Pat Buchanan’s strange new respect for the Ayatollah

He also resurrects older tropes. “Democracy lacks content,” he writes. “As a political system, it does not engage the heart.” This is an odd thing to say given the number of Americans who have been willing to die to uphold democratic values, but it underlies the alienation of nationalists or populists who yearn for “men of action.” Democracy bores and disappoints Buchanan; autocrats like Orbán make his heart beat faster.

This, of course, is a threat liberal democracy has faced in the past: It can seem dull and anodyne when compared to the more romantic and manly ideologies of nationalist or totalitarian blood-and-soil. To its critics, values like modesty, prudence, tolerance, pluralism, and a concern for constitutionalism seem weak and etiolated excuses for failure to grasp the bright shining future offered by the strong and determined. In this view, winning is what matters, not the norms that have long governed American democracy.