AMERICA WILL NOT BE HUNGARY

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. Today we read that while we were distracted by DJT hosting Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago for a primer on deconstructing democracy, Mr. Orban also met with the creators of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation. This is a meeting that should scare all of us. In Hungary, Orbán has undermined democracy, gutting the civil service and filling it with loyalists; attacking immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals; taking over businesses for friends and family, and moving the country away from the rules-based international order supported by NATO. Taking liberty. Not giving it. Kevin Roberts, president of the HF tells us, point blank, that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.” Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country MUST embrace. In their vision, the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’” Dismantling the administrative state in this document starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands.  Purging the civil service is a hallmark of dictators, whose loyalists then take over media, education, courts, and the military. With the government firmly in the hands of a dictator’s loyalists, “things like water or schools or Social Security checks” depend on your declaration of loyalty, and there is no recourse. “You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored,” and “[e]ven courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children.” Decentralized federal government. Leave everything up to the states. We’ve seen how that is working out. This grand plan as envisioned sees some sort of cabal of those who know what’s right for the rest of us, and will have the power to force conformity in all things. I don’t know about y’all but I was raised in the era that warned us to be wary of Big Brother. Taking away our personal liberties by claiming to give us freedom is exactly that. This dark vision of our future country is only made possible by the very freedoms these guys hope to take away from the rest of us. They are degrading the very democracy that is allowing them to broadcast its death in plain sight. But America is not Hungary. Count on it.