Post by Mya on Feb 14, 2022 8:36:45 GMT
In 1970, country music legend Ernest Tubbs scored a minor success with "It's America (love it or leave it)." Like Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me", released the same year, Tubbs pitted regular Americans against hippies, draft dodgers, and welfare cheats. "If things don't go their way, they could always move away," he sang. "That's what democracy means anyway."
In the midst of the Vietnam War, demands to love it or leave it were associated with the right. As recently as 2019, President Donald Trump deployed them against the so-called "squad" of Democratic congresswomen. For their part, liberals insisted "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." In different versions, that phrase (often falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson) became a staple of left-wing rhetoric.
Over the last few weeks, those associations have been reversed. Now it's conservatives wrapping themselves in the mantle of dissent, while progressives contend they should accept America as it is or pack their bags.
Rather than Vietnam, the dispute now revolves around Hungary, previously best known for goulash but now a symbol of conservative resistance to globalized liberalism. Conservative admiration for Hungary has been mounting since 2015, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán resisted an EU program to resettle mostly Muslim asylum-seekers. It reached a new peak last week, when Fox News' Tucker Carlson broadcast a whole week of programs from Budapest.
Liberal journalist Matt Yglesias responded by wondering why conservatives don't move to Hungary if they like it so much? He went on to argue that by many measures the United States is a richer and more attractive society. It's not just about comparisons of GDP. According to Yglesias, our food is better, too. Breakfast tacos: love them or leave them!
Yglesias' encouragement for disgruntled conservatives to buy one-way tickets was partly an exercise in trolling. There's something ironic about otherwise flamboyant patriots like Carlson comparing their own country so unfavorably to another. Yet Yglesias isn't the first to suggest that some Americans might be happier elsewhere. Last summer, Rod Dreher reported that "I'm hearing that there are conservative Americans in the DC area who are talking about attempting to emigrate to one of the Visegrád countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland)."
theweek.com/republicans/1003573/hungary-patriotism
In the midst of the Vietnam War, demands to love it or leave it were associated with the right. As recently as 2019, President Donald Trump deployed them against the so-called "squad" of Democratic congresswomen. For their part, liberals insisted "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." In different versions, that phrase (often falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson) became a staple of left-wing rhetoric.
Over the last few weeks, those associations have been reversed. Now it's conservatives wrapping themselves in the mantle of dissent, while progressives contend they should accept America as it is or pack their bags.
Rather than Vietnam, the dispute now revolves around Hungary, previously best known for goulash but now a symbol of conservative resistance to globalized liberalism. Conservative admiration for Hungary has been mounting since 2015, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán resisted an EU program to resettle mostly Muslim asylum-seekers. It reached a new peak last week, when Fox News' Tucker Carlson broadcast a whole week of programs from Budapest.
Liberal journalist Matt Yglesias responded by wondering why conservatives don't move to Hungary if they like it so much? He went on to argue that by many measures the United States is a richer and more attractive society. It's not just about comparisons of GDP. According to Yglesias, our food is better, too. Breakfast tacos: love them or leave them!
Yglesias' encouragement for disgruntled conservatives to buy one-way tickets was partly an exercise in trolling. There's something ironic about otherwise flamboyant patriots like Carlson comparing their own country so unfavorably to another. Yet Yglesias isn't the first to suggest that some Americans might be happier elsewhere. Last summer, Rod Dreher reported that "I'm hearing that there are conservative Americans in the DC area who are talking about attempting to emigrate to one of the Visegrád countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland)."
theweek.com/republicans/1003573/hungary-patriotism