Viktor Orbán has a habit of giving controversial speeches in Romania. His notorious 2014 illiberalism speech was delivered there. Just a few weeks ago, he delivered another whopper, which included unmistakably racist language. In an essay I wrote for The… Read More ›
Politics
Hungary’s Autocrat Orbán Fends Off Opposition Challenge
I wrote this short article for The Bulwark on April 3, 2022, the night of Viktor Orbán’s big election victory. It was a first take, which I think has held up pretty well. You can read it here.
What Was Putin Thinking?
In this episode of BaerTalk, Svetlana Savranskaya, a Senior Analyst at the National Security Archives, talks about the war in Ukraine from the Russian perspective. She tries to get inside Putin’s head to explain what he might have been thinking… Read More ›
Expect a Viktor Orbán Win Next Month
This article was published in The Bulwark. Not only do I predict what will happen in Hungary’s election, but I explain why making this prediction is easy – because Hungary’s not a democracy. This first two paragraphs of the article… Read More ›
Interview with Zoltán Fleck, Chair of Péter Márki-Zay’s Constitutional Working Group
Zoltán Fleck is a Professor of Law and Sociology at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. He was recently appointed by Péter Márki-Zay, the leader of Hungary’s democratic opposition, to head up a working group tasked with examining constitutional… Read More ›
CPAC Is Going to Hungary, Never Mind Viktor Orban’s Attacks on Churches
Here’s a short piece about Hungary that I wrote for The Unhttps://theunpopulist.substack.com/Populist, a substack newsletter started by Shikha Dalmia which is committed to defending liberal democracy and opposing the rise of authoritarianism around the globe. “In his Metamorphoses, written after… Read More ›
Three Myths About Viktor Orbán and His Remaking of Hungary
This article was published in The Bulwark. Below is a teaser. You can read the full article by clicking the link at the bottom of the post. “When Hungarian armies invaded Europe around A.D. 900, shooting arrows from horseback and… Read More ›
Is Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies a Good Book?
H. David Baer (professor of theology), Alexander Faludy (journalist, church historian), and Joseph Novak (Hungarian Baptist pastor) discuss Ron Dreher’s new book, Live Not By Lies, and consider the questions: How well has Dreher described the experience of East European Christians? Is Dreher right to draw parallels between 20th century communism and American today?
Secularization Strikes Back: The End of American Religion?
“One striking feature about religious commitment today is how closely it aligns with conservative politics. Religiously committed Americans are very likely to vote Republican. Yet it wasn’t always that way. Alexis de Tocqueville famously attributed the strength of American religion… Read More ›
A Time for Theologians during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Twenty-five years ago when I first started graduate school, I used to enjoy reading First Things, the “journal of religion and public life” founded by Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus was a Lutheran “neoconservative” who eventually converted to Catholicism and became… Read More ›
H. David Baer 