Sublime

The best we could hope for is a modest kind of politics, one in which we do not seek to implement an ideal but in which we grant people maximum freedom to pursue the different and conflicting ideals that constitute the human situation.

Most people are broadly communitarian: small-c conservative in their approach to matters of state and small-s socialist on public services, fair play and hard work. They cherish liberty but value authority too.

Perhaps more than any other European politician, Viktor Orbán is a theorist of what political scientists call ‘illiberal democracy’, that is, rule by a majority but without liberal protections for individuals or minorities, whether they be defined by ethnicity, religion or gender. In a speech in 2018, Orbán defined Christian democracy as a system t

So too we can expect the vitriol to die down when Trump leaves office and an uneasy calm to exist. Then, following the election of 2028, a new explosion, as the incoming president’s radical policies—from the standpoint of the prior half a century—come under attack. But this vitriol will be simply the surface of the deep structural changes. For the

Pour Tocqueville, l’histoire est faite par des mouvements de fond – à son époque, la montée de la société démocratique –, mais aussi par les dirigeants. Ainsi s’expliquent à la fois le pluralisme des institutions et le destin différent de pays aussi proches que la France et le Royaume-Uni. Aussi n’est-il pas moins important de comprendre les hommes