On Thursday, Tucker Carlson conducted a fairly in-depth interview with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.  It was a fascinating look at a classic liberal: liberty-oriented values that don't veer into anarchy, strong principles, and a healthy nationalism.  Leftists have used "nationalism" as a dirty word since Hitler, as they seek a borderless world they can control, but healthy nationalism means doing what Trump did: putting your countrymen first, without regard for other nations' demands that you subordinate your country to them — and that's what Orbán does.

Orbán was born in Hungary in 1963 when it was still under Soviet control.  As a child, he was a devoted communist, but his two years of military service turned him into a conservative.

Ironically, in 1989, it was a scholarship from the Soros Foundation that first took Orbán out of the communist bloc and saw him study political science at Oxford.  He entered politics in 1990 and has consistently run as a liberty-oriented conservative, who believes in traditional Judeo-Christian values, a strong national identity, and individual liberty.

For most Americans, Orbán, who has been prime minister since 2010 (his second term in that office), might not have been a recognized name were it not for the fact that, in 2015, Angela Merkel opened Europe's gates to millions of Muslim migrants, most of them single men.  Orbán, despite being a member of the E.U., refused to get with that program.  If people want to immigrant to Hungary, he said, they must comply with its immigration laws rather than just walking in.

Orbán has also presided over Hungary's passing a set of laws that, while they would have been normative three or four decades ago, are now decried as gross violations of LGBT human rights.

Hungary did not mandate prison for people identifying as LGBT, as the Soviet Union did, or condemn them to death, as Che Guevara did and the Muslims still do.  Instead, in 2020, Hungary came down on the side of biology and reality by refusing to recognize people's claims that they were members of the opposite sex (although the opposite sex is now just one of the 112 different "genders" our government and businesses recognize).

In addition, Orbán's government is trying to enact a law that censors LGBT positive content in movies, books, television, and advertisements.  It would also prevent schools from teaching materials that encourage children to enter the LGBT spectrum.  For those American parents struggling against the relentless pressure in schools, books, TV, and movies to get children to embrace some form of LGBT identity when they're as young as three, that sounds rather refreshing.

Another thing about Orbán that appeals to conservatives is the excellent relationship he had with America during the Trump years and that he had with Israel during the Netanyahu years.  For a central European nation to have a good relationship with the Jewish state is a powerful thing.  Now, though, Orbán faces a cabal of pure socialists and anti-Semitic fascists eager to knock him out of office.

And that gets us to Tucker Carlson, who has spent the week in Budapest, Hungary, from which he's broadcast his show.  He's been raving about the time he spent there, saying that the country is extremely well run: it's safe, clean, friendly, and prosperous and has an orderly border that returns illegal aliens to the other side as quickly as they break into Hungary.  Not many do, though.  Hungary has a simple barbed wire fence, which is given meaning with electricity.

On Thursday, after teasing the interview during the week, Tucker finally sat down to talk with Prime Minister Orbán.  It's a fascinating interview because Orbán operates from a rare set of principles in today's world: he believes that the needs of his people are his pre-eminent responsibility.  He does not exist to right the world's wrongs or to curry favor with others in the E.U.  He is the Hungarian leader, nothing more and nothing less.

I urge you to watch the entire interview.  It is extremely interesting, and in a sane world, Orbán would be articulating the policy guiding America.  It's a crying shame that we are heading down a completely opposite path:

Image: Viktor Orbán.  YouTube screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.