Rod Dreher's Blog, page 15

I like Antonio Garcia Martinez personally, and I usually like his writing, but his new piece for Bari Weiss’s Substack, titled, “Why Does Tucker Carlson Sound Like A Berkeley Leftist?”, is just shallow and silly, and way beneath the high standards of that blog. It starts like this:

In the Before Times, prior to Twitter and #BLM and Critical Race Theory, the one wing of the political spectrum that was reliably “America, love it or leave it!” levels of patriotic was the right. The most traditional and curmudgeonly conservatives, grumps like William F. Buckley and George F. Will who harrumphed glumly about the world in National Review, were also the most absolutely pie-eyed patriots. America was an exceptional and indispensable nation—in the words of Ronald Reagan, “the last, best hope of humanity . . . a light unto the nations.”

One of the post-woke political realignments that’s happened in the United States is the emergence of a New Right. This new movement—Trumpian in its isolationist America First attitude and deeply cynical about the country’s ability to act competently in the world—spans everyone from Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson to religious conservatives like Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule and the author Rod Dreher. Either more overtly (in the case of Bannon), or more implicitly in the case of religious conservatives who hold up countries like Hungary or Russia as aspirational, this emergent ideology breaks with the Reagan-style, small-government conservatism of the past 40 years.

One fascinating aspect of this New Right is that it shares a worldview with, of all things, the old hippie left. Two core tenets of New Right ideology are now:

The United States is incapable of doing good in the world, and historically has been a force for evil worldwide.

Everything that happens in the world is the direct result or responsibility of the United States.

The Ukraine situation makes this unlikely contradiction even more evident. The Putin fans among the New Right—in temporary retreat, currently sublimating their views as Ukraine skepticism—really think Russia some anti-woke exemplar worthy of imitation. Never mind that the church-attendance rate in Russia is far lower than the U.S., their birth-rate as low as any childless European country, and their abortion rate one of the highest in the world. Seen from the “trad” conservative perspective at least, Russia suffers from all the ills of post-modernity even more than the supposedly degenerate West.

AGM goes on to say that he went to the Poland-Ukraine border and stood with refugees, and that convinced him that people like his imaginary “New Right” America-haters are wrong and ought to shut up.

Where to even start with this? I don’t read Vermeule, and I don’t know what Steve Bannon believes, but I’m pretty sure that Tucker does not believe that the US is incapable of doing good in the world, and historically has been a force for evil worldwide, or that America is at fault for everything that happens in the world. I know I don’t. This is college-newspaper and talk-radio level dopiness that doesn’t even begin to deal with the actual critiques that some of us on the Right have made of the US in this situation. He went all the way to Ukraine to write that?

Again, I can’t and won’t speak for Vermeule or Bannon, and can’t really speak for Carlson, because I don’t watch him every night, but I’ll speak for myself and generally for the viewpoint AGM lazily attempts to criticize here.

Who are these Putin fans on the “New Right”? Certainly not me. As I recall, the only time I’ve praised him is for his entirely sensible take on gender ideology. Nearly every time I’ve written about Russia’s war on Ukraine, I have condemned it, and expressed the hope that Ukraine will repel the Russian invaders. It is true that there are some people on the Right who have been more enthusiastic about Putin — Italy’s Matteo Salvini for one — but I can’t come up with any right-wing Americans, with the possible exception of Bannon, who have praised him in general.

And nobody has held up Russia as a model for America. Where is he getting this? I’m a big proponent of Hungary, as you know, but I have said clearly that Hungary is a very different country from the US, demographically and historically, and all the things that work in Hungary aren’t suited for the United States. I have praised certain aspects of PM Viktor Orban’s governance — both in style and in policy — and have said that the GOP should take a look at them and figure out how to make them work in an American context. But it’s half-ass and inaccurate to claim that I or anyone else wants to create a carbon copy of Hungary in the United States. This is as lazy as conservatives who claim that people on the American Left who find things to admire about Scandinavian social democracy want to import it entirely to America.

AGM seems shocked that Reagan-style conservatism is outdated on the Right. Where has he been the last five years? And what is this business about claiming that the New Right believes these two things?:

The United States is incapable of doing good in the world, and historically has been a force for evil worldwide.

Everything that happens in the world is the direct result or responsibility of the United States.

Nobody believes either thing. They really don’t. This is a low-rent way of dismissing substantive criticism about America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe (and elsewhere), and its role in the world today. If AGM thinks that the United States’ policy towards Ukraine since the fall of Soviet communism has been sensible and correct, fine; he should defend it. This seems, though, like a layabout’s attempt to shoot down the Mearsheimer argument. It reminds me of an argument I had back in my college days in the 1980s, with the elderly left-wing mother of a friend. The old woman had recently returned from a “peace cruise” in the Soviet Union, and was full of praise for the Russian regime. At the time I was involved with my campus chapter of Amnesty International, and had been advocating on behalf of Russian political prisoners. When I brought their cases up with her, the old woman became instantly exasperated, and said, “I think you just hate the Soviet people.” Case closed.

This is the line that chaps my backside:

The Putin fans among the New Right—in temporary retreat, currently sublimating their views as Ukraine skepticism…

The cheapest shot in a piece full of cheap shots. This is a classic example of the kind of thing I’ve heard lots of people at NatCon Brussels complaining about: that Russia ultra-hawks make it impossible to have any kind of nuanced discussion about the complexities of the Ukraine situation, because they denounce anything short of maximalism as closet pro-Putinism, or, as here, sublimated Putinophilia. I mentioned in an earlier post today a conversation one friend here had with a Pole who said, in all seriousness, that maybe nuclear war would be tolerable if Russia could once and for all be put in its place. Totally serious about this. I haven’t met a single person at this conference who has taken Russia’s side in this conflict. Everyone here, as far as I can tell, supports Ukraine. But boy, are people tired of being told that they’re letting down the side because they don’t want to expand the war, or get NATO involved.

It’s hard to believe that AGM, who is usually a much better thinker than this, went all the way to Ukraine to write this shoddy piece. He could have just moseyed down to his local barstool. Seems like he traveled over there, came to admire the Ukrainians and to identify with their cause, and now feels entitled to smear anyone who doesn’t share his enthusiasm. This longer reported piece of his from Ukraine is truer to his customarily good form. I can’t account for why Bari Weiss published such a flimsy piece on her usually-excellent site. The war sure has done a number on a lot of people’s minds.

UPDATE: AGM has responded via Twitter. I’ll reproduce his response below. Let me start out by saying that I don’t regard this as a personal dispute. I continue to like and admire AGM! It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but it is, because many people assume that if you fall out on Twitter, you must HATE the other person. Pffft!

Anyway, here we go:

For the record, I don’t think one has to live in another country to admire it, its people, and the policies of its government. I am a huge Francophile, for example, but I have never lived in France.

Huh? I praised Putin’s take on pronouns long before the war started. If Xi Jinping praised mom and apple pie, I would credit him for that too. I only brought the Putin/pronouns thing up in the context of war to acknowledge that I have found things about Putin praiseworthy in the past, and don’t walk away from those things. The fact that Putin has launched a cruel and unjust war on Ukraine does not negate his common sense about gender ideology. That fact that Putin is right about gender ideology, and Joe Biden (say) is wrong, does not justify Russia’s war. Only in the frazzled minds of partisans does any of that make sense.

Oh, come on. You can’t falsely call a guy an America-hating Putin lover, and publish it on a huge online platform, then say, “Hey, it was just a short piece based on a Twitter thread, what’s the big deal?”

But AGM’s original allegation was not that I call the US foreign policy response “deeply flawed.” It was this:

The United States is incapable of doing good in the world, and historically has been a force for evil worldwide.

Everything that happens in the world is the direct result or responsibility of the United States.

Words mean things. In fact, I believe the US has been on balance a force for good in the world, but in recent decades — at least since 9/11 — has done bad things, probably inadvertently. Over and over again, in writing in this space about the Ukraine war, I have said that the US and NATO bear some responsibility for what has happened, but that ultimately, it was Russia’s decision to send Russian forces across the border. Again, it is possible to hold Russia responsible for its criminal action, but at the same time to recognize that strategic foreign policy blunders on our part played a role in bringing this situation about. I could be wrong about that, but surely it is not illegitimate to explore these possibilities, if only so we can learn from our mistakes. This is called thinking, not emoting. I would like to think that AGM doesn’t hold the converse to be true: that the US is incapable of doing wrong in the world, and that the US bears no responsibility for events in the world (unless, of course, things turn out for the best, and the US gets to take credit).

 

Well, I agree. Ukraine is not a holy innocent among the nations, but it is the victim of Russian aggression. Russian troops ought to turn around and go home. But I have always said that, from the first day of the war. Maybe AGM did not read my writing before he slammed me as an America-Hating Putin Lover (AHPL). It’s no crime not to read what I write, but if you are going to make that kind of slanderous claim about someone, especially a friend, you need to understand what you are talking about. If AGM agrees that “there is an absolutely valid debate to be had about to what degree the US/West should aid the Ukrainians,” why did he include me in his sweeping denunciations of AHPLs? To repeat, it seems to me that a number of pro-Ukraine partisans are very quick to condemn as Russian stooges people who don’t share their rabid enthusiasm for expanding the war. This is not only factually incorrect, it’s morally wrong.

“Suddenly so isolationist”? Dude, The American Conservative, the magazine for which I write, was founded in opposition to the Iraq War! TAC has been publishing essays for twenty years arguing for realism and restraint in foreign policy. We’re not “isolationist” (another smear that neocons and neolibs use to dismiss our arguments), but we do believe that the US has been far too quick to rush into war, and that the interests of the US would be better served by realism and restraint in foreign and defense policy matters. AGM doesn’t seem to understand the factions on the Right very well. We on the Realism & Restraint Right cheered when Donald Trump denounced the Iraq War as a mistake from the stage of the 2016 GOP primary debate in South Carolina. The audience booed him, but we thought it was great that a major GOP candidate (read: not Ron Paul) finally admitted publicly what was obviously true to any but the most diehard neocons.

But even assuming that AGM’s claim here is true, wouldn’t the answer be obvious? Russia has nuclear weapons. Russia is not Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. One doesn’t charge mindlessly into war with a nuclear-armed nation, because the costs could be annihilation of the entire human race.

The map was indeed too optimistic (from a Russian point of view), but it had been shared with me by a foreign-policy expert who is not pro-Russian. Nevertheless, I wish I hadn’t shared it, just as I wish I hadn’t shared Ukraine propaganda (the Snake Island story). I decided a couple of weeks ago to stop sharing stories that I wasn’t confident were true, because I don’t want to inadvertently share propaganda. Both sides are engaged in propaganda. It is more pleasant to believe Ukrainian propaganda, but doing so makes the US more vulnerable to making mistakes.

 

Oh boy. Once again, I can’t speak for everyone who falls under AGM’s umbrella of condemnation, but I have repeatedly said that World War III would start if NATO declared a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Why? Because it would involve NATO and Russian aircraft firing on each other. Also, for those who keep bleating, “What’s going to be enough for you people to stop Russia? If not in Ukraine, then where?!” Well, if Russia attacked a NATO country, that would be a clear red line. Ukraine is not in NATO. Treaties matter. I know war enthusiasts don’t like to hear it, but they do.

Second, the point of my snarky remark was that AGM really did travel to Ukraine, but came away with a take that was worthy of a barstool (“Those people who are against joining this war against Russia are a bunch of America-hating Putin lovers!”). Having traveled to the refugee zone is commendable and maybe even brave — but it doesn’t make one’s judgments correct.

To pick an area where I am vulnerable to being driven by my emotions: if I spent time with survivors of child sexual abuse (clerical and otherwise), I would favor raising a vigilante mob to go in, grab the abusers by the scruff of their necks, take them out to a field, and shoot them. This is precisely why you should never put someone like me on a jury judging a case involving the sexual abuse (or any abuse) of children. I sympathize far too strongly to be able to render a prudent judgment on these cases. This is not to say that abusers of children deserve sympathy; I don’t believe they do. But it is to say that my passions in these cases — my rage at the abuse and abusers — clouds my judgment. I don’t want to live in a society in which vigilante justice overtakes the rule of law, nor do I want to live in a society that has the death penalty (despite believing with every fiber of my being that child abusers deserve death). I don’t want to live in that kind of society because I know how flawed human judgment can be, especially when it is driven by emotion. AGM should watch Twelve Angry Men, and reflect on how its lesson can be applied to discussions of war and peace.

That’s because I believe he went to Ukraine, felt sorry for its people (as he should have done!), and now wants to defend them. That is at some level admirable; we should in most cases want to defend the weak against the strong. But this Russia-Ukraine situation is not so simple, and mostly (but not only) because Russia has nuclear weapons. People who diminish this fact are behaving recklessly. No, this doesn’t give Russia carte blanche to do what it wants to do to its neighbors, and yes, if Russia attacks a NATO country, we are treaty-bound to defend it, despite the risk of nuclear war. But Ukraine is not in NATO! Russia’s abuse of Ukraine is wretched, but given the nuclear weapons factor, it is too risky to go to war with Russia to repel its troops. That’s simply an unhappy fact of life.

As others have pointed out, Hungarians were really angry at the West for not coming to their aid when they rebelled against Soviet occupation in 1956. I am quite sure that had I been on the streets of Budapest then, I would have been writing dispatches urging Western military involvement to defend the Hungarian freedom fighters. So it pains me to say that in retrospect, Eisenhower was correct not to risk nuclear war then. Because he didn’t, there is a Hungary today, and an America too. Again, there are times when we have no choice but to take that risk; the Cuban Missile Crisis was one of those times. But these instances must be rare, exceedingly rare, because of the potential costs to the world. The US had a vital national interest in preventing the Soviets from putting missiles in Cuba. At this point, I do not think we have a vital national interest in entering the war to protect Ukraine from unjust Russian aggression. And it doesn’t make me an America-hating Putin lover to say so. In fact, because I love my country, I am sick and tired of seeing her soldiers committed to overseas conflicts by war-loving Washington politicians and the media class that encourage them.

 

The post Barstool Jingoism In Our Time appeared first on The American Conservative.

Good morning from Brussels, where I’m at the second and final day of the National Conservatism Brussels conference. I was struck yesterday by how the Russia-Ukraine war consumed the first sessions here. There was a lot of passion from the stage, especially from Polish speakers. So intense was the discourse that I retired to the bar to get coffee, because frankly it was boring to hear over and over how horrible Russia is, and how terrible this was is. Yes, yes, we all agree — but there seems to be nothing new to be said about it, so many people are re-stating what most people already believe, but with more passion this time. A lot more passion.

In conversations I had over coffee (and later, beer — this is Belgium, after all), I heard complaints from conference attendees that it is almost impossible to dissent from anti-Russian maximalism, even in national conservative circles. In mid-afternoon, NatCon guru Yoram Hazony mentioned in his talk from the stage that it ought to be possible to be both against Russia and against expanding the war. He’s right, and it was encouraging to hear this sentiment voiced. The fact that it seemed a bit risky to say lets you know how fierce the anti-Russian opinion is among this crowd. One person told me over breakfast this morning that she was shocked to hear a Polish friend here yesterday say that it might be worth nuclear war if it meant that Russia could finally be put in its place.

I recommend this account of Day One from Sebastian Milbank, writing for the UK publication The Critic. He writes:

I asked my fellow guests what they made of it — and I encountered a surprising consensus. Though I found some classical liberals milling about, the majority of the people I spoke to saw the Anglo-American speakers as an old guard; what had really drawn many of the younger guests I spoke to was a sense that in Eastern and Central Europe, especially Poland and Hungary, a different, non-liberal, model of modern statehood was taking shape.

Especially in America, a growing section of the populist right see in Europe a form of conservatism they feel has been lost in America, where libertarianism has long dominated Republican politics. Though the Europeans all declared their support for NATO, you could sense the current of pragmatism. These were countries that had emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. Clearly they want to keep American military support in place, but they’re also keenly aware that 70 years ago their national sovereignty was signed away by Britain and America at Yalta and Potsdam. No doubt there were few other options, but one can easily see that they’re hedging their bets and keen to see European-based security frameworks, as well as resisting America’s cultural hegemony.

At one level you could see the realist alliance in play — a European East keeping the Western right sweet and in favour of the military and economic transfers they rely on. But something more idealistic is also clearly at work. A US right is recentring itself as an intellectually and culturally European project, and a European right is drawing on Western thinkers (one thinks of the Scruton Café in Budapest) to reconstruct their nationhood following the trauma of communism and amidst the chaos of global capitalism and liberalism.

Sebastian found the late afternoon panel on culture lively, and also my subsequent address on Christianity, culture, and European life. Writes Sebastian, “Here one felt was what we had actually come to see.”

Father Benedict Kiely, a Catholic priest and founder of Christian anti-persecution charity Nasarean gave probably the most interesting talk, however, posing a question that I have often found myself asking, especially in my previous role covering religious freedom issues for the Tablet. Why does nobody seem to care about persecuted Christians? The answer he suggested was that we had “lost our roots”, that we are part of a “dysfunctional family” that has lost its identity. It was hard to disagree.

Rod Dreher seemed to carry the hopeful heart of the movement, saying: “I owe my Christian faith to Europe.” [Because I first met God in the Chartres cathedral in 1984– RD] However he disagreed with Catholic integralism “it would corrupt the Church itself”, and pointed to Patriarch Kirill as “prostrate before Putin”. Rod focused on questions of faith, and spoke in the style of an American preacher, reflecting his native country’s rhetorical and religious traditions even as he spoke on behalf of Europe.

“Cultural Christianity is not enough…to defend and restore Christian civilisation” — amidst all the calls for the revival of Christian culture and civilisation, this was the most persuasive.

But still, as I reflected on all I had heard, and as heartening it was to hear the sort of call silenced in most modern forums, I could sense something missing. Everyone was furiously willing the end, but who was willing the means?

That’s a great question, and the biggest challenge facing us. It’s hard to know at this point how to go about it. In my talk, I said that we can’t wait for our leaders to take the initiative. Many of them are too weak or compromised to recognize the signs of the times, and/or to act in the face of crisis. But what do we do? This is something I have struggled with for at least five years, since The Benedict Option was published. I am often asked why I haven’t “built a Benedict Option,” or somesuch thing. As if I had to not only make the diagnosis and the prescription, but to do the thing that I’m worst at, which is to create structures and what Sebastian Milbank calls “means”!

We national conservatives — a catchall term that includes people on the Right who believe in the importance of national sovereignty — really do need to develop means of resistance. By “resistance,” I mean not just rejecting what is bad, but affirming what is good, and making those affirmations concrete. These ideas, convictions, and intuitions must be made incarnate somehow — but how? In my talk, I mentioned some good examples: the Tipi Loschi in Italy, and the European Fraternity project led by Imre de Habsbourg-Lorraine. We do need more — much more — and we need it now. 

Last night over beer, I heard from a Catholic who works in the European Parliament that the things going on now — proposed legislation, bills that are actually moving through the legislative process — beggar belief. He was talking about restrictions on free speech (via “hate speech” legislation), and the digitalization of European life, giving more control over individuals to the bureaucracy. At one point I stopped my interlocutor and asked him if this was some dystopian fantasy, or if this was really happening. He and two others at the table leapt to say that no, this is really happening right now, and indeed is accelerating.

The things going on now sound like something out of science fiction, or one of the Evangelical Left Behind novels. How are we going to resist this? We Americans have no real idea about this stuff; it just doesn’t get reported in our media. I’m realizing now that we had better start paying more attention, and making contacts with European conservatives who are fighting this stuff. My Belgian interlocutor last night said that Americans were protected in two fundamental ways that Europeans are not: “You have the First and Second Amendments,” he said, referring to constitutional guarantees of free speech and the right to bear arms.

Added a Dutch woman at the table, “You Americans understand that the state is not necessarily your friend. We Europeans have no way to stand against the state when it threatens us.”

True enough, but with the law schools having become so woke (see Aaron Sibarium’s shock report), there is real doubt as to how long we can maintain those protections. After all, the Constitution only says what the courts say that it says. We Americans need to know what’s happening in Europe with the digitization of daily life and the rollback of fundamental rights and liberties for the cause of “safety,” “antiracism,” and so forth.

At breakfast this morning, I heard a woman who lives in Brussels and who works at the European Parliament talk about how bad crime is here. She herself was a victim recently. It is almost entirely crime committed by Arab migrants, she said. Another woman who until recently lived in Stockholm added that outside the center city, in areas dominated by migrant populations, you can’t really go, because the crime is so bad.

“Wait, the media tell us that ‘no-go zones’ is a right-wing fiction?” I said, with slight sarcasm.

All the Europeans at the table rolled their eyes. The ex-Swede said, “Stockholm has been lost to Europe. It’s gone.”

The Europeans then began talking about how all this can be reversed. None are hopeful. Their view is that at the national and transnational level, European leaders — the Hungarians and the Poles excepted (and they are hated for this within official EU circles) — have no will to face the challenges and roll back the migration and related crime wave. Later, when we were talking about the upcoming election in Hungary, everyone said they expect that if Viktor Orban’s party wins, the media and the NGO class will claim somehow that the election was sabotaged, and that the result was illegitimate.

Just now, at a coffee break between conference sessions, I spoke to a couple of Catholic conservatives living here in Belgium. They were talking about how difficult it is to be faithfully Christian in this country. One of the men, a Flemish, said that he has given The Benedict Option out many times. Listening to these men talk about their everyday lives as believers living in a militantly post-Christian society and culture helped me to understand why The Benedict Option, though it sold well in the US, has really impacted the conversation in European Christian circles. The book speaks directly to the reality they are living right now. It will take another generation, maybe two, for the same reality to hit America. US Christians really don’t understand what is happening to us. The Europeans do.

After that, I talked to an African professor standing by a doorway drinking coffee. He told me that he liked my speech the day before, but that he didn’t see a lot of hope in Europe, or even in the US. “You are dying,” he said, referring to the declining populations. He said that the only way we could pull out of the demographic death spiral is by recovering our religion.

This is not something most Westerners want, at least not at this point. Later, thinking about the African’s claim, I recalled Father Ben Kiely’s remarks about the puzzling fact that Westerners simply don’t want to hear stories about the vicious persecution of Christians in other countries (e.g. Nigeria, where Muslim militants are literally slaughtering Christians). Father Ben thinks the core of the problem is that we have forgotten our roots. He believes that Western publics shove these suffering Christians out of mind because we don’t want to be reminded that we too were once Christians. The suffering and martyred Christians of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia lean on our bad collective conscience — therefore, we ignore them.

Well, guess what: we are going to join their ranks soon. Last night at dinner, I met Päivi Räsänen, the heroic Finnish MP who just endured a trial over so-called “hate speech” back home. Her crimes? Tweeting a Bible verse critical of homosexuality, making comments critical of LGBT Pride marches in a radio debate, and nearly twenty years ago, writing a pamphlet defending traditional marriage against arguments for same-sex marriage. What an honor it was to meet a true contemporary hero of the faith. She told me that the verdict is expected next week. If a Christian can be convicted in a European court for criminal speech simply for stating belief in the Bible’s teachings, Europe will have entered into a dark era. The fact that she was even brought to trial is terrible enough.

Someone said to me yesterday that the most important things that get said at conferences like this are in the lobbies between sessions, as people get to know each other and exchange e-mail addresses. I think that must be true. From my experiences at each of the last three NatCon conferences, I’ve observed, and participated in, the building of networks of resistance. That sounds a bit sinister, maybe, or at least melodramatic, but I assure you it isn’t — not after talking to people involved in the work of the European Union bureaucracies, and hearing their warnings about the things coming down the pike at us.

The post Postcard from NatCon Brussels appeared first on The American Conservative.

The Guardian, the leading left-wing paper in Britain, is on the Hungarian election case. From its latest dispatch:

Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s general election campaign was dominated by such ruling party preoccupations as “traditional values” and protecting children from “LGBT propaganda”.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine featured in the slogans of Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party or the opposition parties which have united to dislodge him.

Ha ha! Those stupid Hungarians, caring about “traditional values” and “LGBT propaganda.” Why can’t they be more like the enlightened Brits? For example, this from the BBC yesterday:

Teenage drag queen Cherry West is dreaming of a flamboyant future after stumbling across the “hilarious” drag scene on holiday as a 10-year-old.

Cherry is the alter ego of Sam Carlin, 15, an Edinburgh schoolboy who connected with the comedy of performing on stage as a woman.

Sam was no stranger to the stage when he decided to develop a drag act at 13.

He started busking during the Edinburgh Festival when he was seven, and was in a boy band from the age of 10 to 13.

His current passion began when he was introduced to drag on a family holiday to Lanzarote five years ago.

His dad, who is also called Sam Carlin, told BBC Scotland’s Mornings with Kaye Adams: “We just stumbled upon this drag bar and thought ‘this is going to be a laugh’.

“So we went in and had a great time, although I got taken up on stage and I got dressed up into a drag queen. Sam thought it was very funny; I was very embarrassed.

“He took it from there. We knew Sam kind of liked the drag scene, and the comedy aspect of it.

“He’s always been a performer.”

More:

When Sam, who is a fan of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, told his parents he wanted to do drag, they encouraged him to start by practising at home, and his sister taught him how to do his make-up.

“We didn’t want everybody else to know at that point in time,” his dad said. “We weren’t sure what people’s reaction would be.

“But since then, since he made it public, he’s just had great feedback.”

Sam said he was “quite surprised” at how supportive his school had been since he started performing in drag last year.

“All the teachers absolutely love it,” he said.

Of course they do.You see how this works. If you think drag kids and drag teens are a great thing, then it is not possible to write or broadcast too often about them. If you don’t, well, then you are “preoccupied” with things like this, and should get over your sick obsession, you bigot. This is the Law of Inverse Pathological Enthusiasm.Cherry West is what liberals want boys to be, or at least have no objections to boys embracing this repulsive identity. Conservatives — or at least Hungarian ones, if not US Conservatism Inc. grifters — don’t believe that. Which side are you on? A lot of people — especially conservatives — want to sit this out, but that option is not available to us. The Left will not allow that. If you are not consciously and actively opposed to this stuff — and act politically and otherwise to push back, as the Hungarian ruling party is doing — then you might was well get used to the cultural castration represented by Cherry West.

The post Rise Of Cherry, Decline Of West appeared first on The American Conservative.

Here’s a very, very powerful addition to my danger of conservative complacency post.

Writing on Bari Weiss’s invaluable Substack, Aaron Sibarium details the corruption of the American legal profession by wokeness. Y’all, this is a five-alarm situation. Excerpts:

Read it all. Seriously, every word. As scholar Eric Kaufmann said over the weekend (see my link in the first graf), conservative voters and politicians have to make fighting wokeness in the culture war their No. 1 priority. If they don’t, we are going to lose our freedom. It really is that simple.

The people who lived under totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc were the first to understand the true nature of the changes sweeping over America in this last decade. I tell their story in Live Not By Lies, and share their advice on how to resist it. If you have previously thought the idea of “soft totalitarianism” was unduly alarmist, I invite you to read Sibarium’s report and reconsider. If you are the kind of person who think that wokeness is a fad among the young, and that they’ll grow out of it, you are not only wrong, you are dangerously wrong.

This week, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is appearing before the Senate in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Two years ago, in a law school lecture, she discussed Critical Race theorists who were influential in shaping her thinking. Here is a link to the text of the lecture. She also praised the fraudulent 1619 Project. Well, Critical Race Theory came up yesterday in questioning:

But it was a question about whether or not infants were racist that drew the first detectable sign of exasperation from Judge Jackson, who sits on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington where the city’s elite — both conservative and liberal — send their children.

Wielding a stack of children’s books, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had an aide display several large color photos from a children’s book called “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi.

“This is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through second grade,” Mr. Cruz said from the dais. “Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

Judge Jackson audibly sighed before leaning into the microphone.

“Senator,” she said, “I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I do not believe in any of that.”

During his 30 minutes of questioning, Mr. Cruz questioned Judge Jackson on her views of race, racism and critical race theory. Critical race theory is a field of study in law schools that argues that laws and institutions can incorporate structural racial bias, but Republicans have used the term as a way to criticize educational materials that describe ideas of racism, racial privilege or inequality.

After he was done with “Antiracist Baby,” Mr. Cruz asked Judge Jackson about whether or not she had read any of the children’s books. And she continued to tell the senator that she was not sure how the children’s books related to her work as a judge.

“I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas,” Judge Jackson said. “They don’t come up as my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.”

Earlier in his questioning process, Mr. Cruz quoted Judge Jackson’s praise of Georgetown Day’s “rigorous progressive education that is dedicated to fostering critical thinking, independence and social justice.” Judge Jackson replied that the school was private, and every “parent who joins the community does so willingly, with an understanding that they are joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued.”

It’s a fair line of questioning. Someone who was against the principles of Critical Race Theory ought to have been eager to criticize the school’s racist policies. Moreover it ought to have been easy for the judge to give to Sen. Marsha Blackburn the definition she asked for:

“Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female?” Blackburn pressed. Jackson did not comment on the matter.

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’” the senator asked.

“Can I provide a definition? No,” Jackson responded. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Blackburn asked.

“Not in this context, I’m not a biologist,” the judge replied.

“Do you believe the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn pressed.

“Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide,” Jackson said.

This is completely disingenuous. Judge Brown knows well that judges like her are required to make these decisions in cases involving transgender civil rights claims. Her refusal to answer the question straightforwardly tells us what we need to know.

Judge Jackson is both a radical and a mainstream 2022 liberal, in the sense that Aaron Sibarium means in his piece. That is, it’s clear that she would be a reliable vector to Supreme Court deliberations of the kind of culture-war radicalism that has consumed law schools. I have a relatively expansive view of SCOTUS nominations, thinking that presidents should generally get their nominees confirmed absent some grave reason not to. In these times, though, and with the serious threat that gender ideology and CRT pose to the fundamental social and constitutional order, I would not vote to confirm any judicial nominee who was not explicitly opposed to both. This is too important to the country’s present and future.

The post Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries appeared first on The American Conservative.

Greetings from Amsterdam. I’m in transit to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, and overnighted here to visit old friends. I just saw Tucker Carlson’s monologue from last night. It’s first-rate:

In it, he talks about how Volodymyr Zelensky has shut down all opposition political parties and TV channels that he doesn’t control. Tucker says that this is not necessarily out of question in a war situation, but that we should stop praising Zelensky as a beacon of liberty and democracy. Tucker aired a series of clips of Washington politicians heaping praise on Zelensky as a new George Washington. According to Tucker, Zelensky is certainly brave, and worth praising for that fact, and the Ukrainian people are rightly to be cheered for their resistance to this unjust Russian invasion. But come on, let’s not lie to ourselves about who Zelensky is.

Second, Tucker airs a video clip with the head of a Ukraine’s military hospital telling a journalist interviewing him that he has ordered those under his command to castrate captive Russian soldiers, because they are not human, but rather “cockroaches.” YouTube took the video down, but it’s still watchable online; Tucker had the clip. The Ukrainian doctor, Gennadiy Druzenko, later apologized for his words.

Tucker says that inasmuch as we Americans are paying for a lot of Ukraine’s defensive war on Russia, we should know what we are funding. He says several times in the ten minute segment that he supports Ukraine’s self-defense against this unjust invasion, but he is not about to pretend that Zelensky and Ukraine are other than they really are, just because it feels good.

Along these lines, I cheered when I saw J.D. Vance, speaking in an Ohio GOP Senate race debate, stick to his guns in opposing NATO instituting a no-fly zone over Ukraine:

WATCH: @JDVance1 explains why he opposes a No Fly Zone in Ukraine.

"It's not in our vital national interest. I'm in the minority up here…we have our own problems in the United States to focus on." #OHSen pic.twitter.com/CFtcaRgjpS

— Ohio War Room (@OhioWarRoom) March 21, 2022

Here’s what Vance said:

“It’s not in our vital national interest. I’m in the minority up here because at the end of the day we can accept as individuals — look, it’s tragic, it terrible. What Vladimir Putin did was wrong in invading a sovereign country on its border, but we have our own problems in the United States to focus on. I’m very distressed that for 4 years Congressional Republicans refused to give Donald Trump $4 billion for a border wall. $4 billion for a border wall when fentanyl was pouring into our country, killing our citizens by the tens of thousands. In one week, they give Joe Biden $14 billion for Ukrainian aide. What I would do in this moment is premise, condition further Ukrainian aid on support for our border and support for our problems. People always say we can walk and chew gum at the same time, let’s actually do it.”

The other GOP candidates came out for the no-fly zone, which would mean World War III. Do you remember how back in 2016, in the GOP presidential primary season, Donald Trump was the only candidate willing to say the Iraq War was wrong? Trump faced a bunch of slander and charges that he was an enemy of the tribe — same as J.D. Vance today — but he was right. The willingness of the revived neocons to ride the Ukraine wave to restoration and yet more war is a good indication that they have learned nothing over the last twenty years.

The entire Ukraine war is a good reminder that they would gladly have us in a world war at the moment if they could. The polls show that most Americans support a no-fly zone … until they learn what it is, and what it would likely mean. I am not watching US cable or broadcast news. Tell me, American readers: are US viewers being adequately briefed on what all this would mean?

The post J.D. Vance Holds Line Against Warmongering appeared first on The American Conservative.

You see the Daily Variety story the other day about how Pixar has restored a same-sex kiss to its upcoming film Lightyear after a gay employee group denounced its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, for not taking a tougher line against the so-called Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The story says, in part:

The decision marks a possible major turning point for LGBTQ representation not just in Pixar films, but in feature animation in general, which has remained steadfastly circumspect about depicting same-sex affection in any meaningful light.

These disgruntled employees changed an entire industry that engineers the imaginations of children around the globe. And to be clear, “Don’t Say Gay” is a lie. The bill is called “The Parental Rights In Education Act,” and you can read its details here, in the primary document. 

The thing that has opponents so upset is that the bill forbids classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. That’s it. That’s what liberals are so angry about. So devoted are they to the cause of making little children sexually aware and undermining their psychological stability around sex that they are throwing a massive tantrum over a law that says teachers can’t introduce this stuff to children under the age of ten.

Within Disney, activist employees organized on company Slack channels a staged walkout this week to protest Disney brass, including CEO Bob Chapek, for supposedly not doing enough to fight the bill. The crybullies blame Disney leadership for making its LGBT employees feel, yes, “unsafe” by not fighting the bill.  Here, from their website, are their demands — which, if enacted, would make Disney even more of a woke-capitalist, culture-war behemoth.

Can you imagine what it’s like to work at Disney as a political, social, or religious conservative under the reign of this mob of tyrants? You don’t have to. Today a group of anonymous Disney employees have released the following “open letter” begging the company’s leadership to keep the company politically neutral. The letter points out that these slacktivists have created a hostile work environment for anyone who doesn’t go along with their demands. Here’s the open letter text (which a Disney employee leaked to me):

 

Disney Employees’ Open Letter in Favor of a Politically Neutral Disney

As employees of the Walt Disney Company, we believe in the dignity of all people. This is why we do what we do. We write stories. We make costumes. We act in parades. We run cruises. We stream movies. We make magic. We do this because our work contributes to a fountain of wonder that inspires joy, awe, and delight in guests and audiences of all ages. We are proud employees of the Walt Disney Company. We love our jobs because we get to share the wonder of life and human experience with millions of people worldwide.

However, over the last few years, one group of cast members has become invisible within the company. The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive. We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.

The company’s evolving response to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida has left many of us wondering what place we have in a company actively promoting a political agenda so far removed from our own. TWDC leadership frequently communicates its commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where cast members feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and being their authentic selves at work. That is not our workplace experience.

Over the last few weeks, we have watched as our leadership has expressed their condemnation for laws and policies we support. We have watched as our colleagues, convinced that no one in the company could possibly disagree with them and grow increasingly aggressive in their demands. They insist that TWDC take a strong stance on not only this issue but other legislation and openly advocate for the punishment of employees who disagree with them.

An internal poll within the company went out a few months ago asking us if we felt accepted in the company. Many of us didn’t complete it because the nature of the questions made us worry that the results of the poll could be used to target us for quietly holding a position that runs against the progressive orthodoxy that Disney seems to promote. TWDC has fostered an environment of fear that any employee who does not toe the line will be exposed and dismissed.

Much has been made of our internal efforts to Reimagine Tomorrow, but as much as diversity and inclusion are promoted, the tomorrow being reimagined doesn’t seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company. Left-leaning cast members are free to promote their agenda and organize on company time using company resources. They call their fellow employees “bigots” and pressure TWDC to use corporate influence to further their left-wing legislative goals.

Meanwhile, those of us who don’t align with this vision keep our heads down and do our work without bringing our personal beliefs into the workplace. We’ve done this without complaint because we don’t want to rock the boat, but the boat is being rocked, and our leadership seems compelled to reward those who are rocking it.

Employees who want TWDC to make left-wing political statements are encouraged, while those of us who want the company to remain neutral can say so only in a whisper out of fear of professional retaliation. The company we love seems to think we don’t exist or don’t belong here. This politicization of our corporate culture is damaging morale and causing many of us to feel our days with TWDC might be numbered.

Furthermore, as this politicization makes its way into our content and public messaging, our more conservative customers will feel similarly unwanted. You can only preach at or vilify your audience for so long before they decide to spend their money elsewhere.

Working for The Walt Disney Company is a dream come true. We love being part of creating the magic that so many people around the world enjoy. Our storytelling is second to none. It resonates with people from all walks of life across the political spectrum. Our parks are the source of joy and inspiration that Walt hoped they would become. Every year, millions of guests escape an increasingly divided world to a place where they can relive fond memories of the past and savor the challenge and promise of the future. They do this alongside thousands of other guests that might not have anything in common with them other than a shared love of Disney.

The unique brand of family entertainment that Disney is known for is an objective good in this dark world. It brings people together and provides cultural touchpoints that even the worst enemies can unite over. At the height of COVID lockdowns in the Summer of 2020 when the country was fiercely divided over a range of issues, Hamilton provided us something to collectively celebrate. At the end of an incredibly contentious election year, The Mandalorian was there to soothe a weary nation with non-political entertainment we could all enjoy no matter who you voted for. When Disney takes sides in political debates, they deprive the world of a shared love we all have in common. TWDC is uniquely situated to provide experiences and entertainment that can bridge our national divide and bring us all together.

CEO, Bob Chapek had the right idea in his original statement that he has since walked back. In Chapek’s own words, “As we have seen time and again, corporate statements do very little to change outcomes or minds. … Instead, they are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame.” Disney is far more important and impactful to the world by avoiding politics than it will ever be by embracing a political agenda. By focusing on entertainment that inspires us with stories of universal appeal, we are doing good in the world.

Disney shouldn’t be a vehicle for one demographic’s political activism. It’s so much bigger and more important than that. More than ever, the world needs things that we can unite around. That’s the most valuable role The Walt Disney Company could play in the world at this time. It’s a role we’ve played for nearly a century, and it would be a shame to throw all of that away in the face of left-wing political pressure. Please don’t let Disney become just another thing we divide over.

Why does Disney force its conservative employees into the closet, where they have to live in fear, for the sake of appeasing this woke mob that wants to sexualize children? Has Disney forgotten who and what it is supposed to serve? And what about you, Mom and Dad? Do you really want to support a company that treats its religious and politically conservative employees like this — and that empowers a woke internal mob to compel it to interfere in politics to disempower parents’ control over the sexual education of their children, and to turn popular art into culture-war propaganda?

I stand with the internally silenced and persecuted Disney employees, and with the Florida legislature that is not allowing woke capitalist bullies to tell parents to sit down and shut up and hand their children’s minds over to activist teachers. I hope you will too. Trying to stop activists and woke capitalists from queering little children through the schools is a fight worth having.

UPDATE: If you want to signal your support for the conservative Disney employees asking for a neutral workplace, click here to go to the open letter and “sign” it. 

The post Disney Drives Conservatives Into Closet appeared first on The American Conservative.

A few years back, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said to a group of international visitors of which I was part that he hoped we would consider Budapest our “intellectual home.” I’ve thought about that a lot over the years since, most recently this past weekend at the Danube Institute’s excellent one-day academic conference, titled The Post-Liberal Turn And The Future Of British Conservatism. 

Eric Kaufmann, the academic I was most looking forward to meeting, had to cancel because he came down with Covid, but he did manage to deliver his lecture by Zoom. And what a lecture it was! When the video recording goes up on the DI’s website, I’ll post it, because you really need to hear it to get the force of its urgency.

Kaufmann’s main point was that conservatives have to make fighting the culture war their most important goal — more important than economics, taxes, or anything else. Why? Because his research on the attitudes of younger generations shows that they are illiberal leftists who don’t believe conservatives have the right to participate in society. “I don’t think we are ready for what’s coming,” he said.

Kaufmann based his remarks on recent research he carried out for the Manhattan Institute; he discusses his findings in-depth in this City Journal article from earlier this year. Excerpts:

The clash between socialist and liberal economics defined the late twentieth century, and this century brings a cultural version of that struggle. Today’s culture wars pit advocates of equal outcomes and special protection for identity groups against defenders of due process, equal treatment, scientific reason, and free speech. Our political map is taking shape around this new divide between what I will call cultural socialism and cultural liberalism.

Cultural socialism, which values equal results and harm prevention for identity groups over individual rights, has inspired race-based pedagogies and harsh punishments for controversial speech. Rooted in the idea that historically marginalized groups are sacred, this view is no passing fad. Letters, associations, universities, and media defending free speech notwithstanding, the young adherents of cultural socialism are steadily overturning the liberal ethos of the adult world.

Survey data from my new Manhattan Institute report, “The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America,” show the scale of the challenge. While the American public leans two-to-one in favor of cultural liberalism, a majority of Americans under 30 incline toward cultural socialism. For instance, while 65 percent of Americans over 55 oppose Google’s decision to fire James Damore for having questioned the firm’s training on gender equity, those under 30 support the firing by a 59–41 margin. Similar gaps separate young and old people on similar instances of cancel culture, such as the oustings of Gina Carano (an actor fired from Star Wars for social media posts) and Brendan Eich (the former CEO of Mozilla forced out in 2014 for opposing gay marriage in 2008). Only part of this disparity stems from the fact that young people lean left: centrist young people, for instance, support Google over Damore by a 61–39 margin, while centrists over 55 support Damore over Google 58–42.

On the use of critical race theory in school, a similar divide emerges. Eight in ten people over age 55 oppose teaching schoolchildren that the United States was founded on racism and remains systemically racist, or that the country and their homes were built on stolen land. A slight majority of young people support teaching these notions. While opposition to critical race theory in schools can take an illiberal form, compulsory CRT violates two key liberal principles: first, that pupils in a classroom or employees in a diversity training session should not be forced to agree with ideas they don’t believe in; and second, that people should not be treated differently because of their race. Recent attempts by state governments to limit whites’ access to Covid-19 medication are another manifestation of this tendency.

More:

Another front in the culture war is censorship of speech, usually justified on grounds that such speech would inflict psychological harm on minorities and that power should be redistributed to “marginalized groups.” Activists pushing for such censorship organize online flash mobs and pressure campaigns, wielding accusations of racism, homophobia, or transphobia to ruin a person’s reputation and have them fired from their position. The problem is especially acute in higher education: the number of academics targeted for cancellation has exploded in recent years.

Young people are especially afraid of cancel culture. Forty-five percent of employees under 30 worry about losing their jobs because “someone misunderstands something you have said or done, takes it out of context, or posts something from your past online.” Just 29 percent of those over 55 have the same worry.

This fear, however, doesn’t appear to lead young people to oppose cancel culture. Most millennials and members of Generation Z are not cultural liberals too scared to say what they truly believe. Instead, many privilege cultural equality over freedom. By a 48–27 margin, respondents under 30 agree that “My fear of losing my job or reputation due to something I said or posted online is a justified price to pay to protect historically disadvantaged groups.” Those over 50, by contrast, disagree by a 51–17 margin. Younger age brackets are both more fearful of cancel culture and more supportive of it than are older age groups.

He concludes:

America still has two cultural liberals for every cultural socialist. Questions of cancel culture and CRT split Democrats and unite Republicans, putting pressure on both parties to resist cultural socialism. Twenty percent of Democrats, one-third of independents, and nearly half of Republican voters now rank culture-war issues as a top concern, my survey finds. The classical liberal inheritance that underpins our legal system does not live in the hearts of younger generations because it has not been brought to life in stories, film, or education. We urgently need to revive this lost tradition—but the hour is late.

Read the whole thing. 

This is the point of Live Not By Lies — that this stuff is coming, and coming hard, and we have to be ready for it. Kaufmann’s research provides strong evidence of the magnitude of the coming darkness. Yet Kaufmann believes that we can still fight it off, but not if we keep failing to take it seriously. And by “take it seriously,” he doesn’t mean merely being alarmed by it, but doing anything substantive.

In his Saturday talk, Kaufmann said that American conservatives are pretty good at talking about culture war issues, but terrible at coming up with effective policies to fight wokeness. UK conservatives, by contrast, have some good policies, but are very bad at talking about it. He praised activist Christopher Rufo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for bucking the habit of conservative complacency about the culture war.

Kaufmann added that conservatives have to have plans to retake public institutions, as well as to bring political scrutiny to public institutions (e.g., universities) to force them to be fair and neutral. Defending the rights of individuals is more important that respecting institutional autonomy. If the state will not intervene to protect political and religious minorities from discrimination, and to ban woke policies on speech, and so forth, it will only get worse.

He made it very clear that, based on his research, conservatives are going to face a fight for their right to exist within institutions and in the public square. Kaufmann later added, in the Q&A period, that conservatives are either too “stupid” (his word) to see the seriousness of the threat to wokeness, or are too stubbornly distracted by the things they prefer to talk about (like cutting taxes) to recognize that if we lose the culture, we will have lost the opportunity to argue for anything else.

Kaufmann was followed by James Orr, a lecturer at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and a bruised but unbowed veteran of the culture war in that university. (It was Orr who initially tried to bring Jordan Peterson to campus to speak, was shot down, then fought back, finally succeeding.) Orr told the audience that conservatives should not make the mistake of thinking that wokeness is shallow. No, he said, it’s deep, and it’s a very serious threat to the free society. Only the State is strong enough to regulate all this and to defend liberty and sanity. Conservatives would be foolish to think that we can get by with modest responses to this threat.

Prof. James Orr

Indeed, in talking to various UK academics this weekend between sessions, I was shocked by how very far wokeness has gotten in British culture. It’s even worse than in the US. I am not sure how much of what I was told was confidential — though I know some of it is — so I’m not sure what I am at liberty to repeat here. I’ll just say that these warnings from Kaufmann, Orr, and others are in no way exaggerated.

Orr added that conservative attempts to reform existing institutions have generally come to naught. We need to create counter-institutions and networks, so our ideas can thrive. See, one of the reasons I think US and UK conservatives can learn from what Viktor Orban and the Fidesz Party are doing here in Hungary is that they are pretty effective at using the State to fight for conservative values, in ways that complacent US and UK conservatives are generally not. Plus, Orban and Fidesz understand the importance of culture more than their western counterparts do.

For example, here is the précis of a 2017 academic paper talking about how Orban and Fidesz laid the groundwork for their 2010 political victory, and the subsequent twelve years of Fidesz leadership (which will extent to sixteen years if, as expected, Fidesz wins another majority on April 3), via cultural organization:

Starting in 2010, the Fidesz party achieved in a row six (partly landslide) victories at municipal, national, and European Parliament elections. Not questioning other explanations, my ongoing research traces the remarkable resilience of the ruling party above all to earlier “tectonic” shifts in civil society, which helped the Right accumulate ample social capital well before its political triumph. This process was decisively advanced by the Civic Circles Movement founded by Viktor Orbán after the lost election of 2002. This movement was militant in terms of its hegemonic aspirations and collective practices; massive in terms of its membership and activism; middle-cIass based in terms of social stratification; and dominantly metropolitan and urban on the spatial dimension. Parallel to contentious mobilization, the civic circles re-organized and extended the Right’s grass-roots networks, associations, and media; rediscovered and reinvented its holidays and everyday life-styles, symbols, and heroes; and explored innovative ways for cultural, charity, leisure, and political activities. Leading activists, among them patriots, priests, professionals, politicians, and pundits, offered new frames and practices for Hungarians to feel, think, and act as members of “imagined communities”: the nation, Christianity, citizenry, and Europe.

Here is a link to a full 2021 academic paper analyzing how Fidesz did it through a variety of strategies.

And here is a link to a full 2020 paper analyzing in-depth how Fidesz built their political movement by focusing on civil society organizations. Over the weekend I went on three separate occasions to a couple of the three Scruton coffee houses in Budapest. These clean, cozy gathering places for coffee, wine, beer, and food, and named after the late, great British conservative thinker Sir Roger Scruton, are part of the contemporary Fidesz strategy to encourage the building of conservative communities.

(A side note: one of the visiting UK academics this weekend who was close to Scruton told me that Viktor Orban flew into Britain from Indonesia to attend Scruton’s funeral. He said Orban came quietly, with no fanfare, like an ordinary mourner. Such was the Hungarian PM’s esteem for Sir Roger.)

As I have repeatedly said in this space, it’s neither desirable nor possible to pick up everything that Orban and his party have done in Hungary and transplant it into American life. We are a different people, with different ways of living, and different traditions. Nevertheless, there is so much to learn from the way Fidesz does it here. Heaven knows American conservatives have to try some new things. They’re probably going to get Congress back this fall, owing to Joe Biden’s failures. But for once, they ought to try deserving power by using it to do big things — none more important than fighting back hard against wokeness, with positive legislation. Beyond pure politics, it’s time for innovative conservative activists and thinkers to get beyond grifty, tired Conservatism, Inc., strategies, and try to devise something like Fidesz’s Civic Circles movement from the early 2000s. What would that look like in an American context? I’d like to know. I really would love to see a growing stream of curious US conservatives beating a path to Budapest to learn from these folks.

What have we got to lose? Well, talk to Eric Kaufmann about that. He can tell you.

UPDATE: Should have mentioned the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and its Republican legislature, for going to war against the ghouls of the transgender industry. Here’s an article about how the state Attorney General ruled that transitioning children is a form of child abuse, as it certainly is. And here’s a story from the Texas Tribune about Jeff Younger, a father who lost a famous child custody battle, and whose son is now being medically transformed into a pseudo-female; Younger’s case helped move the Texas legislature to go after clinics that transition children. The Tribune, a liberal paper, writes of Younger and his GOP supporters as a villain, but you still get the idea that it was the grassroots that compelled Texas GOP politicians to act.

The Texas governor and legislature are being roasted by the media, but so far, are taking the heat. More like them, please.

The post The Peril Of Conservative Culture-War Complacency appeared first on The American Conservative.

Surprise! Now that Trump is gone, a number of Republican Party bigs have reverted to type:

Republicans held their tongues through all the ally-alienating NATO bashing Donald Trump did as president. They largely held ranks during his Ukrainian aid-related first impeachment.

The GOP of 2023 is turning into something very different. Key parts of it have shed the MAGA gag to assail Vladimir Putin for launching a war in Ukraine.

More:

Those were just a few of the personal insults [against Putin] that flew from the likes of Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, respectively, as they unloaded on the Russian president at the US Capitol.

Wicker accused Putin of slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children over the years, citing his involvement in deadly campaigns including the leveling of the Chechen capital of Grozny two decades ago and the bombardment of Aleppo, Syria in 2016. “He will continue to kill innocent human beings until he’s stopped,” Wicker told reporters.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a former Trump rival who then became a key ally in Congress, said cutting Putin’s ambitions short should be everybody’s top priority.

“It is in America’s national security interest for Russia to lose because we don’t want Putin to be stronger and to take a major step towards reassembling the Soviet Union, towards threatening Americans, towards threatening our allies in Europe,” Cruz said earlier this week.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who advocated for shipping over whatever defensive weapons Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants ASAP, cast the current conflict in apocalyptic terms.

“It’s a moral battle between good guys and bad guys,” Sasse said while surrounded by a dozen colleagues at the US Capitol. “And we need the good guys to win.”

Yep, it’s just that simple, Senator. Good grief. Now that Trump is out of the picture, these guys would be willing to start World War III.

The post GOP Land: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten appeared first on The American Conservative.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why women and the men who love them tolerate the destruction of women’s athletics by this giant man who calls himself Lia Thomas — and by the woke NCAA officials who mandate that everyone live, and swim, by the lie that he is a female.

I can’t think of anything today that better exemplifies this line from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Look and listen to this man, who demolished the female competition this week in the national championships:

“It means the world to be here.”

Lia Thomas spoke about swimming in the NCAA women’s championships. pic.twitter.com/aP0afVA0KE

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 18, 2022

Look:

Emma Weyant takes second in the 500 free with the third-fastest time in UVA history – 4:34.99! #GoHoos pic.twitter.com/yRiErvzjkY

— Virginia Swimming and Dive (@UVASwimDive) March 17, 2022

No, Emma Weyant is the national champion. Lia Thomas is a usurper who stole Emma Weyant’s place by virtue of having powerful ideologues in his corner. This is the way of the world now. I wonder if CPAC founder Matt Schlapp has sent Lia congratulations for smoking the vagina-havers.

No matter what one thinks of Lia’s ability to swim with women her story deserves our compassion. It will be interesting to hear Lia’s pov in 30 years. https://t.co/NLY9f6TO6I

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) March 6, 2022

Click on this tweet to read a thread about how transgenderism is destroying women’s sports — and how female student athletes can’t say anything about it because of Title IX rules:

Title IX is trending bc Lia Thomas has FINALLY made ppl notice what many women have been saying for the past few years, but being called “bigots” & “transphobes” by the media, politicians & virtue-signaling Hollywood celebrities for:

Yes, women’s sports ARE being destroyed.(1/8) pic.twitter.com/C7U9SCKSpQ

— Jennifer Gingrich #KeepPrisonsSingleSex (@fem_mb) March 18, 2022

The author is not a conservative, but a self-described “radical feminist”. If you wonder why more young women athletes aren’t protesting (other than Title IX), consider the harassment from LGBT media:

their schools and by knowing that when over 300 female college athletes sent a letter to the NCAA 2yrs ago asking for more review before biological males were allowed into their sports, Outsports leaked all their names & labeled them “anti-trans” (5/8) https://t.co/VldMsPozaN

— Jennifer Gingrich #KeepPrisonsSingleSex (@fem_mb) March 18, 2022

Women athletes are being dispossessed in full view of the rest of us, and we’re just letting it happen, because we have to be progressive, and live by the left-wing lie that biology doesn’t matter, and that sex is all in one’s head. Even a conservative leader like Matt Schlapp has accepted the lie (“her story”). Right now, all across the US, children are being taught in schools that men like Lia Thomas really are women. These kids are being prepared for submission to this totalitarian regime of lies. They are being instructed by the authorities in this culture — including parents who either accept the lie, or who are too timid to object — to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Orwell says this was the Party’s “most essential command” because if you can force people to affirm something that they can plainly see and hear is a lie, then they are putty in your hands.

People who believe Lia Thomas is a woman, and who won’t raise their voice when he and his powerful allies steal from women, are preparing our society for slavery. Orwell told us how.

UPDATE: MBD snarks:

Is anyone out there in the mainstream willing to bite the bullet and claim that what’s happening on the right side of this photo amounts to transphobic assault on the subject to the left? https://t.co/xJM5BoSUrk

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) March 18, 2022

The post Swim Not By Lies appeared first on The American Conservative.

It’s Friday night, and I have better things to do than to push back against Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column from Hungary, about the upcoming election. But what am I here in Budapest for if not for this reader service?

First, this stupid headline, which discredits the entire column:

A western European I met this spring in Budapest told me that his friends back home think that he risks being beat up by jackbooted thugs every time he goes out on the street. We laughed at how dumb people are back home, believing the media hype. Last week, an Alabama friend and his little boy came to visit for a few days. They didn’t have a political prejudice about Hungary, but they simply remarked about how wonderfully safe they felt everywhere we went in this city — this, by comparison to many American cities. The murder rate in many US cities is skyrocketing. Who lives in the “free world,” then?

Second, by what measure is Hungary not in the “free world”? Speech is free here (unless you want to talk to Hungarian children in school or on TV about how those penises of theirs might really be girl-penises — yep, you can’t do that here). The media is free to say whatever it wants — and it does, on both sides. There is not the slightest hint of a police state, or any of the other markers of Communism (the term “The Free World” was invented during the Cold War to describe the West). The idea that Hungarians are in shackles is typical progressive crackpottery. Seriously, come here and see for yourself.

I looked just now for video from the MCC Feszt in Esztergom from last summer. The anti-Orban liberal Peter Kreko and I appeared onstage for a dialogue before an audience. I wanted to find a clip to quote it on video here, but I couldn’t locate it. Anyway, Peter and I disagreed about a lot, but at the beginning of our session, Peter told the crowd that he has lots of complaints about the way Viktor Orban runs the country, but people should stop saying that Hungary is a “fascist” country. It’s not. It’s not even close. Goldberg interviews Kreko for her piece. Again, he’s one of the country’s leading Orban critics, but I wish journalists like Goldberg would listen to him.

Here’s the first graf of Goldberg’s piece:

On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.

You’d think that he cared more about holding a campaign rally than Ukraine. What Goldberg doesn’t tell you, which she might not understand, is that Tuesday was a big national holiday in Hungary, and this rally, which gathered hundreds of thousands of people outside the Parliament, had been scheduled for a very long time. But then again, Viktor Orban does find it more important to show solidarity with his own countrymen and their interests, not those of foreigners.

Goldberg:

State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them.

Again, a lie. In terms of overall audience, Hungary’s liberal opposition media are bigger than the pro-Fidesz media. If nine newspapers in the NYC boroughs and suburban counties were conservative, as the New York Times is liberal, you could claim that “almost all the New York City area media are conservative,” and be technically correct, but still wrong. A useful though admittedly rough comparison in the US is when conservatives complain that the American media are overwhelmingly liberal, and liberals say, “Hang on, you have Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.” As if those were any kind of balance!

Goldberg:

I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”

Well done, Marki-Zay! He played the visiting Times journalist like a fiddle. He certainly knows that Orban’s Hungary is not remotely in the same category as Putin’s Russia. Orban supports the EU and NATO. In what sense does he not support the rule of law? The press is certainly free here. Democracy? If Orban loses, he’s going to do what he did the last time he lost an election: go home. And so forth. But Marki-Zay knows what Michelle Goldberg was looking for.

Marki-Zay is right that he and Orban stand for substantively different visions for Hungary. I understand why liberal Hungarians would prefer Marki-Zay to Orban. But the idea that Hungary under Orban is an autocratic hellhole is ridiculous. If that were so, why has the man been in power for twelve years? And why, after twelve years, is he favored to win on April 3? Unless most Magyars are idiots who don’t know what’s good for them — and it would not surprise me if a liberal New York Times columnist thought so (“What’s the matter with Hungary?”) — something is not adding up in Goldberg’s column.

Goldberg:

Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.

The Marki-Zay coalition includes the Jobbik party, which formally joined the anti-Orban coalition last December. Jobbik was, until recently, an openly anti-Semitic party. From the Times of Israel in 2012:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned a Jobbik lawmaker’s call to create a list of Jewish politicians a day after thousands demonstrated in Budapest to protest the anti-Semitism of the far-right party.

“Last week sentences were uttered in parliament which are unworthy of Hungary,” Orban said during a parliament session on Monday. “I rejected this call on behalf of the government and I would like you to know that as long as I am standing in this place, no one in Hungary can be hurt or discriminated against because of their faith, conviction or ancestry.”

Orban’s denunciation and Sunday’s demonstration by an estimated 10,000 protesters came in the wake of a call last week by Marton Gyongyosi to create a registry of Hungarian lawmakers and members of the Hungarian cabinet of Jewish origin. Gyongyosi spoke during a Nov. 26 parliamentary debate on Israel’s military operations against escalated terrorist bombings from the Gaza Strip.

But in the past few years, Jobbik has tried to moderate its image. In 2020, Jobbik elected a new leader, a Catholic whose grandmother was Jewish. And yet, old habits die hard. Earlier this year, video emerged of one of Jobbik’s parliamentarians doing a Nazi salute and laughing about it. 

You would think that the fact that Marki-Zay is in a formal coalition with this party — which is not a fringe party at all, but the third-largest in the Hungarian parliament — would be of interest to a Jewish columnist for The New York Times. But I guess not; defeating Viktor Orban is more important.

More Goldberg:

Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.

He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.

Marki-Zay is a Personally Opposed, But kind of guy. He has said that if elected, he will introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage (Hungary now has domestic partnerships for same-sex couples), and overturn Hungary’s anti-LGBT media law — which is up for a national referendum on Election Day next month, and is expected to pass overwhelmingly. He also promised to overturn the constitution and start from scratch. 

One thing you learn from being here talking to Hungarians is that their economic lives have improved significantly under twelve years of Fidesz rule. Even people who are fed up with Orban and his high toleration for financial corruption say they are grateful to him for stability, prosperity, and for defending Hungarian sovereignty. Over and over I have had conversations with people who are sick of Orban and ready for a change, but unwilling to take a chance on an unproven amateur like Marki-Zay. Goldberg talked about his “skill” at using language to make a case for liberalism, but this completely ignores one of the biggest stories of his campaign: that it has been filled with gaffes (e.g., publicly accusing Orban’s son, a soldier and Christian pastor who stays out of public life, of being a closet case, and telling his supporters not to worry, that Covid would take care of lots of Fidesz supporters — implying that being old, they would all get sick and die). When I arrived back in Budapest in early February, I was shocked to see all my old conservative friends who had been downcast when I left at summer’s end last year, all happy, even ebullient. They had all feared Fidesz would lose, but Marki-Zay had been such a lousy candidate, tripping over his own tongue constantly, that Fidesz was riding high in the polls. Turns out that as mayor, Marki-Zay was fined multiple times for saying libelous things. He is not a cautious man.

Some of the anti-Orban crowd hoped that Marki-Zay’s gaffes would redound to his benefit, as Donald Trump’s did, by making him seem more authentic. It hasn’t happened. This is a different electorate, and now that there’s a war next door, they are even less eager to take a risk.

Goldberg:

The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media…

How is that possible, given that the most popular news outlets in Hungary are aligned with the anti-Orban opposition?

Goldberg:

Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.

He might be right about that. It’s true that the Poles want a far more aggressive response to Russia than the Hungarians do, but if the war ends without a lot more destruction — if — then things will revert back to normal. The real problem with the nationalist bloc in Europe dream is that as Orban has said in the recent past, until and unless a nationalist-populist government takes power in one of the major western EU countries (e.g., France, Spain, Italy), nothing will come of it. I’m told that Macron is a shoo-in now for re-election in France. I don’t know about Spain and Italy, but Matteo Salvini’s political career in Italy, already in trouble before the war, will almost certainly collapse after his years of identifying openly with Putin.

Anyway, read the entire Goldberg column if you like. You know that I’m pro-Orban, so take what I say above in that light. I’m just trying to help you understand where this Times column goes seriously wrong in its analysis. The idea that Hungary is not free is simply lunacy, a claim that says more about the liberal imagination than actual conditions on the ground in Hungary. Do you really think that a people that lived for forty years under Communism, and who have had free elections since Communism’s end, would choose to live under bondage? You’d have to, if you accept Goldberg’s claim (which, to be fair, she got from Marki-Zay, who at least knows how to tell liberal Western reporters what they want to hear).

There are good reasons to vote against Viktor Orban and his party, but they barely come up at all in Goldberg’s column. I imagine that readers of the Times who think they’re getting an accurate take on the situation here in Hungary are going to be shocked when Orban goes back in on April 3. Ask yourself: if things are as dire in Hungary as Marki-Zay and Goldberg say, why is it that three weeks away from the election, this is what the polls look like:

 

When is the Times going to run an analysis on how Viktor Orban, after a dozen years in power, is on the verge of winning four more? What could he possibly be doing right, and why is the opposition so hapless? Are those even thoughts that Times columnists allow themselves to have? We are so cut off in the US from the way many others in the world think.  The whole reason I suggested last summer to Tucker Carlson that he come to Hungary and take a look is because I was here for maybe two weeks when I realized how different this country is from the way our media portray it.

At the Rudas Baths this morning, I spoke to a Hungarian who lived for years in America, and he said to me, “You hear Americans ask all the time, ‘Why do they hate us?’, but the way they ask it is not really wanting to know, but more like trying to figure out what’s wrong with foreigners for not thinking like Americans.”

By the way, for more commentary on Hungary’s election, check out the new piece by my TAC colleague Bradley Devlin.

UPDATE: Think of it this way: Hungary is no more “unfree” than Ukraine is, as Putin claims, a “Nazi” state. These are lies told not to promote thinking, but to short-circuit it. As I said, there are good reasons to oppose the Orban government and want a change, but you will barely find them in the Goldberg column.

The post Earth To NYTimes: Hungary Is Not A Slave State appeared first on The American Conservative.