Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“Over the last decade or so, Hungary became for the new right what Sweden or Cuba were to the old left. For generations, various American leftists loved to cite the Cuban model as better than ours when it came to health care or education. Some would even make wild claims about freedom under Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. … President Trump, Tucker Carlson, and J.D. Vance (most recently while campaigning for Orbán) have all lavished praise on Hungary. Patrick Deneen, a leading new-right intellectual, saw in Orbán’s Hungary ‘a model of a form of opposition to contemporary liberalism that says, ‘There’s a way in which the state and the political order can be oriented to the positive promotion of conservative policies.’’ … Orbánism is not a new model, or ‘wave of the future.’ It was a tide of the past. And it’s good news that it’s receding.” (04/15/26)