America & Hungary’s Orban

Aug 7, 2021 by

by Mark Tooley, Providence Magazine:

There’s a debate among some U.S. Christians about Hungary’s Victor Orban as a model or at least inspiration for America.  The socially conservative and increasingly authoritarian prime minister has governed since 2010 without strong opposition as his party commands two thirds of the parliament.

Rod Dreher, a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and author of The Benedict Option, has been blogging from and about Hungary during Tucker Carlson’s visit and hailed Orban for defying “globalist liberalism.” Orban’s regime has advocated pro-natalist policies, resisted some LGBTQ advocacy by Western Europe, limited immigration, and is a strong advocate for persecuted Christians in the Mideast and elsewhere.  Orban has defended “Christian Europe” and derided Western secularists who advocate “a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies.” For Dreher and others, Orban exemplifies success against global wokery.

In response, evangelical columnist David French has noted Hungary’s pro-natalist policies are no more generous than many others (its birthrate is lower than much of Europe’s), free speech is increasingnly more constrained in Orban’s Hungary, corruption has enriched regime cronies, and Hungary is much poorer than America and suffers from net migration, even though Orban enthusiasts insist he has revived national pride.  Freedom House has in recent years downgraded Hungary from “free” to “partly free.” French compares conservative Americans who romanticize Orban’s Hungary with American liberals who historically have idealized Scandinavian social welfare states. In neither case are conservatives or liberals seeing the reality of those countries but instead are projecting their own aspirations.

Read here

Watch:  Tucker Carlson’s interview with Victor Orban

Tucker Carlson and Douglas Murray Discuss The Left’s Meltdown Over Tucker’s Interview With Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

Please right-click links to open in a new window.

 

Related Posts

Tags

Share This