When Good People Leave: Emigration, Bad Leadership, and the Silence That Follows
There is a strange and painful way bad leadership thrives. The best people leave.
That was the central insight behind a recent Economist article on emigration and bad rulers. The article focused on Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has remained in power for nearly sixteen years. As Hungary faces political corruption, economic decline, and weakening democratic norms, many of its educated, ambitious, and reform-minded citizens have begun to leave. Young professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and other skilled citizens are moving elsewhere in Europe or even to America in search of better opportunities and freer societies.
A Watershed Moment for Evangelicals?
Recently, President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself in a Christ-like role, healing a sick individual, with different people around him and a lot of strange imagery in the photo. There were eagles—which are not the issue—but also fighter jets, glowing figures in the sky, and an overall tone that was just bizarre. Some of the figures looked almost demonic. It was a weird image in a lot of different ways. But the bigger issue was not just that it was weird. The bigger issue was the blasphemy of presenting yourself as Jesus. That is, by definition, the action of an antichrist—presenting yourself as a pseudo-Christ. The photo itself was creepy, which is probably the right word for it.
Not Built on Superhero Pastors
In a world addicted to charisma, scale, and centralized power, Christ’s answer is startlingly ordinary: not a platformed personality, but a sanctified people in a hostile world.
The Moral Ecology of Bad Leadership
Leadership rarely collapses all at once. More often, it decays gradually. A leader casts a compelling vision, followers rally behind it, a culture forms around it, and before long, an institution can no longer tell the difference between excellence and illusion. What began as ambition becomes deception. What looked like momentum turns out to be moral rot. That is one of the enduring lessons from the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Heaven’s Hall of Fame
In a conversation with a friend, we discussed the thought: there’s a Hall of Fame for everything—tow trucks, insurance, even cockroaches. But the real question is sharper:
If there were a Christian Hall of Fame, who would be in it—and by what standard?
Dictators Aren’t Leaders
We live in an era where leadership training is everywhere. Books, podcasts, and conferences promise the latest framework, the newest method, the secret that will finally “move the needle.” Pastors and church leaders, in particular, are routinely targeted as prime consumers of leadership content.
And yet leadership remains in crisis.