How Democracies Perish, by Jean-François Revel

Jean-François Revel (1924-2006) was a French Jean-François Revel, a French philosopher, novelist and satirist (1924–2006), published a fascinating book in 1983 entitled How Democracies Die. This book feels like a report from the future, smuggled out of tomorrow's newspapers. Revel had a clear vision of our modern paradox: the freest and richest societies can become their own enemies when their virtues are used as weapons against them. Although he was agnostic, Revel understood the void left by the abandonment of Christian civilisation and morality. He conducted a profound analysis of ‘self-dissolution’ long before social media and human resources sensitivity training made this diagnosis commonplace.
This episode delves into his great warning: that the best virtues of Western civilisation are also its greatest weakness. As in a judo match, our enemies know how to use democracy's own weight to bring it down. Every pillar of Western freedom is used against it: the most advanced and secure societies open their borders wide in the name of compassion; they make a suicidal pact with “tolerance” and are so careful not to offend anyone that they neutralise language until citizens can no longer name sabotage in parliament, classrooms and popular culture. Revel saw how each virtue is exploited as a vulnerability in a relentless attack that cracks the foundations of every Western democracy.

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