 min read

    • Article

      Party Animals

      Jan 17, 2022

      Party Animals
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, And The Struggle For The Soul Of Libertarianism

      Feb 2, 2024

      By Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. x, 416. $35 hardcover. The Individualists is a work of academic philosophy at once remarkably ambitious and highly accessible. Seasoned academics and general aud

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Liberal Disorder

      Sep 25, 2022

      The Liberal Disorder
      4 min read

    • Article

      Power To The People

      Jan 17, 2022

      Power To The People
      10 min read

    • Article

      We Need To Reframe The Way We Thinkabout “Free Speech”

      Jun 29, 2023

      NO IDEA IS MORE LOATHED TODAY, especially on the Right (how times change), than censorship. Nothing is worse, we are told, than being “censorious”, and seeking to end “vigorous debate” in the “marketplace of ideas”. But what exactly ensures that a de

      11 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: 2023 Was The Year I Started Believing In The Horseshoe Theory Of Politics

      Dec 26, 2023

      This is the season for columnists to offer some new idea that encapsulates the year that was. I got nothing. But 2023 was the year I finally abandoned my opposition to an old idea — the horseshoe theory of political ideologies. The term is often attr

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: In American Politics Today, The Center Is A Lonely Place To Be

      Sep 8, 2020

      Who is a moderate now? Who’s a centrist? Until recently, the answer to such questions was primarily ideological. Centrists were middle-of-the-roaders who rejected the purity of the ideological left and right. I will confess: I used to have considerab

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Lesson of Virtue

      Jul 28, 2022

      Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule recently launched his new book Common Good Constitutionalism. In last week’s edition of Beijing Review, Vermeule and John Pang, Malaysian senior fellow at Bard College in New York, described the shared cla

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Universities Owe to the Liberal Project

      Jan 25, 2023

      We live in an era fraught with challenge. From a global pandemic to rising authoritarianism and a European war, the world is as fundamentally unsettled as it has been in nearly a century. Domestically, Americans face rising levels of polarization and

      14 min read

    • Article

      Democracy in Trump’s America

      Sep 1, 2019

      Democracy in Trump’s America
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Demon in Democracy

    4/5

    38 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      If you are a conservative and believe that homosexuals, multiculturalism, feminism and cultural Marxism are out to get you, then this is the book for you, if however you are sane, then skip this book entirely and save your time

      3 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Sounds like a lot of right wing propaganda designed to obfuscate the very real nature of totalitarianisn in western capitalist "democracies" to me

      3 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      If you agree with Mr. Starkey here - and think that "Biden voters" haven't worked a day in their lives, or if you believe that it's the fault of the modern American worker that his wages have stagnated since 1970- then by all means hoover up this right wing trash disguised as "intellectual political non-fiction." If you are a sane and balanced individual who isn't eager to jump on this train - "Next Stop: Fascism!" then skip this one: it's only intention is to persuade you into giving your rights away, and to believe that it's in your best interest while you're doing so.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Just victimization of religiosity, and puts all secularism into the bag of communism, ignoring there are many non believers in either communism nor religion. An insult to secular liberals.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The narrator has a repetitive style, but the message of this book is important enough to listen anyway.
    • 2/5
      Redundant and frustrating.

      The author here makes an awful lot assumptions about the so called American "every man."


      If anything, I think this author just fundamentally does not understand US character and he understands the culture even less.
    • 2/5
      I disagree with the author on politics and people like him are the reason I escaped Poland but he has a very good point about liberal democracy become closer and closer in method of operation to communism. Like communism liberal democracy allows only one "correct" view, requires people to perform self criticism at the first hint of unauthorised opinions and generally doesn't suffer any kind of challenge.
    • 5/5
      The most frightening and important book I’ve ever read.