There is a lot of evidence to support the idea that American conservatives are abandoning their love for democracy.
Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher have heaped praise on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who in recent years has consolidated power and cracked down on political opposition in the name of protecting family values and Western civilization.
Many Republicans don't think it's a good idea for Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, but many Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed laws that make it easier for the party to meddle with the results after the next election.
J.D. Vance, who won the Ohio Republican primary this week and talked darkly of Trump regaining power and ignoring the Supreme Court to remake the federal government, is one of the U.S. Senate candidates funded by tech moguls.
Republican politicians, technocrats from Silicon Valley and media people are not the only ones. A significant portion of the conservative religious community has embraced the drift toward illiberal and antidemocratic impulse.
The view that Catholicism should be the foundation for public law and policy has been promoted by Catholic intellectuals for a few years now. There has been a shift over the past decade toward the belief that Christians should take, in another sphere of Christianity that is very different from Catholicism.
David French is a conservative writer and senior editor of the Dispatch. French is trying to convince American Christians to reject these ideas.
None of the movements have a high degree of respect for individual liberty. They don't have a high degree of respect for the free speech or free exercise rights of those who disagree with them.
French said these ideas don't yet have a huge power in numbers, but that is changing because of the idea of politics as an all-or-nothing battle with one's opponents.
If you are animated by a lot of animosity and motivated by a lot of animosity, when someone comes along and says, "Well, here's some", then you really don't like the other side.
The more animosity that builds between parties, the less people are interested in the liberty and the flourishing of their political opponents, and the more they are interested in their defeat and their domination.
French said that democracy skepticism on both the right and left is caused by intense polarization, but that the problem is more widespread on the American right.
I have been a First Amendment advocate and First Amendment attorney for my entire career. It is more difficult for me to make a First Amendment argument to conservatives right now than it has ever been in my life.
French and Chang are trying to get American evangelicals to support liberal democracy at a time of increasing peril.
French and Chang, a former pastor who is now a consulting professor at Duke Divinity School and a senior fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary, are building efforts to create videos and other online content to educate and persuade.
The evangelical community is increasingly leaning towards Christian nationalism and other forms of authoritarian approaches that reject free speech, civil discourse, tolerance, and other core tenets of classical liberalism.
French told Yahoo News that he wants to convince conservatives not to support the Don't Say Gay law in Florida.
I do not carry a lot of water for Disney. They have their constitutional rights, but I don't like how much it kowtows to a genocidal Chinese regime and then adopts a strong moral pose here at home. The idea that the state will be able to punish people for exercising their rights is problematic.
Dreher wrote Friday in praise of the actions against Disney.
The state stepping in to protect families and institutions from the predation of entities like the Disney Company is what Dreher wrote about.
The great virtue of the American founding and the most functional liberal democracies is that they combine a high view of human value and dignity with a realistic view of human nature.
French said that more authoritarian structures underestimate the inherent character of the authoritarian and belittle and disrespect the fundamental dignity of the citizen.
Dreher is one of a growing number of conservatives who believe that democracy is impossible because progressives want to eliminate those like him and his way of life.
I would prefer the flawed liberal democracy that we had in our country until about thirty years ago, to the illiberal secularist democracy that renders people like me into enemies of the people.
Dreher wrote that we all seem to be barreling towards a future that is either left illiberalism or right illiberalism.
Dreher's talk is an ends-justifies-the-means philosophy that departs from Christian teaching.
The main thrust of being a Christian is the imitation of Christ, French said.
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