Another Threat

The threat from America’s authoritarian left is both serious and well known, and it is good that people pay attention to it and oppose the leftists. However, there is another threat that many friends of liberty have missed or failed to take seriously – the threat from the authoritarian, traditionalist right. It is a smaller one, but it still deserves some attention. There are influential conservatives who have rejected enlightenment liberalism and its tolerance in principle and argue for an illiberal society ordered and controlled to promote religion, stability, family, traditional morality, and national  identity. They often present Viktor Orban’s government in Hungary as an example of what they want. Some of them are trying to change the Republican party into one similar to some of the rightist, authoritarian parties of the last hundred years in continental Europe. They have not succeeded or even come anywhere close to succeeding, but it is worth spending some time and effort to make sure they do not get any closer. It is an understatement to observe that such people probably are more dangerous and likely to be listened to in a party influenced by Donald Trump than in one influenced by Eisenhower, Bush, or Reagan.

(As an aside, there was an interesting article Monday on the Bulwark’s website pointing out that in the 1950s and 1960s William F. Buckley and some of his associates were at least apologists and sometimes enthusiasts for Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain.)