What’s more important, what a person says, or what they do? While it’s best when words and deeds match up, if we have to pick, I think we’d go with deeds. “Actions speak louder than words,” and all that. This is something people of all political persuasions should agree on.

So I’m bothered by the appeal of authoritarian strongmen (they’re always men) to the conservative right. I wonder if their fanboys really know who they’re hanging out with.

The obvious example is the presumptive nominee of one of our major parties. He has enormous mass support among religious conservatives, despite his well-known personal peccadilloes and dishonest business dealings. But he’s just the latest in a long and disturbing trend.

We can go back in history for other examples of social conservatives being seduced by religious rhetoric. I’m thinking of Pope Pius XII and Hitler in WWII. Why was the Vatican unwilling to come out against Nazi Germany, instead remaining neutral throughout the war, despite the obvious rightness of the Allied cause and the horrible brutality of the Nazi regime?

After eight decades, historians still haven’t resolved this question. They probably never will.

But one factor is clear: The Nazis professed belief in God, while the Communist Bolsheviks were militant atheists. As horrible as the Nazis were, openly professed atheism as seen as equally repugnant. In the battle of Nazi words versus Nazi deeds, their words won the battle for Vatican neutrality.

In the present day, we have Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He’s won fans with the Fox News crowd by decrying America’s obsession with transgender politics, our support for gay marriage, and our supposedly lax social mores. His administration has even blamed the war in Ukraine on “forced gay pride parades” in the now illegally occupied Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.

By contrast, he portrays Russia as a longstanding bastion of family values. He has banned “the international gay and lesbian movement”, whatever that is, reaffirmed the traditional roles of men and women in Russian society, and publicly proclaims his secret baptism and belief in God at every given opportunity.

To Putin’s fanboys in America, let me ask you this. What kind of conservative murders his political opponents? What kind of conservative ensures real opposition parties are not allowed to run against him? What kind of social conservative leads a country that continues to have among the highest rates of abortion, out-of-wedlock births and divorce in the developed world?

Do true conservatives build their army with pardoned murderers and rapists? What conservative principle demands the abduction and brainwashing of children from conquered territory?

Is all of this OK as long as a leader says the right things about God and values? Or do actions also matter?

Victor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, is another leader who some conservatives seem to admire. Tucker Carlson is a big fan of Orban’s “illiberal democracy”. I’ve got questions for him, too:

What conservative values require supporting an anti-Semite who shuts down universities he doesn’t like? Why kind of conservative celebrates an election win by rewriting his country’s constitution to give him more power?

Should America have a president like that? How would you compare Orban to, say, Ronald Reagan? Notice any differences?

The conservative movement is at a crossroads. It can, if it chooses, sip the sweet cocktail of religious rhetoric and “family values”, doped with the rape drug of authoritarianism.

Or it can walk out of the bar and enjoy the fresh air of limited government, personal freedom and economic prosperity.

I know which choice I’m rooting for.

Barry Fagin is a senior fellow at the Independence Institute in Denver and the author of The Radical Center. His views are his alone. Readers can contact Fagin at barry@faginfamily.net.