This is the speech delivered by Dr. Jurášek, a counselor to the Slovak prime-minister, at the Conservative Summit, held in Bratislava in November 2024. Presented here with the kind permission of the author.
-- from the Editor
Nov. 29, 2024

What is the best way to preserve and spread national and conservative values?

For long years I believed it is this: to deeply follow your conscience, intuition, what you feel deep inside, do it with your full heart, positive attitude, pure intention and to not care whether it is popular or politically effective. I believed that if you do the right thing, then God, Providence, Fate, vis maior – you name it – will make the rights thing happen at the right time.

For me, that meant I did not care about what is popular, just what is true; I did not care whether my articles were read by a hundred or by a hundred thousand, whether I was praised by anyone, whether I would one day be elected or have a career in politics. I did not want any sponsors, I did not want to work with political parties. I did not want any money for what I was doing. It had to be pure, volunteering, bottom-up, grassroots. That was the purest form of activism I could envision. I felt as a speck of light against a big, bad system.

Actually, there is a name for this approach. It was coined by Václav Havel, with whom I disagree on many things, but I believe he got this one right. He named it the “power of the powerless”, which basically means that if you face a big, bad, totalitarian system, it might feel hopeless at first. But if you observe more carefully, you find that the system has many internal tensions and inconsistencies. Many people follow it out of fear, greed or mindless, mechanical habit; there is very little authenticity and morality. So even though the system may seem powerful from outside, it is dead inside.

Thus, all one has to do is to live according to their moral standards, authenticity, do small, every day, civic acts of justice and they can be sure the evil system will crumble to dust – sooner or later. You don’t know how, you don’t know why, but it is a given. In paraphrase, if you have good intentions and follow them honestly, God will take care of everything else.

And I am still convinced of it now. But I learned that sometimes, Providence, or God, works in ways you would not expect.

A year ago, still deeply entrenched in the “power of the powerless” principle, I unexpectedly got the offer to become an advisor of the prime minister. After some thought, I gratefully accepted, and viewing politics from inside, I learned several lessons.

First, the forces we are standing against are immensely powerful and have a spectacular head start. Of course, I knew of this before, but now, I see it from the inside, in my everyday work, is a whole new experience. The “system” we are standing against is brutal. From this follows that while “power of the powerless” is a viable and important strategy, it should not constitute all of our activism. Especially, if life or Providence, gives you the option to be a bit less powerless, you should not hesitate to use it. You are not just a lilly of the field, but you have been entrusted with some talents.

Second, we are all people, full of faults and morally conflicted. No one is perfect, but that doesn’t mean they cannot stand up for the right thing. And I realized that Providence sometimes picks people who are not ideal, but can do the right thing, at the right place, at the right time. A fresh example is what happened last week in the US. Donald Trump – against all mainstream odds – will return to the White house. While he is hardly an ideally moral person from the conservative viewpoint, I believe that – in the broader scheme – in many ways, he is standing on the right side.
There is a reason why Donald Trump has made it to the White House twice, and none of us here has, and why Robert Fico has made it to the Prime Minister of Slovakia twice, and none of us here has – although we may think we are better representatives of conservative moral values.

And this is my challenge to conservatives – and there are conservatives like this, even in this room – who somehow shy away from working with people like Donald Trump, Robert Fico and others because they may seem not nice enough – which seems “unconservative” – or they, according to the media, are corrupt or whatever. Our work should be with everyone who, at least partly, shows an open heart for conservative values and we should be helping them to become a better version of themselves, if they are willing to listen.

But there is a red line. We have all heard rallying cries of the progressives in the sense that politicians like Fico, Trump or Orbán will in short time steamroll liberalism and deconstruct democracy. That is, of course, absurd fearmongering. They don’t want it, they don’t need it and they don’t have the means to do it. Given all the circumstances, all they can do, is make the system less imbalanced, and a bit fairer towards conservatives. And slow down the progressive steam roller.

However, odds may change in the following decades. And we must be very wary not to become the monsters we are fighting now, as Nietzsche would warn us.

Many see what is happening now as a war about the future of our civilization, or even our very survival. I don’t disagree. On the other hand, with a war mentality, you think differently. Under an existential threat, all is suddenly allowed. It brings black and white splits and contempt towards the other side. Let’s face it: some conservatives can measure up to progressives in the fanaticism and one-sidedness of their beliefs.
Thus, we must always be reminding ourselves, that – even if we are fighting – we are fighting for something, not against. We are fighting for a society that is living according to natural law, but is free at the same time, a society that has picked the right side consciously and willfully, and not because it was forced to do so.

This is the path of a conservative activist. All three ingredients are needed: we have to have good intentions, we have to be practical (the lion and the fox), but without losing respect for the other side, and strive for freedom, not a society in which we unfairly dominate – as the progressives often do today in many ways. That is no easy task, but we are not conservatives so that our work is easy, but so that what we do is right.

Thank you.

Dalibor Jurášek is a lawyer and activist, co-founder of the Institute for Paradigmatic Reforms. He co-organized several civic initiatives and petitions in the areas of freedom of speech, education, and environmental protection. Currently, he serves as an advisor to the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic on civil society issues." Visit his website at: www.ippr.sk/en