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Claire Berlinski Answers Viktor Orban, Part 1 of 4
And in doing so, I’ll also answer Robert Lux. But I’d like to ask all of Ricochet if we — all of us, me included, and me especially — have this conversation in a way of which Ricochet can be proud. These are deeply emotional issues. They should be.
I feel quite strongly about the future of liberal democracy in the West and Islamic terrorism. I’ve written books about the issue, some parts of which might surprise those of you who’ve pegged me as the resident all-heart-no-survival-instinct editor of Ricochet. (Critics roundly denounced that book when it was published ten years ago as the midnight eructations of a ravening Islamophobe. They probably hadn’t read it carefully. But no one is criticizing it now — except, perhaps, for me.)
I couldn’t be closer to these questions, literally. Had my father not been in the hospital this past week; had he or I or my brother instead gone out for dinner or a drink at one of the places that was attacked, we might now be DNA samples on the pavement over which lachrymose Parisians are lighting candles and singing choked-up versions of the Marseillaise. Everyone I know in Paris has been affected.
And no one in his or her right mind thinks it’s over, yet. A few days ago I sent an e-mail to Michael Totten sketching out what I figured would happen next. He ran with the idea in this column, and needless to say, I agree:
… ISIS doesn’t need to destroy the French Republic or any other state to inflict an extraordinary amount of damage. Just look at what one guy— Seifeddine Rezgui—did in Tunisia five months ago.
He casually strolled up to a bunch of British tourists on the beach and murdered 38 of them with a Kalashnikov.
The police shot and killed him, of course, and dozens of local Tunisians tried to stop him and even volunteered as human shields, but the damage was already done. Tunisia’s tourist economy went the way of the dinosaurs.
… imagine if ISIS decides to attack France that way in the future. Rather than targeting five or six civilian targets simultaneously, they could hit a new one every day for a week. Or a new one every week for a month.
That would cause some serious economic mayhem in France or anywhere else. ISIS might do to France what it did to Tunisia. I certainly don’t intend to give them any ideas by mentioning this in public, but figuring it out on their own is no more difficult than reinventing the wheel.
My gut says the logic of this — and thus the odds of this scenario — are high enough that it’s reasonable to be concerned by it. That said, I can’t know for sure, and can’t adjust my life according to fears with no quantifiable basis, and won’t adjust my life to terrorists, and besides, my mind these days is on the much more specific fear that my father’s cardiac monitor will stop pulsing in front of my eyes. That puts all other fears in perspective.
But my point is that I’m emotional, for reasons I hope everyone will understand. These issues are very personal. They’re personal to all of us, each for our own reasons. It’s not just that I live here, but that I’m the granddaughter of Jewish refugees from Europe. The fact that I’m alive at all is a statistical fluke. The boats full of desperate refugees sinking in the sea remind me of the S.S. St. Louis, the MV Struma, of Operation Embarrass. Of course these are family memories that shape my views. My grandparents only barely escaped. My grandmother was bitter about this until she died: My grandfather had fought in the French Foreign Legion, but even that wasn’t good enough for France; when the war was over, the word went out: Enough with the Jewish refugees.
Then too, my perspective is colored by the decade I spent in Turkey. It is impossible to say to someone who lived as long as I did in the Islamic world that Islam is a singular thing. I have too many Muslim friends to think that, but even if I didn’t, I hope I’d have worked that out just on the basis of common sense. But that’s not my key point. The key point is the other thing I saw in Turkey, the thing that marked me most permanently. I saw the rise of an authoritarian regime — a real one — and how such regimes take power, step-by-step.
Turkey was of course never a liberal paradise. But I lived through a long, twilight period where the lights grew dimmer and dimmer, even as the rest of the world insisted they were blazing strongly. This didn’t happen because Turkey is a Muslim country (and in fact, it is not, technically; it is a secular country with a majority Muslim population). It happened because the safeguards against the authoritarian temptation weren’t strong enough.
I’ve come to believe that absent those safeguards, it’s not — as I and many others’ hopefully thought in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall — mankind’s natural disposition to move forward into broad, sunlit uplands of liberal democracy. I no longer believe there’s a natural trajectory of history at all. But certain forms of government seem to become popular at various periods of history. The form of government for which the early 21st century will be noted by historians is not liberal democracy, but competitive authoritarianism, Viktor-Orban style.
I’m emotional about all of these things. But let me continue the plea with which I began. Let’s discuss this — all of this — with all the patience, respect, calm, warmth, and dignity we can muster. Let’s assume our interlocutors’ good will as a matter of conversational discipline, even if we have no reason to assume it epistemically. We are all here, presumably, because none of us really wish to truck with the vulgarity and invective of the typical argument on the Internet.
So let’s make our cases as carefully and politely as possible, however strongly we feel, not least because what we feel is immaterial — feelings aren’t arguments. Let’s try, as well, to listen to what others are saying, not jump to conclusions or caricaturize the arguments of others. And while it is right to feel emotion about these subjects, let’s attempt to make robust arguments in preference to blackmailing one another with our feelings: It is what civilized men and women do.
***
So, Robert, Viktor Orban seems compelling in that video, doesn’t he? If it were all I knew of him, I might nod and say, “I’ll hear him out.”
I did, in fact.
My response to him falls under three categories. The first treats the specifics of his speech. The second treats him, specifically, and his record in Hungary. The third treats the political philosophy he represents. I’ll address them seriatum in the coming three posts.
Before I do, though, I thought it would be helpful for us all to have a transcript of his speech. I couldn’t find one on the Internet, so I did it myself. Forgive me if I omitted a word; it’s just a transcription error and not deliberate. Nor do I speak Hungarian, so any errors in translation are owed to the translation provided.
I’ve skipped the first minute and a half, in which he begins by offering his condolences to France.
At 1:33, Orban says,
Until now, we Hungarians were focused on closing the border from the flood from the Middle East and Africa. And so we got our punishment that this is not ‘humane.’ But here we have before us the question: What is more humane? To close the borders against the illegal border crossers, or to risk the lives of innocent European citizens? The right to life precedes all other rights. Just as the right to self-defense is stronger than anything else. No ideology or economic interest can allow us to put the lives Europeans citizens in danger. Howsoever, we can see that the EU is drifting. It is weak, unsure of itself, and paralyzed. There are conferences and negotiations unto exhaustion. But there are no solutions. We are writhing in a web of ideologies, instead of acting based on common sense and our own personal cultural traditions. The leaders of many European nations still, to this day, are wracking their brains about how to solve the transportation and acceptance of masses of immigrants, instead of finally taking united, practical steps to stop the flood.
In Brussels, they still claim that immigration is a good thing. Despite receiving proof day by day that immigration is a bad thing. This situation is not “win-win,” but “lose-lose.”
Esteemed House, we feel that Europe’s existence is at stake. Brussels, however, keeps sending bad messages, newer invitations to migrants, instead of us finally and honorably sending them the straightforward message that here, what they expect is not at all what awaits them.
Esteemed House, we have repeatedly warned the leaders of the European Union to not invite these people into Europe. Everyone who has, through common sense, considered the likely consequences of unchecked mass immigration must clearly know what dangers lurk in the mass pouring in illegally and unchecked, across our borders.
The European and American security specialists, secret service and intelligence bosses, police leaders, have constantly warned Europe of the growing danger of terrorism. Every politician, all of Europe’s leaders, knew of the danger. And the Greeks have said long ago, at the start of the summer, it can no way be ruled out that jihadists arrive along with the masses of migrants. Standing on the ground of common sense and viewing it from there, it was apparent that completely simply, masses must not be allowed inside unchecked. Hundreds of thousands of sorts of people, we know not where they come from, we don’t know who they are, and we don’t know what they want.
Furthermore, Esteemed House, these are territories where the EU is currently performing military campaigns. Such a thing has never happened before. We are accepting, no, transporting unchecked people in their hundreds of thousands from areas that are at war with the European Union. It has been proven that terrorists are knowingly and in a well-organized way are using mass immigration to melt into the mass of people abandoning their homes in hope of a better life. We don’t think that everyone who comes from there is a terrorist. But we don’t know, and no one is able to say, how many terrorists have arrived with the migrants so far. How many are already here. And how many are arriving day by day. Even one terrorist is too many. It hurts to even think about how many terrorists may have crossed our homeland. It’s time to put an end to this all throughout Europe.
My esteemed representatives, it is clear to every normally-thinking person that Europe cannot sustain this many people. We all know that the European economy cannot tackle such massive pressure. But beyond the financial and economic realities, mass migration possesses three severe dangers, each of which alone are sufficient to clinch the human tide.
First of all, on Friday night, we could experience that mass migration means an exponentially increased threat of terrorism. Moreover, today we aren’t referring to the threat of terror anymore, but a fact. Real terrorism.
Secondly, mass immigration increases the danger of crime. It’s not “PC,” politically correct to talk about this. Moreover, the Western world openly denies these facts. But despite that, it’s still a fact. In Europe, where there are many immigrants, there crime has greatly increased, and security has decreased. There are more thefts, robberies, harassment, severe physical assaults, rape, and homicide. Even if we do not talk about it, these will remain facts.
And thirdly, the mass settlement of people arriving from other continents and cultures represents a danger to our culture, our way of life, habits, and traditions.
Now even those, who lived under the failed conception of multiculturalism, and who even wanted to force that mistaken conception on us, they can see where all this leads.
Esteemed President, my esteemed representatives, esteemed House. In the light of these events, we must speak about the obligatory quota question, too. We are still there, where someone from outside Hungary, they want to tell us whom we, Hungarians, need to live with. This is what this quota is about. I recommend to this esteemed house to still not accept this. Let’s keep sticking to deciding for ourselves whom we want to let in, whom we want to live with. The obligatory quota system is, completely, simply, not Europe. It stands in sharp contrast to the spirit of Europe. It is pointless, because it does not fix the crisis, but deepens it. It can be easily seen that the obligatory settlement quota does not keep migrants away, but rather acts as an invitation. It does not lessen the pressure, but increases it. And due to the suddenly increased pressure, the European nations will restore their internal EU borders. If this continues, it is only a matter of time. This will mean the end of the Schengen system and freedom of movement.
The obligatory quota, my esteemed representatives, is also unlawful, since the EU leaders don’t have the authority to make such a decision in this question. They have no authority to force a single member nation such a measure concerning refugees and migrants that the given nation does not want. In the light of the terror attacks, Brussels can especially no longer deny that member nations have the right to defend themselves.
Namely, the obligatory settlement quota is dangerous because it would disseminate terrorism throughout Europe. Facts and tragic events point out that we need a new kind of European politics. It is not enough to pat and patch and fix up the old. I recommend that we cast aside the dogmas, forget political correctness, let’s speak straightforward and open. I recommend that we return from the world of ideologies back to common sense, and to rethink European politics on the basis of four self-evident commandments. First of all, we must protect the external borders of the European Union. Because security begins with protection of borders. Second, we must protect our culture, because the essence of Europe lies in its spiritual and cultural identity. Third, we must protect our economic interests, because we Europeans must remain central to the world economy. And fourth, we must give people the right to be able to influence European decisions, because the Union must stand on democratic ground. Esteemed representatives, the European citizens did not want hundreds of thousands of unknown aliens to illegally and in an uncontrolled manner cross our borders and trample our countries. This sort of power was never given authority or permission by anyone, anywhere. People want to live in safety, and they want to enjoy the advantages of the EU. And for us parliamentary representatives, and to governments across Europe, our job is to hear the voice of the people. Thank you for your gracious attention.
That’s all for now. In other news from Paris, police assaults are underway in Saint-Denis; a woman there has blown herself up; Abaaoud and several other suspects are believed to be holed up in an apartment building there, helicopters are flying over the building and police have cordoned off the area, and it seems there are a few more suspects still at large.
Update: two people are dead, as is a police dog.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism
“In order for liberal democracy to work, we must have a shared sense of community and history, ”
This is such a fundamental point which is missing from so much of our political debate. America is not just lines on a map nor words written on an old sheet of paper; we are a people.
Liberal democracy of the kind we all cherish was founded on a judeo/Christian cultural and intellectual heritage. As John Adams (think it was) said, it was framed for a religious and moral people and is wholly insufficient for the governance of any other.
It is dangerously naive to think we can keep its liberties while we eviscerate its institutions and throw off the virtuous habits that sustain it.
The same authoritarianism that attracts people who think their government is weak attracts students as elite universities who think their administrations are weak.
Those who don’t want the responsibility of governing themselves will be drawn to “masters” who promise to take care of them. What happens to other people, they don’t care. Meanwhile, the would-be masters bide their time and seize their opportunities.
This is not so obvious as you suggest. Democracy is the community of liberal democracy. Exactly what history is there that you need to have? Do you mean, democrats or the people have to believe themselves to be one people? Do you mean that in the sense of the Declaration & Preamble to the Constitution? Or do you mean that in the sense in which the Chinese call themselves Han or the French or Germans call themselves French &, respectively, German?
That’s because if We heard this excerpt from one of Our politicians We would hear patriotism.
Queen Claire is going to lay the groundwork that PM Orban is a terrible, tyrannical despot. Therefore, anything He says should be seen as terrible and tyrannical, regardless.
Remember, on a previous post, Queen Claire felt the need to tell Us to see Her as an immigrant to France; so as to establish the idea that the hundreds of thousands invading Europe are all Queen Claires.
Before I can assess this, I need an explanation of “Illiberal State.” Are we talking Hong Kong, or are we talking Soviet Russia? The difference matters.
I don’t mean to suggest it is obvious; in fact, I think it is something that other nations take for granted, yet Americans completely overlook.
Exactly? That I cannot say. But there does have to be some sense of a shared history and culture.
This is pretty much it. The Declaration or The Bill of Rights do not define us, nor do they guarantee our freedoms. Our reverence for our founding documents are what make us a people.
Not exactly in the spirit of the OP there Jimmy……
It is true that your Founding documents assume much more than they say. Even your Founding has to have its mysteries. But it seems to me that the form takes precedence over the matter only in your case: Reflection & choice over accident & force.
That cannot mean, however, that one could revere documents which do not define one as what & who one is–unless of course one wishes radically to transform oneself. Our exchange is somewhat unclear, & we should strive for clarity. A people cannot revere that which is held by the people to be bad or wicked–I think, we are agreed on that. What a people revere is what is held by the people to be best or even holiest.
American sentiments about their country are far stranger than elsewhere in the world, & because of the Founding: Your ancients are distinctly modern people–like Ben Franklin.
Reverence is a word Madison uses; it is what Lincoln wanted from a civil religion (like the Roman). But is it fit for individuals with individual rights so fundamental that they pre-exist & may destroy their constitutional order?
Jefferson once proposed to Madison that the laws of America be short-circuited one every 19 years, with the mathematical accuracy & practical foolishness of an Enlightenment American. Madison walked him off that ledge, as he did not infrequently–he was both more American & more practical–or more American because more practical. But Americans love Jefferson better: He made them seem greater than Madison could.
The emphasized statement stuck out like a red flag. There is a backlash against the Progressive position because they refuse to acknowledge that mass immigration from a nation filled with radicals just might be a problem, but it is an equally dangerous fallacy to make absolute security the standard of governance.
Orban’s stance on illiberal nationalism is perfectly adequate if the only threat was against external threats. These threats are appropriately getting the attention it needs after Paris. But this ignores the glaring weakness of Orban’s illiberal nationalism: tyranny of one’s own government.
It’s a terrible thing to live in fear of an enemy in the midst, not knowing if a public event will turn into a massacre. I don’t believe it would be worth it to trade one enemy for another which would have far more direct effect on your life.
Orban is setting up a false dichotomy between classic liberalism and national security. Many of “liberal democracies” of Europe represent neither particularly well.
I’m going to begin this hypothetical question with an anecdote, and a counterfactual. The anecdote: following a conference, a German colleague drove me many miles across Europe (she was stopping off with her parents on her way back home, and she offered me their spare bedroom. This saved me much of my planned train ride and a night in a hotel. In the conversation that evening, I learned that her mother and grandmother had been living in what became East Germany, and crossed a river under fire escaping the Red Army in 1945. Her father had of course been in the Wehrmacht.
Now the counterfactual: What if Stalin hadn’t purged Tukhachevsky and gutted the Soviet officer corps? What if when Hitler had launched Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht had been thrown back after bitter fighting in the “bloodlands” and, with the Red Army raping and pillaging its way west, and Germany falls to the counterattack?
As things fall apart, the Nazi gold is put aboard escaping U-boats or sent to Switzerland to bankroll future operations and the Sachsenhausen counterfeiting operation switches to forging passports. The Swiss National Redoubt holds off the Red Army.
Occupied Europe, Vichy France, and North Africa are flooded with escaping Germans. Among them are NSDAP cadres with forged papers, including Gestapo and SS. Unarmed ships filled with Germans embark from the occupied north of France and Vichy held Marseille under white or Red Cross flags. It’s a humanitarian crisis.
What do you do?
Almost every modern state was an illiberal state to varying degrees based on national foundations. That’s the definition of the nation-state.
I read Menace in 2015 – it predicted what we see today. Was it that hard? A decade ago people were sounding the alarm on Russia rising, the goals of Islam from the Mullahs (the 12’ers), etc. They refer to their enemies as the carriers of the cross, the people of the Book…..including Europe – when has this changed?
We are not a democracy, but a Republic. We have different states, but were are united as one country (under God – indivisible). Our Constitution protects with checks and balances to avoid the monarchy mentality. In the case of Europe, wasn’t the EU created to avoid another WWII? Linking currency, giving central power to a few over all, can’t work the way it works in one country like ours. One contagion spreads throughout a continent.
Hungary doesn’t want to be like Spain, but wants to make it’s own decisions, retain its heritage, protect its citizens – isn’t that what he’s saying? It’s the same thing our governors are saying – no more refugees for the same reasons – because forcing is no longer equated with freedom.
Operating from crisis-mode seems to be the order of the day, both here and in Europe. They’re shipping refugees to states with not even their names! We’ve been having an influx from South and Central America for 2 years – kids with no parents – now this. The message is “come”. I have a theory (continued below)
Claire,
I’m in agreement with you on this post, and your previous where you call for compassion towards ISIS refugees. I think the west has a role to play in resettlement. Maybe you can shed some light on conditions refugees experience in camps in Turkey and Jordan, because I just can’t see theirs being analogous to your grandparents’ experience or those of the Jews aboard the St Louis for example who knew they were facing certain death if they returned to port in Germany. Can the same be said for Syrians coming on flimsy boats from Turkey? It defies sense to me to put your family in that position. Would it not be more compassionate to say no, we take you from the camps, do not make this perilous journey, you will be turned back…?
With respect to the fear of letting in so many Muslims, I think it’s important to look at as many cold hard facts as we can. It seems to be the case that after a couple generations, they are virtually indistinguishable from the rest of society in terms of family size, education and employment (More university grads in Canada)
Yes, radicals must be stopped getting in. But they might also get in with student visas, or as skilled immigrants. I was present during the attack on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The shooter was the Canadian born son of a senior civil servant. Tackling radicalization is not nearly as simple as banning refugees.
This strikes me as a source of Claire’s delusions. The Turkey that she loved was born out of authoritarian power and demoralization. Ataturk and his military saw Islam as the problem and formed a government which created secularism by force. It counted on the suppression of Islam for its survival but without destroying Islam. Obviously that was doomed to failure and it is surprising that it lasted as long as it did. The Cold War probably explains its durability. That Turkey is gone and nothing like it will come back unless the demoralization is repeated seems pretty obvious. It now has a new budding authoritarian regime as is typical of Islamic places. It was not an aberration that a crowd full of Turks at a soccer game responded to a moment of silence for the Paris victims with boos and chants of Allahu Akbar. Istanbul, the cosmopolitan city, seems to have some contradictions and probably can’t be seen as cosmopolitan unless you are deluded. I am confident that Claire’s good friends will be powerless moderates, typical of Islam. By the way Claire’s majority Muslim is going on 97%, always a sign of a country that has purged its other or forced them to move away. It was always a fraud and those that see it fondly demonstrate a gullibility that is hard to rival. I feel certain that this gullibility is driven by anti-Christian motives. Now these deluded characters want to experiment with the West including the United States of America. Thanks but no. I have little sense of Orban but he seems quite a bit more rational than your average bigoted neoconservative.
I have a theory because I am part common sense, part conspiracy theorist for lack of a better term. When I see terms like world courts, income redistribution, you “will” or you will pay a penalty…I see a bigger picture.
For example, cities and states have been flooded with refugees for several years, each year increasing – they are not tracked, vetted, checked for diseases, etc. They’ve been told to come here, you will get benefits – this is a known fact. The firing (in Disney recently) of American employees and being replaced with foreign workers (the ex-employees have to train), and highly secretive trade agreement for starters.
The forced penalties if you don’t buy health insurance or supply to your employees, then tracking you through your taxes.
Sowing seeds of discord – from police officers afraid to do their jobs – now demands for separate gender and race “space” at schools and demands for “free” college (floated by Hillary).
Good decisions have good results – are we getting better as a country, a safer world? The message I am seeing is: even the playing field – no rich or poor, no gender distinction, no distinction of country’s history – one big melting pot – no freedom of speech – “we” will decide what you can say or not – no freedom of religion – we might offend so let’s keep things neutral. You will take refugees. The question is who is the “we”, because it seems it is no longer “We the People”.
He was the descendant of a Muslim refugee that was apparently assimilated and still was tempted to this madness. You should realize that this is even more disconcerting. Major Hasan, Jihadi John and all those Western Muslims that have went to join ISIS seem to be part of the same disturbing pattern.
I’m dropping this comment here because there are so many great Claire posts and Q&As I didn’t know where it belonged.
Hypothetically, should Le Pen and Trump be elected, and Merkel ousted in Germany, is it necessarily a negative outcome? Wouldn’t you expect the voters to make a sharp right turn given existing circumstances? To fight back against radical Islam you need leadership that’s ready to fight – unfairly. Some liberties will be lost, but if you’re determined to win the people will go along. Hollande strikes me as a bookkeeper in a bad suit sans a fighting spirit. Obama won’t fight because he’s not sure which team he’s on. Merkel seems lost. I’m not talking Carthage, but the will to shut down borders, and police forcefully. We can’t afford to walk a tightrope of PC civility. We can’t negotiate our way out of the clash of cultures. Islam sees us as infidels. These statistics about radical, moderate or patriotic Muslims are pure speculations. too many are potentially violent or supportive to be given the benefit of the doubt. Hawks are needed in war.
I’m aware of the Nazi connection of Le Pen. I don’t see a holocaust repeat by the right nowadays. I see it from the Muslims. So, MAYBE, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. No, I’m not comparing Trump to LePen. I’m using them as examples of get-tough politicians.
M. Hollande seems tougher than the other leaders of democracies. I am not sure that extends to national security, but he did well in the brief war in Mali, & wanted to go to war in Syria…
I am not sure why you think Le Pen the younger would be tough. Because she talks tough? She also wants to jump into a Russian alliance. Do you believe that, too, & that it would be good or a bad thing worth the cost?
As for Mr. Trump–people who believe he will be tough must be deluding himself, because they have no way of knowing anything about a Trump administration & his grasp of policy, whether ends or means.
There is a desire for toughness among some; they think that is leadership; some merely want someone to punish their enemies foreign or domestic or humiliate them…
As someone living in Budapest for most of the past three years and somewhat familiar with the history, I respectfully but strongly disagree with Claire in her description of the Orban Prime Ministership as representing an “competitive authoritarianism”.
I will be writing and posting an article on the Member Feed, probably posting by tomorrow.
Yes, his father was Lybian. We’ve also had white Canadians convert, radicalize, and go to Syria and North Africa as terrorists. No one is immune in our globalized world. My point is that if you refuse refugees, you may as well ban Muslim students, skilled immigrants, and the whole lot, which I am not prepared to say is a good idea at all, especially considering the vast majority assimilate after a couple generations. Efforts should be focused on intelligence gathering and what we know of radicalization patterns. Radicalization doesn’t seem to be correlated to education or poverty levels. It’s people seeking an inflated sense of self-worth, and they tend to show a predictable pattern of behaviour before they go on to commit fully to violent jihad. It can be anyone’s kids, not just the Syrian refugee next door. I think a public service message to this effect is currently running in France for exactly this reason, to promote awareness of the warning signs.
Some are far more likely. Your anything can happen and there is nothing you can do is not how I find the world in general.
Claire,
I am sorry to be cross with you but I must.
I don’t see how you can possibly compare the two situations. We are talking about a campaign of literal intentional mass genocide with the Jews of Europe. They weren’t fleeing Nazi Europe because there was a lot of devastation and the economy wasn’t so good. They were running for their lives from a merciless, relentless, predator that intended to kill every last one of them down to the youngest child.
Christians have been subjected to something like this in the middle east. Of course, ISIS doesn’t have German efficiency going for them. They make up for it with absolute savagery. The vast majority these “refugees” are Muslim who’s attitude to the West was probably not unlike the Turks at the soccer stadium who answered the request for the moment of silence with “Allah Akbar”. Of course, their attitude changed when the real Jihadists came for a visit.
My family too was tired of the Russian pogroms and the backward economy of czarist Russia. They paid their own passage and stood in line at Ellis Island enduring all of the indignities. When they finally found shelter in Brooklyn they also found an entrenched Jewish community that was not altogether thrilled with the presence of the new and very poor Jewish Russian emigres. My family accepted that life wasn’t perfect, but America was a whole lot better than what they had come from. Money to be made and no Cossacks with their periodic visits to your town.
Sorry, my lovely Dr. Berlinski, but my only recommendation is to toughen up.
Regards,
Jim
Until today, I was unfamiliar with Orban and do not understand just what he means by “liberal democracy.” If he is referring to the increasingly illiberal, intolerant brand of ‘liberal democracy” we now enjoy in the US, I agree with him. As has been much discussed on Ricochet, we only vaguely practice the Classical Liberalism to which most of us subscribe. To my way of thinking, that form of liberalism leaves room for nationalism – at least a degree of nationalism which honors the true, multi-dimensional human progress made under its auspices – a nationalism which is healthy as part of a community of those who practice shared values in a broad, but identifiable common culture.
Our purported representatives, by an large, have abandoned the Classical Liberalism we value. They practice, but do not name, open borders with no limiting principle whatever (sham “vetting”). They not only do not honor the accomplishments of our predecessors and Founders. They despise them.
Unlimited immigration, particularly of those culturally at odds – large numbers of whom do not desire to assimilate, much less respect our fundamental values, is a prescription for something other than “liberal democracy” to follow in its wake.
Given the complexity of most issues, my decision making devolves to an allocation of error. On which side would I rather err? As to current immigration, given the ongoing, increasing fragility of our nation (culturally, economically, intellectually, spiritually), I err on the side of limiting immigration to a slow, deliberate, legal and prudent sort.
+1 toJames Gawron.
Here’s Ian Tuttle from today’s NRO
Yes, I’m quoting from this article that Claire linked to in her post.
Comment #13 clears it up about Mr. Orban’s desire to move away from liberal democracy.
Freedom is a rare and precious thing. We shouldn’t give it away, because we’ll never get it back.
Mr. Orban says, “The right to life precedes all other rights.” Sounds good to us pro-life conservatives, until you think about it. It begs the question: If life is worth more than liberty, why have we spent the last few centuries sacrificing lives to preserve liberty? The number of lives lost in the invasion of Normandy alone is estimated to be in the six figure range.
The dangers of the present day don’t justify giving away the fruits of those sacrifices.
So the freedom to decide who comes into your country and to protect yourself from them is to be denied for the loss of some other freedoms that were not listed? This looks more like a change of subject where the author of #13 was purposely vague. It is of course not a logical argument against anything Orban said in his talk before the legislature regarding a flood of Muslim immigrants.
I was talking about the move away from liberal democracy which was explicitly stated. That is is a separate issue from border control.
It’s not clear what he means by the word liberal but that’s certainly a different context than the speech above. The line you quote was in respect to his economic policies which looks like they involved targeted special taxes on certain sectors with large foreign ownership; re-nationalization of certain industries with natural monopolies, like utilities; and adjusting welfare payments and tax rates to get people back into the work force.
The right to life quote is his answer to criticism that closing European borders are inhumane. Namely, that it is inhumane to put his own citizenry at risk by admitting unending waves of economic immigrants.
I wasn’t going by that speech, but by the information in comment #13, which puts a different light on it.
EDIT: Sorry. I misunderstood your comment. See next one.