Last Night A JD Saved My Life...
Weekly briefings on the life of The New European Capital of Conservatism.
Events This Week
Strap in. Big week. Something in the air. Can’t imagine what… JD Vance is a young man with great potential. Military service, Yale Law School, private equity, author - and apparently Vice President of the United States, which always looks good on one's CV. Here he is in Vienna, simpler times, 2023, enjoying a bevvy, a giant pretzel, a sausage, and some weird yellow gloop with Rod Dreher (who took the picture). Today and tomorrow, the promising Vance will be back in town, holding talks with the PM, and ‘delivering remarks’ on the Hungarian-US relationship, at the MTK Sportpark for what is billed as Hungarian-American Friendship Day. More prosaically, expect major road closures, from the Castle District to Andrássy to the airport. Basically, if you were thinking of using a road, don’t. Daily News Hungary has the full list.
On Thursday, do not miss Henry Olsen. He’s a big guy - hard to miss - but intellectually, Olsen is also one of the most respected pollsters in America, and host of the excellent Beyond The Polls podcast. He’s in Hungary, doing some final field work ahead of the election, which he will summarise in a talk and panel entitled Hungary Chooses (5:30PM at the Villa). Plenty of big names will be weighing in — John O’Sullivan - law giver Ralph Schoelhammer - clean-living professor Patrick Egan - founder of Brussels Signal John Fund - National Review columnist István Kiss - one of the biggest psephology nerds you will ever meet Calum Nicholson - vaguely piratical Research Director The Hungarian election has all the makings of a humdinger — but will it be Thatcher in 1979: a big swing towards the untested? Or will it be the John Major in 1992 - a failure of nerve over the quality of the opposition? Olsen’s insight is that beyond the campaign tinsel, voters often go with their gut.
For the past six months, the DI has been cracking deals and auditioning starlets. We’ve entered the movie biz: wine-ing and Stein-ing producers, directors, and camera crews to shoot our first feature. Now it’s time for the gala. Wednesday is the premier of The Future At The Gate - the DI’s hour length documentary, directed by Isaiah Smallman, about 2015 and the Hungarian experience of immigration. Come and see the future from 6PM at the Uránia National Film Theatre (1088 Budapest, Rákóczi ut 21). A beautiful Art Deco space that’s worth seeing in its own right. In a world where… migrants break down fences… this is Central European policy architecture... as you’ve never seen it before… etc etc.
Today, the Danube Institute is hosting a joint event with MCC, at MCC - 4PM till 5PM. “Where’s our goddamned money?” could be the unofficial subtitle - the infamous ‘million a day’, plus other structural funds sums to 18 billion Euros at last count: enough dough to fully modernise the country’s rail network - or build two new subway lines in Budapest. Officially, of course, it is called The EU’s Double Standards – The Case of Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Ukraine, and features the Fedex-forward Gergely Dobozi, and the ever-excellent Rodrigo Ballester. Moderation by the fragrant Noémi Pálfalvi, who has promised not to talk about her Pauly Shore obsession.
Are you ready for a time of upheaval? Based in Budapest had enough trouble when Carlsberg changed the recipe a couple of years back - never mind the multipolar thunderdome we’re entering. But the question is rhetorical. Song Lilei is Director, European Research Center, a Chinese think tank in Europe. She wants to tell us how Europe can keep itself together at a moment when the Hungry Hippos of the Great Game are gnashing like never before. That’s: Strategic Autonomy in a Time of Upheaval: How the EU's Quest for Sovereignty Reshapes China-Europe Relations” Wednesday 5PM till 6PM, down the MCC.
In 1990, the US won the First Iraq War by a country mile thanks to their Revolution In Military Affairs doctrine: tight fast phalanxes of tanks, aerial supremacy, getting inside the OODA loop of their opponent: seeding Shock and Awe. But that was a long time ago now. The new model army is about drones, ballistic missiles, and AI systems. It is rough and ready, improvisational, almost guerrilla, unlike the clean lines of the old paradigm. This discontinuity is the focus of the MCC-MKI Center For Geopolitics panel, 5PM Thursday. Featuring Robert Clark, a British defence and foreign policy researcher.
Finally at the MCC: we are glad to be graced by Oxford Researcher Jacob Williams. Jake is about to finish up his PhD in Post-Liberalism, and has eyes on a full time move to the capital of Post-Liberalism. Here, he’ll be presenting on quite what post-liberalism means (always a bit hazy - do we want Papal Supremacy and The Inquisition or not?). That’s 5:30PM Thursday at MCC.
Finally finally —Sunday night, the MCC is hosting its own election night party. They promise live coverage, and panels (panels!). Oh, and booze. Hungarian elections, we are reliably informed, tend to tally quickly. As opposed to British ones, where after the initial shock of the exit poll, everyone waits increasingly careworn till 2:30AM for results to start trickling in from Moreton-in-Marsh, followed by a massive info-dump of 300 seats around 4AM that basically confirms the exit poll. 9PM till late. Tas Vezér utca.
It only remains to say that, because of all this election stuff, next week Based in Budapest will come out on Tuesday. Or will it? Perhaps there will just be eerie silence, radio static, a furious SOS tapping against a fading sine wave? Anyway, Tuesday. 9PM till late.
Around Town
Perspectives and people from the week
Best panel of the day involved the irrepressible Ashley Frawley, who gave a brimstone ad libbed speech about helicopter parenting, safetyism and inflated expectations of marriage. “I mean, I just saw a boy I thought was cute, and I said ‘I want to marry him’ and so I did it. I really didn’t think too hard! You just have to deal with things!”
Make A Place To Bury Strangers your pre-election gig. Get into the mood with coruscating sheets of industrial rock from these eminent survivors of the 2008 indie boom. They never compromised an inch. Much like the PM. A38 (the boat) - doors open at 19:30.
Doug Stokes is a Non-Resident Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute, (more lately leading the charge at Modul University in Vienna). In the European Conservative, he’s taken on a new report from The Cato Institute’s Johan Norberg which surveys the track record of Orbánism’s 16 years. Norberg was critical - and Stokes is equally critical of his methodology. Hungary, Doug concludes, was punished for when it did things relative to the rest of the EU - rather than for what it did. After all, the EU has now come round to Hungarian ideals on migration (even if the implementation is still wild). And they are about to bend beneath fundamental reality on energy. Full piece here.
Last week was a big one for God. We had Iain McGilchrist on ‘Why We Need Religion’ and the recent Pusey House conference he attended, in UnHerd. And Lord David Frost, past and possibly future Fellow, turned over the revival of Christianity in his Telegraph column.
Paper of the Week
The Post-Liberalism Debate
Philip Pilkington, Jacob Williams and Andrew Koppelman trade perspectives on what Post-Liberalism means in this follow up to their recent talk on the matter.
The above is, of course, roughly what happened in most Western societies from the 1960s and 1970s onwards. Laws enforcing sexual morality and substantively privileging religion were, fairly quickly, either repealed or abolished: liberal politicians offered the public a cacophony of often-conflicting rationales for their actions. How, then, should we assume Convivians, or citizens of Western countries in the last third of the last century, interpreted what was happening? The obvious answer is that they understood the law, which had always been a “coercive teacher”, to be witnessing to a new set of purported moral truths. Citizens will, of course, respond to this legal witnessing in various ways. Some will consciously resist the teaching. Some will embrace it enthusiastically. Some will regard it with ambivalence. But the state has just put its thumb on the scales of judgement in a powerful fashion. Few will be able to escape the influence of the new teaching, even if the influence manifests itself mainly in virulent rejection of this new progressive regime. Read More
Comings & Goings
The Big Man or the Little Princeling...
Stay tuned.
Dates For Your Diary
NatCon Jerusalem — June 8-10ARC Conference — 23-25 June"Kutyából nem lesz szalonna"
—You can't make bacon out of a dog.
("A leopard can't change its spots")