The Right’s Doomed Compromises – A Reply to Law and Justice Leader Jarosław Kaczyński

Will Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) go down the same path as Western Europe’s Center Right?

The announcement by Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, the Law and Justice (PiS) party’s leader, in an interview with Solidarity Weekly that he would seek “a compromise between conservative and liberal thinking in matters of morals” went almost unnoticed. The editor-in-chief of Tysol.pl’s website reacted by bluntly listing those of the Left’s demands with which such a compromise would have to be made: the killing of children suspected of having Down’s syndrome, compulsory sex education in schools, the chemical and surgical castration of minors, etc. Nor is the conclusion drawn by the head of the Solidarity site surprising: “Poland needs development, not moral compromise.”

The prevailing indifference in response to Jarosław Kaczyński’s words nevertheless bodes ill for Polish politics. It illustrates how accustomed we have become to conformism, doublethink, and a willingness to tactically abandon principles, all of which ends up taking precedence over political maturity. Such maturity is characterized not by an obsessive lust for power at the price of one’s own views, but by a readiness to lead the political community in the search for solutions that are objectively right, and moreover firmly rooted in our national cultural and political identity, our Constitution, and human rights.

Understanding politics in this way is a great challenge. When we hosted Italy’s Christian conservative politician Rocco Buttiglione at the Ordo Iuris Institute a few years ago, he fondly recalled his friend Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor. Buttiglione recounted how, when asked about the importance of polls for a statesman, Kohl had said that “they tell us how many of our compatriots we need to convince to come around to the solutions we believe in.” Conducting politics according to objectively-recognized rightness is also nothing more than following the directives of St. John Paul II. The Holy Father’s warning against a democracy devoid of values, which would then turn into “overt or camouflaged totalitarianism,” resounds constantly in the speeches of our national politicians – most often, however, without their comprehension.

The revolutionary Left is constantly undermining the foundations of social order

Such an open pronouncement of hypocrisy thus becomes all the more disturbing. The readiness for “moral compromise” is accompanied by the ritualistic assertion that “of course, we do not want to give up our views.” Meanwhile, the extremely vague category of “matters of morals” seen as apparently discretionary and subjective is fundamentally false and is a step toward handing that purview over to revolutionary radicals which in both politics and life is in fact the most important one: truth. Moreover, experience teaches us that the compromises in question are nothing more than unilateral concessions from the standpoint of protecting human dignity, as well as defending the family and freedom itself. What’s more, a field once surrendered can almost never be retaken, because the revolutionary Left, which eagerly urges agreements that are favorable to it, never compromises itself and constantly undermines the foundations of the social order.

In the popular perception, the search for compromise appears to lie at the core of politics in a democratic republic. The thing is that, over the years, politics has sought compromise only on a narrow range of issues outside the realm of civilizational, religious, and cultural consensus, which includes issues central to the community’s identity. When consensus collapses due to the rise of revolutionary ideologies, it must not be replaced by arbitrariness and ethical constructivism, but rather an appeal to the truth – and then build policy upon it. Any other idea of politics will only bring about the agony of the national community, which will then be left devoid of objective foundations.

The falsifiers of reality should be marginalized

Since those who are openly enemies of science, reason, and truth entered the democratic scene, calling for the exploitation of the state’s authority in order to implement their ideologies and utopias, any compromise with them has become a step toward destruction. Under such circumstances, healthy political communities enter into open polemics and marginalize such falsifiers of reality by confronting them with fundamental, recognizable, and well-defined facts.

This is the case because, before one can talk about compromise, a well-defined consensus must be developed that is based on self-evident and scientifically-defined premises. Otherwise, politicians who are ready to make hasty compromises become, in the eyes of a rational electorate that puts their trust in them, the executors and endorsers of irrational and destructive policies. The end of such a spiral of compromises is not only their political demise but also the economic, social, and cultural withering away of the community, followed by the weakening and ultimate political collapse of the state. This was not understood by the politicians of the conservative mainstream in the Weimar Republic, who made compromises with the nationalist Left. More recently, numerous factions of Christian democracy in Europe have likewise failed to see this and are now reaping the fruits of compromises they have made with revolutionaries who are opposed to both reason and human nature.

This is all the more reason to remind modern politicians that compromise is not possible when verifiable facts and human nature itself are concerned. In these areas, the role of a politician should be to spread and promote the truth, for any other solution will simply give rise to a proliferation of further regulations and instruments of coercion. Indeed, one transgression against the truth gives rise to consequences across numerous sectors.

Breaking the laws of the economy has consequences, and so does breaking the laws of biology

This is most evident in the use of false market instruments, which lead to unintended consequences as a result of the inexorable rules of the market and the value of money. Once applied, an intervention that introduces a false supply or demand impulse generates predictable consequences that will unavoidably follow from the initial, intended effect. A politician who ignores this – even if he provides “zero percent” credit for the young, for instance – will not escape punishment in the form of an exponential increase in housing prices as the market adjusts prices to meet increased demand. To prevent this, there will be a natural temptation to increase supply with further regulations, whether by restricting the right to rent apartments, triggering developer margin controls, or requiring residential buildings to be sold immediately upon completion. These moves will in turn induce further waves of unintended effects. The deeper the intervention into the market, the more numerous and severe the effects the government will end up having to deal with. The greater will likewise be the costs of regulation, oversight, and the decline in said sector’s profitability.

That principle applies no less when one is violating the laws of biology. A government that rejects the existence of two sexes must prepare for the consequences of rejecting this truth. The most minor of these will be the change in the nature of civil status certificates from being a reliable source of information about a person to certifying an individual’s identity preferences. Next will be the restriction – in the name of protecting these subjective preferences – of the freedom of speech of those citizens who still believe in biological truth and want to proclaim it. This in turn means intervening in the freedom of religion, at least that type of religion which stems from a realistic recognition of truth and falsehood by linking these categories to the knowable and objective features of the reality around us. Finally, science itself must then recognize the primacy of relativism, which will strike a blow at the very heart of the theory of cognition which underlies the triumph of modern science and technology. From a seemingly minor transgression against biological truth, we quickly reach the world of universities implementing DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies, emphasizing diversity and individual identifications at the expense of progress and thought. The social, economic, and cultural effects of one such intervention multiply with each such regulation and adjustment, ultimately threatening the state and the entire culture with collapse. This is because at the end of every such process, there is – on the economic side: cost, loss, and poverty; and on the social side: conflict, polarization, oppression, and the breakdown of the political community.

The violation of one principle entails the violation of others: the example of abortion

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these same laws apply to the defense of life. The violation of the fundamental and universal human principle that people – and in particular, children – should not be killed must result in a tsunami of consequences. This is all the more so when the government refuses to acknowledge the consequences of developments in science and medicine involving the recognition – which was previously only assumed, because it is difficult to see – of the fullness of the humanity of the unborn. These range from genetic studies confirming fully-defined individual and unique DNA in the unborn; to ultrasound diagnostics showing their physiognomy, reflexes, heartbeat, and response to pain ; to medicines allowing for the survival of increasingly prematurely-born human beings; to the treatment, including through surgery, of unborn patients. Denying the humanity of the unborn child has, as a result of scientific progress, become an anti-scientific claim, on a par with Communist economic views or the irrational claims of gender ideologues. The consequence of denying the equal legal status of all human beings both before and after birth, not only at the political level but in opposition to science (as well as religion), is the collapse of the rationale behind the entire system that provides for the defense of fundamental rights. This is what the Polish Constitutional Court wrote about when, in 1997, it pointed out the unacceptable arbitrariness, in light of the rule of law, of Parliament’s decision to limit the protection of human life in isolation from the limits set by biology, which are only conception and death.

The law should serve the truth and the role of a politician is to persuade the community

The task of a politician in those areas that stem from cognition is to enact laws which serve truth. This applies both to that truth which is determined by the sciences as well as that determined by exploring our knowledge of human nature, including the nature of a given political community, which is also known as national identity. In doing so, the politician must be fully aware that any other decision will be to the community’s disadvantage.

When the truth points to the need for difficult and unpopular decisions, the role of the statesman and even the ordinary politician is not to run away from the truth and choose compromise solutions that are harmful, but to prudently convince the community of the need to move closer to the truth. If democracy is deprived of the conviction that, when it is treated in a cooperative and serious way, the community will support a decision based on truth after receiving a sufficiently detailed explanation of an issue, it will be reduced to a dictatorship of narratives and lies, and will soon be doomed to failure as a result of stirring up an avalanche of consequences stemming from rejecting the truth.

Contrary to the prevailing conviction in our post-politics era, the role of a politician is generally not to flesh out compromises and seek the “golden mean.” Seeking compromise would normally occur rarely and should only concern those few major issues as well as those more numerous minor issues where it can be achieved without distorting the truth and going against human nature.

“Compromises” as an escape from responsibility

In this light, the demand to seek “moral compromises,” which implies going against science and the truth about man, is a flight from responsibility. It is cowardly to try to escape the real burden of power, the task of which is not to seek easy solutions, but rather solutions that are beneficial for the common good as well as the entire political community.

Conformists define politics as the art of accomplishing achievable goals under the given circumstances of a particular time to the point of boredom. The invocation of this definition is usually merely intended to justify the abandonment of principles and to make possible yet another unilateral compromise with the Left. Meanwhile, the correct reading of such a principle should lead to the conclusion that there is a need for full fidelity to the truth, without the possibility of making concessions to falsehood, but with an indication of the possibility of setting – in accordance with the prevailing conditions and times – the priorities of rational policy. This choice of priorities, based on the assumption that one is fully safeguarding previous gains, is a policy of responsibility toward the community as well as an awareness of the fact that the goal of implementing rational law and defending human dignity will require time.

In a reality permeated by conformism and relativism in which fundamental values such as human dignity, freedom, and the family can be called merely a “matter of custom,” a politician who appeals to rationality and the good of the community becomes a statesman. In a nation that has been disappointed by a lack of real political leaders, such fidelity to the truth represents a new standard. Given what has been happening to the Center Right in Western Europe, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński should well know that when the big mainstream parties – once they have been stripped of their ideals – are unable to see this, they quickly learn the hard way that politics abhors a vacuum.

Att. Jerzy Kwaśniewski, President of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture