Hungary Leads Way in Defense of Conservative Values, Culture
Eastern Euriopeans had a gutful of extreme Leftism during their domination by the Soviet Communists, so Leftism is a hard sell there now. And it's opposite is in proportion popular
Although in many countries around the world, liberal political views are dominant, some nations in Eastern Europe have notably resisted the left-wing ideology. One of the most criticized among the latter is Hungary.
The Hungarian government stands for national sovereignty and conservative values among the world’s nations.
In a Heritage Foundation event on Monday, “Promoting Conservative Values in Modern Europe,” Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga offered a timely perspective on protecting and representing conservative values in modern politics and the future of European conservatism. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
According to Varga, the left-wing trend that dominates the European Union infringes on member nations’ sovereignty.
That argument is reminiscent of Rod Dreher’s book “Live Not by Lies,” which discusses the cultural shifts that have occurred in the West against traditional values and how a “soft totalitarianism” seems to have taken over Western societies.
The characteristic of that soft totalitarianism is the desire to remake the world, to incorporate all areas of life and culture into the scope of woke ideology, to create new forms of language and thought, and even to force people to lie to conform to left-wing dogma and doctrine.
Moreover, the woke view bluntly seeks to destroy cultural memory and tradition. If viewed separately and apart from one another, the various aspects, such as cancel culture or the taking down of statues, seem unrelated.
Nonetheless, if viewed as a whole, one can see that it’s all part of an integrated worldview. The radicals of another age have spread their ideology and ideas into academia, business, and politics. As such, that soft totalitarianism can take over governments and clash with traditional values and conservatives.
In her timely speech, Varga spoke of how when Hungary returned to freedom after the fall of communism, Eastern European nations realized that Western Europe had changed dramatically in terms of culture. She contended that Hungary did not recognize Europe. In contrast to those problems of cultural displacement and birthrates, according to Varga, Hungary decided to take another path in terms of policy and governance, which has led to success.
Varga said that Hungary’s success is based on three things: 1) protecting its sovereignty; 2) the consistent presentation of conservative values; and 3) sovereignty and conservative values are compatible with the democratic state governed by the rule of law.
These principles are threatened not only by the expanding bureaucracy of the European Union with unelected bodies that try to govern all member nations, but also by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, trying to prevent that nation from freely associating with whomever it wishes in international relations and illegally annexing Ukrainian territory.
In fact, all this is very similar to the arguments former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made in her speech at the CNN World Economic Development Conference back in 1992, and they have proven to be correct. In her remarks, Thatcher warned that a single currency, along with the increasing centralization of the European Union, would produce unemployment, mass migration across open frontiers, and the alienation of people from their governments, which would lead to “the growth of extremist parties.”
Time has proven these warnings to be correct. Nonetheless, Hungary remains an example of another path that could be taken to preserve cultural memory and national sovereignty. The electoral success of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban demonstrates that his party’s approach of applying conservative values and using power to defend Hungary’s identity can, in fact, produce not only policy results, but achieve electoral success.
Orban’s party, Fidesz, won with over 50% of the popular vote, which marked the highest vote share by any Hungarian party since the fall of communism in 1989. In other words, the policies followed in Hungary have produced a mandate from the Hungarian people.
In short, conservatives around the world would do well to learn from each other by taking a close look at countries that have strong, lasting, conservative coalitions and governments in power.
Going forward, conservatives should not be afraid of fighting the culture war, nor should they surrender such things as sovereignty, the rule of law, and cultural memory.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/28/hungary-leads-way-in-defense-of-conservative-values-culture/
**************************************************GOP Senator Tom Cotton claims Dems are INTENTIONALLY turning US into weak country through 'critical race theory and transgender ideology' in ploy he calls 'decline by design'
He's sussed them out
An Arkansas Senator has charged members of the Democratic Party with intentionally thrusting the country into crime-ridden chaos, thanks to woke policies designed to undermine citizens' freedoms.
The controversial claims were aired Sunday in an interview with Republican Tom Cotton, a former soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and senator for Arkansas since 2015.
During the sit down, the 45-year-old politician promoted his upcoming book, Only the Strong: Reversing the Left's Plot to Sabotage American Power, set to publish next Tuesday.
His book takes aim at the progressive left and what he declares is their decades-long plot to sabotage American power that stems back more than a century.
The interview saw Cotton further proclaim that while some may think the country's decline is the result of mismanagement, none of the systemic problems are accidental.
Instead, Cotton declares, that decline is 'intentional' - and one carefully laid by Democrats by 'design.'
'I had so many Americans asking me,' Cotton told Fox News' Mark Levin when asked about the country's current crime-ridden and economic state, 'How did we let this happen? How did we lose to a band of medieval savages?'
The senator said the leftist plot was 'designed to undermine the founding fathers and revamp the Constitution, with amendments that preach schools of thought such as critical race theory and pro transgender teachings and prevent people from speaking out against it.
'Like, how did we let left wing radicals rampage in our streets in the summer of 2020, tearing down statues of our heroes like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant?' Cotton begins, referring to the unrest seen in the country after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
'How we got to the point where we're allowing schools to indoctrinate our kids with critical race theory or transgender ideology,' the senator then adds, visibly upset as he describes the ongoing failures of the powerful political party.
Cotton goes on to remark on the recent advent of American soldiers being chastised for serving their county by woke progressives who preach non-violence and peaceful solutions to international conflicts.
Having served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015, the politician equated such treatment to violent public spectacles seen in Maoist China where citizens accused of being 'class enemies' were publicly humiliated and at times tortured, often by people they were close to.
According to Cotton, all of these issues are rooted in the rise of leftism, which can be traced to the presidency of early prominent progressive Woodrow Wilson in 1913 - the first president to 'openly repudiate' our founding principles and criticize the Constitution, the senator said.
Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, infamously touted the Sedition Act of 1918, which sought to limit free speech, as he worked to bring the country into World War I - a conflict Americans had become increasingly wary of.
Such censorship and disregard to the American people and the principles which the nation was founded on can still be seen today, Cotton went on to claim, in an increasing amount of classrooms and government offices across the country.
Wilson was known to detest criticism of his policies and would subsequently seek to tamp down on such expressions - behavior that has persisted today, Cotton claims, and is more and more apparent in politicians from the progressive party.
The result, the senator claims, is America's recent decline, which has become increasingly evident through marked rises in crime and homeless in Dem run cities such as San Francisco and New York.
Cotton went on to claim that none of these systemic problems are accidental, and instead are the fruits of an exhaustive ploy from the Democratic Party to slowly rob Americans of their rights and ability to speak out against such injustices.
'This is intentional. The decline that [civilians] sense in America is decline by design,' Cotton said of the efforts, which have continued over the past century with presidents such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden.
'The Democratic Party has long been, at best ambivalent about America, and openly hostile to American power, whether it's our military, our sovereignty,' Cotton went on, further criticizing politicians that have allowed these issues to take root.
The senator remarked on the current, diminished 'safety on our streets,' where open drug use and homeless encampments have become commonplace - as well as the sad state of our economy, which has been hopelessly embroiled by inflation since Biden took office.
But the censorship and slow instillation of anti-American values stems back much earlier, Cotton charges in the televised talk, which will air Sunday night on Levin's primetime program Life, Liberty & Levin - back to Wilson and then incensed by prominent progressives such as John F. Kennedy and Lydon B. Johnson in the 1960s.
'After you repudiate the founding principles of our country, it's a very short step to repudiating America itself, which is what the New Left did in the 1960s and the 1970s during Vietnam,' Cotton remarked.
Now, more than a century after Wilson's Sedition Act, Cotton said the 'culmination of trends' critical of American principles and patriotism came with ex-President Obama, whom he called 'the most ideological' in his anti-Americanism since Wilson, citing the increasing number of freedoms robbed from Americans after his years in office.
Cotton referred to Biden as Obama's 'understudy,' and proclaimed that what Americans are experiencing right now in cities all over the country is a direct result of those freedoms being stripped.
Cotton further elaborates on this plot in ‘Only the Strong,' which he says specifies, in detail,' how the Left in America today continues to try to sabotage American power.'
Before leaving the sit down, Cotton said of those efforts to transform the US into a woke dystopia: 'If you love something, you don't want to fundamentally transform it.'
Only the Strong is set to be released Tuesday. Cotton's current term as Senator ends on January 3, 2027.
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Does Tulsi Gabbard have coattails? Watch Ariz., Mich., Nev. and N.H. in November
By Robert Romano
On polls taken up to Oct. 17, Arizona Republican nominee for Governor Kari Lake was leading her opponent Katie Hobbs by 3 and 4 points respectively in Daily Wire/Trafalgar and Data for Progress polls. And then she got the endorsement of former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, fresh off leaving the Democratic Party, on Oct. 18 in a Twitter post.
“For too long, establishment leaders from both parties have sought to enrich themselves, play games, and build up their power while ignoring and even enabling the suffering of millions of hard-working Americans,” Gabbard said in a press release, adding, “Kari Lake is a leader who puts people first, fighting for border security, energy independence, public safety, and other policies that actually make life better and more affordable for the American people.”
The next poll, the Fox 10/InsiderAdvantage poll taken Oct. 24 to Oct. 25, suddenly showed Lake leading Hobbs by 11 points in Arizona, 54 percent to 43 percent.
Does Tulsi Gabbard have coattails?
That might be a good question as the former Democrat hits the campaign trail for Republican gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates in Michigan, Nevada and New Hampshire in the final days of the 2022 elections.
The Fox 10/InsiderAdvantage Arizona poll could be a desert mirage, but Gabbard is worth consideration as a representative of swing voters who always determine the outcome of midterm election cycles, that is, elections two years after the race for the Presidency.
The tendency is for the White House incumbent party to lose seats pretty much everywhere up and down the ballot, losing seats in 90 percent of elections in the House and 70 percent in the Senate, with losses averaging about 35 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Those are pretty good odds for Republicans since simply an average year for the GOP should enable them to retake House and Senate majorities from Democrats, simply because they only have a five seat majority in the House and no true majority in the Senate, which is split 50-50.
But what if there was also a sudden exodus of disaffected Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, led by Gabbard but also other major recent Democratic departures including new Twitter owner Elon Musk?
In states like Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New York, it can take an overwhelming advantage on independents but also cross-party voting by at least a few Democrats for Republicans to win majorities. It’s not always easy, but midterm cycles can help the opposition party and so even a deep blue state like New York could possibly come into play — given the correct ingredients.
Fortunately, there’s time to test Gabbard’s impact on these races, if any. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon in Michigan and senatorial candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire have both been behind in their races prior to their recent Gabbard endorsements. If they suddenly start showing leads afterward, perhaps Gabbard effect could be very real, since nobody thought those races were competitive.
The caveat is this should be a really good year for Republicans no matter what, and so it is admittedly harder to show undercurrents in the body politic.
But Gabbard’s role in these underdog races could be very interesting, especially if the Gabbard-endorsed races have wider margins of victory compared to the non-Gabbard races (assuming there are any victories). The better those numbers are, the more interesting 2024 becomes. Stay tuned.
https://dailytorch.com/2022/10/does-tulsi-gabbard-have-coattails/ ?
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Why do few Australians have positive views of Aborigines?
Noel Pearson says that few do and he is undoubtedly right. Helen Trinca below reinforces that point and tries to explain it. Her explnation is however a work of desperation. She mimics American blacks in saying it is all due to the past -- to the bad treatment of their ancestors. She appears unaware that NOBODY has had ancestors as badly treated as the Jews -- 4,000 years of persecution! -- and yet present-day Jews flourish mightily. Blaming the past is rubbish. It is the present that counts.
Psychological research has repeatedly shown that impressions we have of others are highly malleable. We are strongly influenced by what we have most recently seen. It even has a name: "The recency effect". Our views rapidly move towards what we ourseves have recently experienced. Expectations and stereotypes rapidly give way to actual experience. Some of the academic research findings to that effect is summarized here and here
So whatever view we have of Aborigines will be strongly founded in our experience of them. And we DO have some experiences of them, even in the cities. And if I can summarize that experiences briefly: We see them mainly as drunks and beggars and layabouts. We do not like WHITE drunks and beggars and layabouts so there is no likelihood that we would like that in blacks.
So why are so many blacks like that? No mystery. They are the victims of their separate development (Yes. I know of another usage of that phrase). For 60,000 years, they have evolved in geographical isolation as superb hunter gatherers and have some quite eeries abilities in consequence of that. But they have NOT evolved the abilities that allow them to fit in easily with the differently evolved people of the Eurasian continent. They are like fish out of water in a modern Western society. Many thousands of years of fierce competition among the many people of Eurasia has enforced an adaptive evolution in them that very few Aborigines can easily co-exist with. They don't "fit in".
Just a final and relatively minor point: Trinca mentions the hard time that football fans gave Aboriginal player Adam Goodes and blames it on racial prejudice. She omits much in that. See here and here
Noel Pearson opened a new front in the story of Indigenous Australia when he used his first ABC Radio National Boyer Lecture to talk about the unpopularity of First Nations people.
It was a shocking statement that came early in Pearson’s impressive opener to the four-lecture series delivered first on television on October 27 and repeated on radio on Sunday, and it’s worth quoting at length
“We are a much unloved people,” Pearson said. “We are perhaps the ethnic group Australians feel least connected to. We are not popular and we are not personally known to many Australians. Few have met us and a small minority count us as friends. And despite never having met any of us and knowing very little about us other than what is in the media and what WEH Stanner, whose 1968 Boyer Lectures loom large over my lectures, called ‘folklore’ about us, Australians hold and express strong views about us, the great proportion of which is negative and unfriendly.
“It has ever been thus. Worse in the past but still true today. If success in the forthcoming referendum is predicated on our popularity as a people, then it is doubtful we will succeed. It does not and will not take much to mobilise antipathy against Aboriginal people and to conjure the worst imaginings about us and the recognition we seek. For those who wish to oppose our recognition it will be like shooting fish in a barrel. An inane thing to do – but easy. A heartless thing to do – but easy.”
Many non-Indigenous Australians would have felt a stab of recognition on hearing those words but, worse still, despair for the future. Pearson was calling it as it is, not in anger but with a profoundly sad pragmatism that reminds us that he is not just good at rhetoric, he’s also a good thinker.
Pearson is urging us to go beyond the truth that racism has in various ways helped shape many views of Indigenous people to a more subtle but perhaps more damaging truth – that lack of familiarity and friendship with First Peoples could determine votes in the referendum on the advisory body, the voice to parliament.
The 2022 Boyer lecturer drew on the horrible sledging of former AFL great Adam Goodes to make his point. What happened to the footballer reminded Pearson of the trouble people had with Indigenous Australians, trouble that could readily be called racism and “certainly racism is much to do with it, but the reality is not that simple”.
“Unlike same-sex marriage there is not the requisite empathy of love to break through the prejudice, contempt and, yes, violence of the past. Australians simply do not have Aboriginal people within their circles of family and friendship with whom they can share fellow feeling.” It does not detract from the truth of Pearson’s comments to see this as an inspired tactic – sidelining the unhelpful argument about what is or is not racially motivated behaviour and staking out far less threatening ground for a conversation with opponents of the voice. Yet it has rarely, if ever, been articulated.
Most non-Indigenous Australians – even those committed to the voice and a treaty, those who value the deep culture of Aboriginal people; those who want in every way to atone for the wrongs of the past – know Pearson is right when he says Aboriginal people are simply not in the friendship and family groups of the overwhelming number of Australians.
It is difficult for many non-Indigenous Australians to even meet an Aboriginal person, given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comprise less than 4 per cent of the population. Many Australians will never see an Indigenous Australian other than in a media photograph or on television. Views are formed through news stories or cultural products such as paintings, dance, literature, film and music or exhibitions or books. There’s sport of course, the great Australian equaliser, which allows for largely positive recognition – except in cases such as that of Goodes. In country areas, First Nations people are more visible, but again class, economic differences and the social problems in many Indigenous communities mean the distances between the groups can be even more pronounced. The reality is unless you work in the arts, universities, the public service, or you are an elite sports person, you may have little chance of finding an Indigenous friend. It’s very different when it comes to homosexual people, for example.
A colleague reminds me that more than a decade ago we were at an election event at Rooty Hill in outer suburban Sydney when a woman got to her feet and asked Julia Gillard, the prime minister at the time, why she could not marry her same-sex partner. The crowd erupted with clapping and one knew then the experience of many families was dramatically shifting attitudes. Legislating for same-sex marriage is not the same as amending the Constitution, but Pearson’s point is well made.
Time, then, to come to terms with the reasons behind this “enduring antipathy against my people” – in short, that the colonial project required the first settlers to deny the rights of Aboriginal people to succeed. There are other reasons why Indigenous Australians may not be popular, but terra nullius underpins them all. That original denial and its tragic consequences are well documented yet still so little understood by many Australians offered little or inadequate history across so many decades. Australians need to accept and absorb this if we are to have any chance of exercising good judgment in the forthcoming referendum.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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