The dangers of postmodern politics and political correctness can not be overstated, said Todd Huizinga, the president of the Center for Transatlantic Renewal and a former U.S. diplomat, during a Budapest lecture at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Huizinga’s lecture focused on the loss of traditional values and the ineptitude of the European Union to direct the states of the continent towards common goals.
The academic was particularly outspoken against political correctness, which he said is a distortion of hard-fought freedoms towards a sinister purpose. The West’s culture of political correctness has become a symptom of a postmodern politics where there is no longer any values or truths and everything is subjective.
He said the ideological terror of political correctness is best exemplified by how it reduces freedom of speech. This ideology manifests itself as a fear of those to speak up for what they cherish, such as the case of supporters of traditional Christian values increasingly afraid to speak their mind, for example, against gay marriage.
He also said that the European Union in its current form, which is a gathering of Brussels bureaucrats and a parliament that is not a true parliament, is a utopian experiment doomed to fail. In the meantime, the EU remains a dangerous institution pursuing a policy of globalism that seeks to transfer power from national actors to organizations with little accountability to democratic institutions.
Huizinga added, however, that Europe does need a somewhat looser alliance of strong nation-states.
According to the academic, the world is heading into a confrontation between globalists and sovereignists, or in other words, between progressive and traditionalist forces.
The lecture was organized by the Danube Institute, established in 2014 by conservative British political commentator John O’Sullivan with the aim to provide a forum for open political debates between conservatives and classical liberals and their democratic opponents. The audience mostly consisted of diplomats and international businessmen.
Huizinga was previously a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
As a U.S. diplomat from 1992 to 2012, Huizinga served in Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, and Costa Rica, as well as in the European Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Department of State in Washington D.C.
Title image: Former U.S. diplomat Todd Huizinga (youtube.com capture)
