Hans Herbert von Arnim | legitimizing power despite its democratic shortcomings
"The political class is supported by the many-thousand-voiced chorus of those who are committed to it by the already accomplished or still hoped-for awarding of offices and dignities. The proof of deficiencies is made difficult at the outset by the fact that there is an abundance of thought patterns (paradigms), formulas and theories that support the basic ideological thesis of the quasi-automatic functioning of the system. They seek to close the gap between norm and reality not by improving reality, but by interpreting the norm laxly or by obfuscating reality. Serving the cause of legitimizing power despite its democratic shortcomings: scientific paradigms, political formulas, scientific theories, prohibitions of thought and language (= "political correctness"), stagings of reality and the so-called political education (...) If one does not let oneself be blinded by the blinkered paradigms and political formulas saber and does not let the way to knowledge be shifted by glossing over theories, then one recognizes that the two basic principles of our form of government, public welfare and democracy, are realized by the existing system only to a very limited extent."
Hans Herbert von Arnim
