The 62nd annual congress for the Hungarian Association took place on 24–25 November in Middleburg Heights, Ohio near the city of Cleveland in the United States. A whole slew of distinguished speakers, from the world of psychology, charity, clergy, and even NASA, spoke at the illustrious event meant to raise awareness of and celebrate the great work of Hungarian artists and scientists living in the diaspora.
In his short speech introducing the international conference, head of the Thomas Molnar Research Institute, historian of political thought Károly Attila Molnár highlighted that as a Hungarian emigrant, Thomas Molnar tacitly accepted the values of liberal democracy in the United States, but criticized its ideological foundations and pointed out the dangers of ‘Americanization’, the consequences of economic liberalism and social engineering.
Renowned Hungarian revolutionary and statesman Lajos Kossuth arrived on the shores of the United States on 6 December 1851. He was received by a warm welcome and outpour of enthusiasm, from the highest ranking politicians and the ‘common folk’ alike, who lauded him for his pursuit of Hungarian freedom.
The conservative position in the United States is that American exports should be ramped up to secure European energy stability and American influence, pushing back Russia’s own power across the continent while questioning the validity of the environmentalists’ alarmism in the process. While U.S. policy is already moving in such a direction through its increased LNG exports, a possible conservative administration in 2024 seems to have its agenda set to push the effort into overdrive.
The American Hungarian Federation has been working tirelessly to preserve Hungarian culture and education in the United States, and has been a powerful advocate for the collective rights of Hungarians living in minority status in the Carpathian Basin. AHF also considers it its mission to dispel misleading narratives about Hungary and Trianon, AHF President Ákos Nagy told Hungarian Conservative.
Recent Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian biochemist living in the United States and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Szeged, stressed to Hungarian news agency MTI that it is not awards that serve as motivation for her research but rather the awareness that people are suffering and solutions must be found to help them.
‘All things being equal, the roots to the actual deadly conflict are profound, as already mentioned. Yet it does not help the cause of peace to keep doing business with Iran, just as the United States has done under the Obama administration and is still doing under the present one.’
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó praised the Trump era initiatives at the Southern border of the United States, likening it to the fence between Hungary and Serbia; he also stated that without physical infrastructure protecting the border a country is ‘defenceless’.
The idea of founding a country from scratch in order to establish a homeland for a nation that does not exist yet is an act that would be seen by most as patently insane. But looking a little further into the past, it should be clear to all that there is indeed such precedent; and a very notable one, in fact: the United States.
The 26th President of the United States, one of the most popular and influential people to hold the office, Theodore Roosevelt became the first US President, incumbent or former, to set foot on Hungarian soil when he gave a speech in the Hungarian Parliament in 1910. He was invited by his friend Count Albert Apponyi, whom he had hosted in the White House for lunch in 1904.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
