Michael Beschloss, a so-called presidential historian and a frequent contributor for the major American news outlets NBC, MSNBC, and the public media PBS, has made some peculiar comments about the recent meeting between former US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
‘Donald Trump has now had Viktor Orbán, the brutal dictator of Hungary, to be his house guest…Take this seriously, if you love democracy,’ he warned all.
This absurd statement prompted Rod Dreher, the well-known American conservative writer and columnist living in Budapest, Hungary, to publish an open letter to Professor Beschloss, through The American Conservative. Mr Dreher is also a contributor to our very own site, Hungarian Conservative.
The letter is dripping with sarcasm, detailing the horrid reality of living under ‘the Viktator,’ and yearning for the freedom and prosperity of Joe Biden’s America. That sarcasm would not come across in a vicarious retelling, so we will just list the major points of the letter in a serious tone below.
As Mr Dreher points out, public safety is a lot better in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary than in the United States currently. Subways are safe here, with no reports of frequent fights, urination, and even shoving innocent bystanders onto the tracks by mentally ill criminals, like in New York City these days. Retailers do not have to lock their merchandise behind glass cases to prevent shoplifting in Hungary. Part of the reason for this, in Mr Dreher’s opinion, is that Hungary is actually controlling its border effectively and has rejected mass migration from less developed countries, unlike the United States and much of Europe.
The author then goes on to write about how one of the major criticisms for the ‘oppressive’ Orbán regime coming from Western media and governments had to do with the prevention of LGBTQ propaganda in public schools—something that is quite reasonable and many Americans would actually welcome.
He also covers the unique electoral success of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP party coalition, winning four elections in a row with a constitutional supermajority, which allowed him to stay in power for so long. Mr Dreher writes that even international observers validated the results, and some of that electoral success can be attributed to the incompetence of the left-wing opposition parties. Dreher writes on this issue:
‘Yet as we know,
when a people makes a democratic choice on election day that contradicts what liberal elites know is better for them, they have surely been strong-armed into voting against their own interests.
In the 2022 election, the opposition coalition’s leader, Péter Márki-Zay, was a disaster on the campaign trail. I appreciate how hard the Western media worked to obscure this fact from the American people, but it is unfortunately true…Márki-Zay bragged on the campaign trail that his coalition is truly diverse, for it includes both communists and fascists. It was true—but bizarrely, that did not endear the opposition to voters. False consciousness everywhere!’
In his piece for The American Conservative, Mr Dreher also lauds the fact that, in Hungary, businesses and educational institutions do not have to deal with the woke dogmas of ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion;’ as well as not having to remove statutes of past greats of Hungarian history just because their moral do not live up to today’s standards.
To top it off, Mr Dreher points out the irony that the very man who is so deeply concerned for democratic values in the United States and Hungary alike, put out this tweet back in December 2022:
Holding people accountable for not applauding a political figure is something straight out of Stalinist USSR, yet Professor Beschloss seems to be very eager to do just that—now that’s what his vision of democracy is all about! Too bad we fall ever so short of it here in Hungary…
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