America may be “the city on a hill,” but that has not stopped American politicians and pundits from drawing on the examples of other countries in domestic political debates. Two of the most animating figures of the American Left in…
Terrible is the situation of a small country that stands alone. — Miklós Bánffy, Twenty-Five Years (1945) It is May 26, 2006, and the Hungarian Socialist Party is holding its annual congress in the bucolic lakeside village of Balatonőszöd. The attendees…
In the age of disappearing Snapchat messages, Insta stories, and 280-character tweets, it is reasonable to ask why building lasting monuments matters. It matters because in this sea of 21st-century distraction, we must be pulled out of our everyday lives…
In a recent Economist article examining whether Ukrainian refugees will stay in Poland, the author grumbles: “Literature classes deal overwhelmingly with Polish writers. History classes concentrate on Poland’s struggles with Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary.… Ukraine, a nation that long lacked…
The great debates of our time are not exclusively those hard-hitting ones affecting human anthropology and political community — how many genders exist, what criteria we should look for in prospective immigrants, and so forth. Certainly, many of our most…
I’m writing from Budapest, the beautiful, Danube-bestriding Hungarian capital. Hungary, though a faraway land and modest in both size and population, has played an outsize role in the American conservative conscience for the past half-decade or so. After just a…
Until this past fortnight, I had no idea how many American Spectator readers were emotionally attached to Hungary. I’ve heard from people who live there and people who want to live there and people who think that everybody should live…
Joe Biden is holding a virtual “summit for democracy” this week. It is the fulfillment of one of his campaign promises. He has long considered himself a great expert on the subject of democracy, even as he increasingly embraced the…
“May I speak English?” I asked the woman behind the grocery-store counter. In English. “No!” she spat back. Stocky and diminutive, she looked as if she might’ve made a good drill sergeant. Or champion bowler. It was last month, and…
