Yesterday I gave you a long exegesis on how Victor Orbán legally turned Hungary into a competitive autocracy. The short version is that Hungarian democracy—like American democracy—was run on the honor system. I hope you’ll read the long version anyway.
Today I want to talk about how the incoming Hungarian government is thinking about structural reforms to take their democracy off of the honor system. We should pay attention to this because if we’re lucky enough to throw off Trumpism in America, we will face a choice.
Should the American opposition party focus on “the future” and “kitchen-table issues”?
Or should they go after the retreating authoritarians hammer-and-tongs and use power to reform the structural weaknesses that allowed Trumpism to flourish?
After we talk about what the Hungarians are looking at, we’ll talk about some of the things that should be on the table in a post-Trump America.
Warning: We’re in a late republican period. If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild and pretty far out there and go in directions that a lot of liberals right now are uncomfortable with.1
Let’s go.