For a long time the West was a landmark, a paradise to be reached.
The symbol of solid ground provided by the rule of law and freedom.
For an Eastern Europe held captive behind the Iron Curtain, liberal democracy was THE benchmark.
Where we would go, when the Communist house of cards collapsed.
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When the Wall fell in 1989, the East Europeans therefore decided that the West would provide them with the key to the moral, economic and political reconstruction of their societies entangled in the rubble of Sovietism.
Reforms, Constitution, economic models, almost everything was imported from a West that had become half a benevolent big brother, half a fussy professor of countries "in transition".
But, observes the philosopher and conservative MEP Ryszard Legutko in
The Devil in Democracy
, a scouring opus on our liberal democracies, once arrived "safely", Eastern Europeans were disillusioned.
It turned out that the West in general, and the European Union in particular,
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