Another look at European conservatism, this time Ryszard Legutkoa leader of the Polish Law and Justice Party and author of The Demon in Democracy.
Starting about 20 minutes into the interview:
scholarship in which you nevertheless show that structurally there's a reason why marxists communists
who had been governing poland under a totalitarian regime were able to easily slide into
governing as a liberal regime can you help us understand what possible similarities can there be between
marxism and liberalism well there are many of them the first
similarity was that the new liberal democratic system
started with the very strong message we have to restructure everything
we cannot have the society as it is it's backward it's it's traditional it's
conservative it's religious no no we have to
reorganize it we have to restructure and there was very similar
rhetoric to what my parents had heard after world war ii when the
communists took over their message was very similar we have to modernize the society you
cannot we cannot have the society as it is everything has to change so uh then i understood
that what makes those two ideologies very similar is that they are not about freedom
liberalism is not about freedom communism is not about equality they are
all about social engineering i mean very profound restructuring of society and not only
institutions not only economy but everything
including the way you think the way you uh the way you speak you have to they
have to re replace your mind with a new one like there was this this there was this
this race a new man homo novus in latin right we have to we have to create a new poll
a new man exactly like communists had done a couple of years
decades before and and it's obvious that when you come up
with a program like this a lot of people will resist
and they say no no i don't want to give a structure i'm quite happy with my mind
and and they begin to resist and what uh do the liberals do
they said we will have to reform you right we will uh we will teach you
we will indoctrinate you we will take your children from you and send them to school and the
school curricula will be such that your children will be new poles
there will be human not like you yourself who actually belong to the dustbin of
history