Recurrent discussion now and over next few years on whether Western societies are moving away from liberal democracy. Error is to focus on leaders - strongmen - when the real change and thecreal danger is happening at the level of values, rules and mores
To give just one example (they could be endlessly multiplied), the danger to liberal democracy in the US is not Trump, but the destruction of the university by political ideology. And so on...
The real danger to liberal democracy in Europe and the US is not this or that kind of leader, but the creeping idea that words and thoughts are directly responsible for violence (how can you believe in free speech if you also believe in this?) and so on
Paul Hazard says somewhere that at one point - overnight - Europeans stopped believing in Bossuet and started believing in Voltaire. Today it seems that Europeans are about to stop believing in Voltaire and start believing in Bossuet
