Listen now (104 mins) | In this episode I speak with Flagg Taylor about the life and writing of Vaclav Benda, and his idea of the parallel polis, decentralization, and creating space in society for culture, the family, charity, education, and human flourishing. Though he was writing under communist regimes, Benda’s writings are very relevant today in light democratic pressures to conformity, de-platforming, and especially as a new ontology of the person is being written into law — and dignity is used as weapon against religious and cultural liberty. Benda’s idea of the parallel polis was not a siege mentality, nor so much a reform existing structures that had ossified or were corrupted, but a call to build new, innovative, and better structures and social institutions that would activate people’s participation in civil, cultural, and commercial life, and give people a sense of purpose and agency. Examples today include decentralized technologies or classical education - which is not running away, but creating better alternatives to mediocre state run schools.