In the interesting new book, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism and the Future of the West, author R.R. Reno examines the philosophical sea change tearing at western societies that has introduced a level of national anxiety not felt since World War II.
As a political ideology to counter nationalism, the late Karl Popper, a teacher and philosopher at the London School of Economics, introduced the open society, believing that the strong gods, that is, the objects of a person’s love and devotion — faith, family, and patriotism, among others — are the “passions and loyalties that unite societies.” But, according to Popper and his disciples, George Soros, among them, these strong allegiances are destructive and lead to authoritarianism and fascist oppression, and they must be destroyed. Only by eradicating those strong gods and opening societies along geographical and cultural boundaries, as well as through licentious morality and unfettered personal behavior, can peace and true freedom be found.
If we stand for nothing, however, we will die for nothing.
In place of affirming the strong god of truth, mankind should rather be engaged in the search for individual meaning — an ever-evolving ideology that has introduced the weak and conditional “her truth” or “his truth” into the lexicon, referenced repeatedly during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
But there is a big problem. Reno writes that “by Popper’s reckoning, totalitarianism is in the DNA of Western philosophy.” So Western philosophy, Popper believed, along with its metaphysical foundation, must not only be rejected, it must be undermined and replaced. In order for individuals to walk by the light of their own illumination, strong truth claims must end — especially in public life. Principled political arguments and policies must land on the trash heap. “Authenticity in personal life demands rejecting the authority of traditional moral norms. … You can’t lead young people to the ‘post-conventional’ promised land without condemnations of ‘conventionalism.’”
Whether she fully understands it, which seems doubtful, this is at the heart of Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s agenda to reestablish Radio Free Europe in Hungary. The Ohio Democrat has been in Congress for 36 years. She has never married and lives with her elderly brother in the modest Toledo house in which they grew up.
Kaptur cites Soros-funded oracles as her authority and says she sees “anti-democratic developments” in Hungary reviving nationalist “narratives that led to centuries of conflict on the continent.” She warns that it is a “time of rising authoritarianism.” In this, Kaptur completely ignores the facts that in its most recent election, Oct. 13, the opposition party ousted Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party in Budapest and in several other large-city mayoral elections, giving the world what Budapest’s new liberal mayor, Gergely Karacsony, calls, “a lesson in democracy.”
So, which is it? Is Hungary the fascist state that Soros, Kaptur, and other left-wing globalists are seeking to portray, or, as with the Trump administration presiding over America, is it an inconvenient reminder that most freedom-loving people trust governments that govern closest to home, rather than from Brussels or alongside New York’s East River? If those people at heart are patriotic and fond of constitutional nationalism, where faith, family, and moral order bring the progress of prosperity and security at home, if “totalitarianism” really is in their DNA, then hearts and minds, particularly of the young, must be changed. That won’t be easy.
The recent mayoral elections will not affect Orban, who remains wildly popular due to a strong economy, hefty wage increases, and secure immigration policies. These are the same conditions that worry Democrats looking at the 2020 elections here at home.
I was once Assistant Director of the United States Information Agency and director of the Voice of America under President Ronald Reagan and then-President George H.W. Bush, as well as the leader of Radio Marti to Cuba and later of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I was for years on the board of RIAS in West Berlin (Radio in the American Sector). I was intimately acquainted with all of the world’s radio services, the BBC, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Kol Yisrael , et al., and their excellent work during the decades of the Cold War.
Because of my long experience with radio, I find Kaptur’s campaign stupid and offensive. It is an effort to weaponize Radio Free Europe in much the same way other congressional Democrats are using impeachment proceedings to smear President Trump. These both are desperate attempts to delegitimize the will of the respective electorates and undermine free elections. The plan to manipulate Radio Free Europe is an affront to millions of people who suffered, sacrificed, and died beneath the yoke of Soviet Communism. For them, Radio Free Europe was a font of both information and hope for freedom denied by their own governments, a lifeline of liberty against the tyranny of Marxist totalitarianism.
To reestablish Radio Free Europe so it can be used as a bludgeon against a democratically elected government is an ugly irony that assaults the mind.
American leftists dislike Hungarian patriotism, and they have come to loathe Orban for his opposition to open borders and his rejection of left-wing ideas pushed by Kaptur and Soros and their fellow globalists in a steady propaganda war. In fact, it is more than propaganda. As Reno notes, “economic globalism shreds the social contract. Identity politics disintegrates civic bonds,” and the “greatest threat to the political health of the West is a decline in solidarity and the breakdown of trust between leaders and the led.”
While Trump and Orban are strong personalities focused on protecting America for Americans and Hungary for Hungarians, Reno makes a compelling case that their brand of populism is “not nearly as dangerous to the West as the fanaticism of our leadership class, whose hyper-moralistic sense of mission—either us or Hitler!—prevents us from addressing our economic, demographic, cultural, and political problems.” If left unchecked, Reno believes that the growth of these problems will stoke “further discontent and greater polarization,” to which our leadership class will “respond with amplified anti-fascist or anti-racist rhetoric.” In this way, he warns, it will be their conviction that “only they can save the West,” but that leaders like Kaptur, Soros, and their rich and powerful confederates “will shipwreck our nations.”
Richard W. Carlson is a former U.S. ambassador to the Seychelle Islands and a former journalist. He is a winner of the George Foster Peabody Award and numerous Hollywood Emmys. He lives in Washington, D.C.
