Utopía y desastre : Los intelectuales y la estupidez política

From its inception a few centuries ago, modern democracy has attracted attacks from utopian proponents, who called for supposedly better and more advanced, if not perfect, forms of political society. Even today, extremists on both the right and the left continue to believe that existing democracy, or liberal democracy, is a false and unjust system that should be replaced by a genuine democracy (which may be called socialist, people's, or national). After outlining the foundations of liberal democracy, this book explores the attacks launched against it by utopian intellectuals, from the French Revolution to the present day, and analyzes the ideological errors within democracy itself that have been used to justify these attacks on issues such as civil religions, racism, and eugenics. This illuminating perspective invites us to reflect on the eternal struggle between utopian irrationality and political pragmatism, extremism and democracy.