From Damon Linker’s (ridiculously) fair treatment of Rod Dreher:
Whereas the return of political hope led most members of the American religious right to express gushing approval of Trump, Rod rose in regular defense of Orbán instead, explaining to a long list of American journalists how unfairly American journalists were treating the Hungarian president. Rod also played a key role in arranging Carlson’s visit to Hungary during the summer of 2021, which led to a week of fawning coverage on Fox News in prime time. CPAC coming to Budapest in May 2022 and Orbán flying to Dallas next week for another appearance at the conference are just the latest testaments to the convergence between the Republican Party and Orbán’s Fidesz Party, which Rod has been helping to foster.
Linker goes on to ask if Christian politics and moral truth are compatible with the racist and xenophobic illiberalism of Viktor Orbán? Of course, being gracious, he calls his friend Rod to admit his mistakes and make the appropriate changes. But when was the last time anyone even heard of someone doing that? These days—if they’re even different days at all—the best you can hope for is that someone might change his or her mind but will pretend he or she never thought differently. Dreher et al have been continuing down the exact same trajectory for years. As Gregory Thomson said about Dreher’s latest book,
it nurses fears of propaganda even as it misrepresents history. Because it invokes liberalism while holding others in contempt. Because it denies the oppression of others while heralding its own victimization. Because it decries therapeutic culture while indulging in self-actualization. Because it affects dissidence while remaining silent before a destructive regime. Because it assumes a Christian identity while failing to embody Christian practice. Because, in sum, Dreher has produced a historically reductive, relationally tribal, intellectually superficial, and profoundly self-absorbed work that actually performs what it protests.