Introduction
This article analyzes the proposals of the Good State Foundation, which offer a conservative alternative to modern newspeak and abstract ideologies. Contrary to appearances, the proposed program is not a manifesto of nostalgia, but a concrete plan to repair institutions and restore accountability to public life. The Foundation focuses on the personalization of responsibility, the transparency of administrative decisions, and the prudent management of local resources. Central to this is the rejection of ideological language in favor of concrete procedures and clear rules. Readers will discover how to build a modern state based on enduring institutions that do not succumb to new incantations but strictly enforce the law.
The Good State Foundation: A Reform Project and the Rule of Law
The Good State Foundation proposes a deep institutional reform based on the personalization of responsibility. Every administrative decision must have a specific author and an impact metric, serving as a weapon against the newspeak that dilutes guilt within impersonal structures. In this model, the rule of law takes precedence over the mechanisms of pure democracy; law is a procedure of impartiality that places the norm above the will of those in power.
To distinguish sound procedure from "word magic," the Foundation introduces five verification tests. The person test asks "who?", the law test checks for the existence of an appeals process, and the institution test examines whether a dispute can be resolved at the local level. The final two stages are a language audit (translating slogans into procedures) and a brutal cost test. Such "accounting-style" political poetics makes it possible to avoid ideological traps and build a state that honors its commitments.
Scruton Debunks Educational Errors and Parisian Nonsense
Roger Scruton points to the necessity of returning to an orthodoxy of tools in education: logic, rhetoric, and the scientific method. Instead of ideological "curricular purity," he advocates for a pluralism held accountable by outcome testing. In culture, he proposes a republic of conversation—community centers and discussion clubs should teach evidence-based debate rather than serve as tools for meta-political indoctrination.
The philosopher sharply criticizes so-called Parisian nonsense—the theories of thinkers such as Foucault, Lacan, and Žižek. He labels them fools, frauds, and firebrands because their language does not serve dialogue, but rather the destruction of reality. Scruton exposes how abstract slogans of "liberation" and "social justice" destroy the classical concept of justice, which inseparably links an action to a specific person. Instead of emancipation, modern elites offer intellectual narcotics that fail miserably in practice.
Mediating Institutions and Polish Models of Self-Governance
The key to social stability lies in mediating institutions: guilds, brotherhoods, cooperatives, and parishes. As "little platoons," they absorb crises and teach citizens agency. Polish history, from sixteenth-century guilds to Solidarity, is a school of practical conservatism. For example, old craft guilds implemented a rule-of-law protocol on a micro-scale, where every master was personally responsible to the community for the quality of their work.
Modern Poland should draw from these models, adapting, among others, Ostrom’s principle in local politics—the self-management of resources by participants. Enduring institutions are the foundation of modernity because they protect society from the monopoly of central power. According to Scruton, conservatism is the remembrance that good things are easily destroyed but incredibly difficult to create—therefore, the strength of the state lies in institutional memory and the stability of procedures.
Summary
A good state is not a manifesto, but a home where institutions are subject to audit, the law is impartial, and the citizen is responsible for their actions. Can we reject the alluring rhetoric of revolution to appreciate the monotony of a well-written procedure? Or are we condemned to an eternal swing between empty promises and bitter disappointment? Poland is not a Petri dish for foreign ideologies. It is a place where freedom matures in the shadow of institutions, and the individual always matters more than an anonymous process.
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