" As regards the modern liberal democrat who represents the class of victors in this process of emancipation, despite his loud bragging about transgressions, too much of his language and presuppositions sound discordant with the idea of freedom -- too much necessity, inevitability, irreversible change, and too many natural God-given drives. His language holds too many references to the tides of history and refers to excessive adapting, yielding, giving in, and indulging. There is also too much easiness in pursuing freedom, too much self-absolution, and too much nonchalance in dismissing all the caveats and counterarguments accumulated over the centuries. He appears more like an actor who takes part in a performance in which he has been ordered to play the role of a free man. He duly obeys the author's and director's orders but is utterly unaware that, by listening to those orders, he has already lost his chance to be his own master. "

― Ryszard Legutko , The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols