What Hungary does today, America does tomorrow?
It was Disraeli who supposedly said of the English heart of the industrial revolution that “What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.” At the time, Manchester truly was leading the world in building new sorts of machines and transport networks.
Today, it is Hungary that’s blazing a path for others. It’s not as shiny as Manchester’s innovations and certainly not new (illiberalism is as old as human civilisation). But a substantial part of the American political establishment, not least Republican former vice-president Mike Pence, is set to follow in Budapest’s wake.
In late September, Mr Pence was at a right-wing summit with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The conference, which included other nationalist European politicians, had “family values” on the agenda. Mr Pence spoke passionately on the “crisis that strikes at the very heart of civilization itself”, namely the fragmentation of the nuclear family, low rates of marriage and high i…
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