The Fire of Stupidity Cannot Be Contained (David French, 5/31/26, NY Times)
[M]illions upon millions of people are enduring democracy as “the worst form of government” without the necessary balanced understanding (that citizens in the mid-20th century had gained through firsthand observation) of “except all those other forms that have been tried.”
So even fascism and communism — for some people, at least — are no longer avatars of atrocity, but dynamic alternatives to a sclerotic present. In their frustration, all too many people are attracted to the theoretical benefits of authoritarianism, and they don’t have the experience or the education to understand its actual and inevitable defects.
They do not understand the link between their fashionable and transgressive ideologies and the oceans of blood that fascism and communism spilled across the globe.
In this ahistorical context, even political violence can seem justified — perhaps even a bit daring and romantic — unless you’ve lived through, say, the riots that swept American cities in the 1960s, a cataclysm that was far more violent, deadly and prolonged than anything that happened in the United States in 2020.
The compromises and restraints of diplomacy, which can often mean granting painful concessions to terrible regimes, can seem like a fool’s errand, unless you’ve witnessed the indescribable horrors of world wars.
The problem is rather different than Mr. French describes: it is the atavism of the Last Men. Life is so affluent and boring, thanks to the triumph of liberalism, that these people are willing to embrace violence just to make their lives more exciting.