American Thought Leaders - Is Hungary a ‘Democratic Backslider?’ Shea Bradley-Farrell Explains

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Shea Bradley-Farrell is president of Counterpoint Institute and author of “Last Warning to the West.” In this episode, we dive into Hungary’s atypical policies when it comes to immigration, family, and social issues.“I wanted to find out why Hungary had and how had it retained its unique identity and its love for its national sovereignty,” she says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

I wanted to find out why Hungary had, and how, had it retained its unique identity and its love for its national sovereignty. Dr. Shea Bradley Farrell is the president of Counterpoint Institute, an author of Last Warning to the West. The communists at that time were dividing people along class lines, right? We see more so today dividing people along class lines, right? We see more so today dividing people along racial lines, dividing people along gender lines. We dive into Hungary's atypical policies

when it comes to immigration, family and social issues. Freedom is not free and we are only a generation away from losing our freedom. Americans don't remember what it's like not to be free. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Shea Bradley-Ferrell, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's an honour, Jan. Thank you so much for having me. It's high time. You know, you've had your book out for a while now, Last Warning to the West.

Of course, it's looking at all sorts of things related to Hungary, and we're going to talk about that. You've also had a recent trip to the border, and you're creating a bunch of border policy in terms of part of your vision 2025. Why is it the last warning to the West? Well, hopefully it's not the last warning right? But Jan I think we're very close to losing our freedom. Reagan of course said we're only a generation away and I didn't understand that as acutely as I do now. The reason that I wrote the book for Americans and I called it Last Warning to the West is because when I went to Hungary to do research for this book, I was not only just doing statistical

data and historical data, but I was interviewing Hungarians. People in the government, yes, but also just people out in the countryside, regular people, plumbers, decorators, that kind of thing. And person after person said to me that the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminded them of their Soviet era. They were occupied by the Soviet Union for 46 years until 1991. So this is something very fresh in their memory, living under communism, living under Marxist oppression, living without freedom. And, you know, that's a gut punch, right? Being told that your country, the land of the free, reminds them of their Soviet era. You know, it's interesting because they also, they were occupied,

but as with all these, you know, you know Soviet owned countries or the satellite countries you know they kind of many of them participated as well right and so that that the sort of emergence out of that was an interesting proposition for everybody and this is something I've been charting for example in my home native Poland, right? Why did Poland do the way it did? Why did other countries do differently? Well, you know, the Soviets marched into Budapest in early 1945 and pushed the Nazis out. They had been there occupying Hungary as well. So the Soviets took over. Yes, they had sympathizers with the Soviets that were from the Hungarian people, but it was the Soviet Union that dictated and made the communists there. But once the Soviets came in, you know, all bets were off. And they took over this headquarters that the Nazis had previously been in.

It's called the House of Terror. And in this place, and I've been there many times, there was a dungeon underneath where political dissidents were tortured, were killed by both the Nazis and the Soviets. So it's very interesting. Someone said to me, you know, the Nazis, some of them that were working there in the House of Terror, they just changed their uniforms and went over to working for the Soviets. Right. I mean, Poles, of course, always imagined themselves to be under Russian, frankly, Russian,

they would say, occupation during that time. And even the Polish communists, they tried to be as opposed as they could under the circumstances, even though they were basically in power as a result of the Soviet Union, like you say. So Yalta, the Conference of Yalta was happening in early 1945. And you have FDR and Churchill and Stalin. And during that time, you know, Churchill and FDR basically handed

over the satellite countries to Stalin. And the purpose of the conference was to make sure that these countries were given, were nurtured in democracy. So Stalin agreed to that, not intending to do it. You know, he also agreed to give fair elections in Hungary. He never meant to do it, and he didn't. But if you go back to the beginning of the war, Germany marches into Poland, right? Weeks later, Russia marches into Poland. But before that, we had an agreement between Hitler and Stalin, the Hitler- Stalin Pact. You probably know about this. That was a secret pact that divided up these countries between Hitler and Stalin and what happened is the United States and and Britain essentially gave Stalin the

Soviet Union exactly what they wanted although they were aggressors in the war in the first place so I find that very interesting and very ironic yeah I think another name was the Ribbentrop Molotov pact. Yes, that's just harder to say. But so again let's let's come back to the topic at hand because you know I of course I've been thinking a lot about this lately. What is the warning? The warning is to recognize the Marxism that has crept into our Western civilization. You go to the Bolshevik Revolution and the types of issues that were coming out of Marxism at that time, abortion which was being branded as healthcare, the purposeful diminishment of parental rights.

Man, have we really had to deal with that in our country lately, especially with the transgender activism. So if you look at the things that were coming from Marxism, we're doing very similar things. I put the 11 points of communist psychological warfare in the book. What's interesting is they were written by our Department of Defense or published by our Department of Defense, written by a national security expert. But it was put forth as like a lesson, a lesson plan to help people counteract communism, Marxism in 1959. But if you look at these points, every one of them is applying to the United States and what we're doing today. I'll give

you two examples. One is to create a propaganda body. The government will create a propaganda or a media body that puts forth its message. The Biden administration has been blamed for, if you look at the case, Murphy versus Missouri that's going on right now, they have been blamed for suppressing entire bodies of American citizens' thoughts on social media. This correlates, like I said, with this point of communist psychological warfare. Another example is using a crisis to gain control. We saw governments all over the world using COVID as an excuse to put people in camps in some countries, like in Australia, to force vaccines, vaccine mandates upon people, etc., etc. We

can talk more about that if you'd like. But my point in writing the book and giving the warning is to tell people to wake up. I think that as the Hungarians said to me, you know, Americans don't remember what it's like not to be free. They do. They gained their freedom again in 1991. So there were many people, I mean, I was certainly alive in 1991. There are many people that remember what it's like to live under Soviet oppression. in their late 80s and 90s that really gave me the ins and outs of living a lifetime under fear and the loss of freedom. So one of the things I remember from Stephen Pausani's list, what you're describing, it's like a fascinating thing. It's something I didn't know about until I read your book, is this need to kind of instill hate. That's right. To enrage people towards hatred, to divide them. The communists at that time were dividing people

along class lines, right? We see more so today dividing people along racial lines, dividing people along gender lines. We certainly are dealing with that. You know, in many ways, the victim against the victimized. Yeah. A lot of this whole pro-Palestinian thing is about casting Israel as a victimizer and the Palestinians, even though Hamas is a terrorist organization, as the victim. That's a whole strategy. But yeah, that's a very important point, Jan, that you bring up. And another one I think is very interesting is to actually

kind of twist all courage and strength and will to live out of your opponents, to beat them down until they really can't stand up and fight for themselves. My opinion is that what that is what we've seen happen with Trump over and over again. We, you know, calling even conservatives or people that voted for Trump, domestic terrorists, scaring people, indicting people that do not deserve to be indicted. I think it's part of this warfare, lawfare, to really beat out people's will to survive. You focus on foreign policy at CounterPoint Institute, of course, where you're the president. Well, CounterPoint Institute, we focus on foreign policy and national security. And I always say what makes us unique is that we don't just sit around writing great policy papers,

which we do that, but we go to the place where the issues are happening. About a week ago, I just got back from the U.S. southern border talking to residents, law enforcement, local law enforcement, border patrol agents, business owners down there to find out what's really happening at the border. I've been writing op-eds about that, doing media about it. We don't really know what's happening down there. And the border residents are disheartened by that. The politicians are coming down there and they tell their stories over and over again, then the politicians come back to D.C. and nothing changes.

I probably spent three or four months in Central Europe last year going to the stories there. I went to the Ukrainian refugee center in Hungary to find out really what was going on. So we try to go to where the issues are happening. Our first objective is to educate Americans about what's going on, like you and I are doing right now. And then we go to Capitol Hill and talk to legislators there or the administration to try to shape policy and shape legislation. And you partnered with this organization in Hungary as well. It's called the Center for Fundamental Rights, and they are a conservative think tank.

They're in Budapest, Hungary. And yes, they published my book, and I was a senior fellow for them for about a year and a half. And they invited me me over and I was allowed to do interviews with, you know, senior government officials as well as some focus groups out in the country and with students in Budapest and it was really a great experience. I got to know Hungary very well. I've been to Hungary, I guess, maybe five or six times at this point and it's become somewhat like a second home. We hear a lot of different things about Hungary. Something that I've heard a lot about is very interesting family policies. Okay, so promoting family, promoting increased childbirth in the society and so forth.

Very, very interesting to me. We also heard here that could be a bit heavy-handed. Yeah, the overall leftist media is very antagonistic towards Hungary. Our own U.S. ambassador is very antagonistic towards Hungary. Hungary has dug their heels in against the woke agenda. They came through 46 years of communism, still a Christian nation, still a freedom-loving nation. They spent a thousand years actually with occupation of the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, the Habsburg, the Habsburg Empire, then the Nazis, then the Soviets, all along maintaining their Christianity, their love for their family, and their love for their country. And, you know, the European Union

raises its head, and they will not tolerate the top-down decision-making of where the European Union is going right now. Do you know the philosopher, the great conservative writer, Sir Roger Scruton? Do you know him? Well, he's well-loved in Hungary. He actually was part of the underground, of course, during the Soviet time, bringing books and knowledge and networking people during the Soviet occupation. He had a statement, a quote that I put in the book that was basically saying, you know, even though the wall has come down,-down decision-making body, the European Union, that is still trying to hold on to people's thoughts, tell them how to think, take away their sovereignty. So to go back to your original question, you know, Hungary is determined not to

lose their sovereignty again, even if it's to a body that seems more civilized, shall we say, the European Union and the Biden administration. And there are three main issues that the Biden administration and the EU are angry with Hungary about. It has to do with the radical gender theory. The EU has tried to push transgender ideology into classrooms and curriculum there, a referendum done with the citizens in that the citizens overwhelmingly said no. The Biden administration is also very angry about that and has tried to push back a lot. Our ambassador goes on social media quite regularly calling Hungary a LGBT hater or whatever because of this.

But their position is that it's up to the parents to teach their children. It's up to the parents to deal with the with ideas of transitioning, etc. The second issue that they are maligned for is they are not going to have mass influx illegal immigration in their country. They tried that in 2015 during the Arab uprising when the EU wanted them to do it. They had to declare a national emergency because of all the people

going through this small landlocked country of 10 million people. We can talk about that more if you'd like. And then the third issue is that they have been calling since the beginning for peace negotiation between Ukraine and Russia. They could not handle the sanctions against Russia because the vast majority of their energy was coming from Russia. Even their infrastructure was Soviet era. So again, lots to talk about in that. But those are the three reasons you hear that Hungary is a democratic backslider, aligned with Russia, etc. All kinds of bad stuff in the press, but it boils down to these three points. A month ago, they established an all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for the new era, all capitalized, you know, as per the Chinese regime's propaganda press, so to speak.

And that is surprising to people. Any quick thoughts on this? Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on that. In fact, I have a whole chapter in the book on this. And I've been very honest and open with the government officials and the friends that I've talked to in Hungary. They know how I feel about this. They disagree with me.

But let me go back a little bit and try to explain what their mindset is, whether or not I agree with it. So for 1,000 years, like I said, they have been in this landlocked area with all kinds of different peoples coming in and conquering them and taking them over. So if you talk to them, you understand that paramount in their policy and way of thinking is survival. So they, in fact, the chapter in the book is called Balancing Between the East and West. That's what they've been doing for a very long time. They became a Christian Western country, kingdom, like I said, over a thousand years ago. But there are people that came from the East, from the Ural Mountains. It's debatable

which side. People don't know. In fact, the origins of Hungarians, it's very murky. But they came from there, moved west until eventually they became this kingdom. So survival, like I said, is paramount in their mind. They have been getting economic investment from the Chinese. It's helping their economy. And I'm sharing with you what was told to me by some of the government officials there. They're a significant part of the Belt and Road Initiative. That's right.

That's exactly right. And as this money is coming in, you have to understand that the European Union has sanctioned them millions, perhaps actually billions of dollars, because of the three issues that I explained to you. The administration here in the U.S. is supportive of that. I'm not saying we're sanctioning them, but we're antagonizing them. Stupidly, they're our allies, and the EU and we are making it harder for them to work with us.

At the same time, they're getting economic investment with the Chinese. Judith Varga at the time was the Minister of Justice. I interviewed her for the book, and she said to me, you know, it's very hypocritical. When the Germans get investment from the Chinese, you don't hear about this. When the Chinese are the second largest foreign landowners in the United States, or excuse me, foreign debt in the United States, you don't hear a lot about that. They look at it as very hypocritical. My stance is I think we are both playing with fire in this. It was said to me by many different Hungarians, the Chinese, it is in their interest to infiltrate the United States, basically to spy on you, to try to take over your institutions, etc., etc. But they're not interested in that with us. Also,

they don't try to change our morals. I did say to them, I think that that's a little bit naive. That's in my book also, that perhaps they're not doing it now, but I believe that they will. I think the Chinese look long-term. You know, for us, 50 years is long-term. With the Chinese, it's 100 or more years, right? That all makes sense to me. My concern is for the Hungarians.

Yes. This isn't, you know, an ideological position. It's just, you know, I think there's a lot of historical precedent of what happens when, you know, you allow the Chinese to do too much investment. We know. Absolutely. Right? It's not hard to figure out.

So it just seems incongruous. It's not an issue of, you know, someone from the outside coming in politically saying, hey, you're doing something bad, but wait, you guys are doing it too. I think as you suggested, it's equally problematic. I agree. And the other thing that's concerning to me is they are strengthening cultural ties with China. There's a one-way flight from Budapest to, I believe, Beijing.

They have a magazine that they've promoted that promotes cultural ties. So I think they're being naive about it. And I think that the United States also is being naive about the way we handle China in general. And a nonstop flight or a one-way flight? Excuse me, non-stop. Okay, okay. Well, all three, if not one way. Right, right, right. One thing I do know is they, Orban has been open about this. He believes that the United States is not going to be

the great power that it has been, but we're going to be in more of a multipolar world. And so they see this, I believe, as hedging their bets. I also had an official that I, you know, that's in the defense there that I greatly respect, actually. He said that to him, the greater threat to Hungary was the, you know, political Islam, the jihadist Islam that has infiltrated Europe. And if you look at it, you know, Poland and Hungary have not had a terrorist attack. And they're the countries that have stood against this mass influx of people from all over the place that, you know,

where they're really not vetted. But we've seen terrorism, of course, in England and France and Germany and other issues. Well, we're seeing countries go back on their immigration policies, too, to something that's definitely heading in the direction of Hungary and Poland. That is something we couldn't have said, I think, even a year ago. True. Right? So there is a shift, I think. It's a little bit too little too late, quite honestly. Good. I always believe we can change things for the better. But they've got some serious problems. and what is just what are they doing actually I mean it's fascinating because

this isn't something that's really been done very much true well in a nutshell the more children you have the more tax cuts you get they also have subsidies and loans for housing or bigger cars the more family that you have. And it has actually been very supportive of the Hungarian people. They have reversed the decline. I think the fertility rate was like 1.2 when they started 10 years ago. Now it's like 1.6. So it's not at the point of replacement yet, but it is headed in a good direction. A year ago, they had the highest marriage rate in the European Union. They've cut abortion in half.

I think as time goes on, you will see more and more benefits. That policy alone is responsible for the cuts in the half cut in abortion. I mean, that's obviously very significant. Well, there's other things to it and like I said people can get subsidies loans for a bigger home loans for a bigger car these kind of things that good interest rates so so it's a mixture really okay well fascinating it's supported people so they feel like that they can get married and have children. And actually what I found interesting is that there are more working mothers now.

So women that have children are also working, whereas before they didn't have the, I think, the support to have the children that they wanted to have. Tell me a little bit about Hungary because we hear about it but you know like how big is it you've said that it's it has a thousand years of basically of being a Christian nation but just gonna give me the the outlines because I think you know I I even only know a piece of that yeah well I think what's interesting actually, you made me think about this when you said that, is in 1920, with the Treaty of Versailles, which what came out of that was the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary actually lost two thirds of its territory,

lost about three million of its people. So because it was one of the countries that was technically aligned with Germany, because it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time, it was penalized under the Treaty of Versailles. And, you know, Wilson's right to self-determination did not extend to Hungary. You know, he had said actually that they were going to draw the lines during this time of the different territories or the countries, redraw lines in favor of the population. Well, that didn't happen with Hungary. They, like I said, they lost two-thirds territory, like three million people, and it really weakened

Hungary, which led, I believe, to the Nazis being able to occupy it, and them really being in that vice grip between Germany and between the Soviet Union. How many people in the country? Now there's 10 million, but Orban has extended citizenship to the people that were lost during that territory. And I don't know the ins and outs of how they get it. I guess they have to prove that they're part of that line. So these, I think that the citizenship is actually greater. So that's been kind of a source of contention. People have said that Orban did that in order to bolster his election polls. So the Treaty of

Trianon obviously is a huge sore spot even today. It's a big deal. I mean it's a huge loss of territory and of people. So to them Hungary is not just inside the borders. It is those Hungarians as well that they lost in 1920. So it's been almost, it's been a hundred years ago now. 10 million people is not a huge population for a distinctive group trying to keep its identity. And can I tell you something about that? That's very interesting. Throughout all this time where they were moving from the east to the west

and throughout all this occupation they kept their unique hungarian identity and their language i mean who else in the world speaks hungarian nobody it's probably the only language in the world that's more difficult than polish there's a There's a debate going on about that. Yeah. Well, I had the pleasure about a year and a half ago of interviewing for a Counterpoint Institute event, Peter Siarto. He's the foreign minister for Hungary. And he said that they considered Hungarian code because whenever they were speaking it, they were speaking code because nobody else could speak it. So I guess that's an advantage for them. And I went to do research for the book. I didn't go with a goal in mind. That's the kind of research I do. I wanted to find out why Hungary had, and how, had it retained its unique identity and its love for its national sovereignty.

Orban, Prime Minister Orban, was one of the fighters that helped push the Soviet Union out of Hungary. And the Hungarians have really maintained that love of their freedom, of their family. Even during the occupation when they had to take the Christian symbols off their walls and put the pictures of the communists up there, like I was told by these older gentlemen that I interviewed, that in their families, they would go home and they would still practice their religion and they'd be taught, you know, love of country and here's how we do things. And then they'd go to school and they'd pretend to go along with the Soviet ideal. But it was just curious to me how this country retained all this. And now is this little country that's been catapulted to the world stage because it's pushing back on the European Union, sanctioned by the European Union, maligned in the press,

hated by the Biden administration. And I just thought that was fascinating. Like you said, 10 million people. And, you know, a lot of people know, know about Hungary. So you had this recent trip to the border. And I can't help but think about this, you know, second issue that's contentious, of course, which is the immigration issue. They put up a wall or a fence, a very kind of a fence that effectively stops people moving across the border. And they have been very serious about that and unequivocal in their approach. Presumably, you think there's some lessons to be learned from Hungary here, but it's a completely different

border situation. I mean, they have a fence, right? And we need a wall. Yes, but I think the fundamental lessons are the same. They use physical barriers and they use policy to keep people out until they are vetted to see if they are able to claim asylum. That's what a sovereign nation does. I mean, it's so simple. You go home at night and you lock your doors because you don't want people to come in because you don't know who they are. Now you get to know somebody, you become friends with them,

you invite them into your home. And right now, if the Texas DPS, which is where I was the last time, catches someone, you know, they are eventually let go into the interior. And Rodney Scott was the former chief of Border Patrol. He was on a panel that I was running recently. And, you know, he said the hour and a half that the Border Patrol usually had to interview someone coming in for asylum has gone now down to under five minutes. The county attorney in Texas that I talked to, Kinney County, he said that most people have dropped their IDs before they get there.

We don't know who these people are that are being let go. And it took 19 people to kill thousands of Americans in 9-11. I mean, we are so naive right now. So we need to close our borders. We need the wall. We need policy i believe in immigration but it should be done legally but biden has said that his immigration is humane orderly and safe it is not illegal immigration is very detrimental to the immigrants coming across this last time that i was there, I talked to emergency medical professionals who were telling me about the young women, the teenage women, the children, females, that have been raped and beaten by the cartels. Because in order to get across illegally, you have to collaborate with the cartels. But you'll be killed if you don't. And, you know, these women come across with bands on their wrists that have

barcodes on them so that the cartel can monitor how much money they owe and where they are. And if they can't pay financially, they pay with sex or they pay with indentured servitude. So I actually have horrific stories that I could tell you that Border Patrol told me, that these medical professionals working in the Border Patrol processing centers told me. So if the Biden administration, if the Democrats want more people in this country, they should find a way to do it legally. Because it's not only hurting desperately our communities at the border. I have a lot of stories about that too. It is totally detrimental to the immigrants trying to come across.

People who are generally positive towards humanitarian needs would say, and a number of people have said to me, say, look, if these people are ready to brave the cartels ready to you know with the knowledge that they might be hurt along the way these terrible things happen you know it doesn't that signal that they really are in need that that they they really do deserve asylum you know that you've heard this before yes but according to the people that I talked to a lot of times these people don't know what they're gonna have to go through. They don't know the physical endurance that they're going to have to go through to

get there. You know the majority of the people coming over are men, but there are a few women in different groups as I've seen and I've heard. I really, and as was described to me by a Border Patrol wife who's seen horrific things and has had to protect her own children in her house against illegal aliens trying to break into her house, you know, she doesn't think a lot of these women coming across know what they're going to have to endure. They're probably sold a bill of goods and they'll do anything to come. If you telegraph to the world that there are consequences for coming, there are risks for coming, then less people will come. If you telegraph that the borders are open, everything's wonderful, you're going to be given a debit card and a place to stay, etc. People are

going to try. They're going to come. But I don't think a lot of these young women especially know what they're going to go through. Allison Anderson is the wife of a Border Patrol agent. She's the one that was chased by an illegal alien on her property that was trying to rape her. She's had to, on multiple occasions, defend her young girls from the illegal aliens that were coming. And I'm not saying everybody's bad. That's not what I mean. But there are criminals coming as well. We've forgotten the fact that there is legal immigration. In the documentary, we recently released Weapons of Mass Migration, Joshua Phillip went down to the border a few times in his catalog. There's a whole kind of international

structure facilitated by UN agencies that's actually facilitating this. Are these your findings as well? Yeah, absolutely. There are organizations that the UN is funding, and if you walk that back, that means you and I are funding it, that give instructions, make instructions available to people on how to come over. And then, of course, give them help once they are here. They facilitate the whole thing. So, yeah, we're paying for that. There are charity groups that are doing that as well on their own. And again, I don't understand the sense of it because like I said, there are really bad things happening. In the words of another

Border Patrol agent to me, you know, these drop houses where people are trafficked is a place where bad things happen. And Jan, our border patrol agents have come to a very kind of the end of their rope kind of situation. I was told by a senior border patrol that domestic violence is up in our border patrol, suicide rates, alcoholism. Because of the things that they're seeing, even with these organizations, if they believe facilitating more immigration is the right thing to do, then they should find a legal way to do it because they cannot care about the people coming across and facilitate illegal immigration. That was my

point. You believe that Hungary has something to teach. You talk about that very deliberately in your book. What can we learn here? Well, I think the overall lesson from Hungary that we can learn is really ideological in that freedom is not free. And we are only a generation away from losing our freedom. And to have an awareness of the Marxism that is creeping into our country and to stand against that. As far as policy goes, you know, I don't think everything in Hungary's family policy, where it may border on social welfare, is for America. But I do think things like income tax cuts for bigger families is a good thing. I think that's a really good thing. The social ideology of America is being held hostage by the mainstream media because I don't believe that the majority of Americans think that pushing radical gender theory on children is a good thing. So in

terms of policy towards that, maybe we can learn something from them. Because something that I have spent several years working on in Congress is trying to explain the dangers of things like the Equality Act and legislation, because what it basically does, it essentially erases the lines between men and women. Title IX right now, the Biden administration has added that gender identity part to Title IX, which means that men, biological men, can use the same entitlements that women have had in scholarships or on sports teams. You can take that wider. During Obama, biological men were using domestic violence shelters that were funded publicly by the government. You know, the other thing is a push back against the international organizations. Trump did this. You know, Trump defunded the UN agency that Biden refunded. Trump had already defunded it because, you know what, we already knew it was connected to Hamas and it was anti-Semitic. Trump did a lot of things like that,

like pulling us off the Human Rights Council that allows China to sit on the council. Secretary Pompeo described China as the greatest human rights abuser, definitely, of our time period, especially with over a hundred, excuse me, over a million Uyghur Muslims in these re-education camps. So they have also taken a stance, like I said, against the European Union and other international organizations. And I think we can take a lesson from that. You know, specifically something that I remarked on reading your book is their emphasis on you know civics and national identity and of course they have this thousand years of history which they you know hark back to America doesn't have a

thousand years of history but it has a very powerful idea which was you know what created that unifying you that unifying vision realized in the Constitution or manifest in the Constitution. Here's what's very interesting. One of the four steps or five steps of Sovietization is to kill all the civic associations, which they did in Hungary. I think they closed down like 5,000 civic associations in order to break the unity between people, because what better way to control, right? So it's interesting that you bring that up, because it is very important to them, their national identity, their pride in their country, and the fact that nationalism to Hungarians is not a dirty word. You know, nationalism, of course, we know has been perverted, especially by the

Nazis. But if you just take it for its meaning, it's pride in your country. And going back to Roger Scruton, he explained that nationalism was really what made democracy work because you come together and you agree on how the economy is going to work. You agree on how the law is going to work. You agree on how society is going to work. That's a sense of collaboration within a nation or nationalism. And I think you're right. I think we can learn from Hungary in that. And that's a lot of where their power comes from. We need to remember

that America was built on principles, on an idea that has worked for us, right, for a long time now. Have we had problems? Yeah, we've had problems. Certainly slavery was a huge problem. I believe that we were given the founding documents and that idea to work through these problems. And that's what we need to continue to do as challenges come up. Well, Shea Bradley-Farrell, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you, Jan. It was an honor to be with you. Thank you all for joining Shea Bradley-Farrell and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.