Hungary: January 10

"A classis liberal may be defined thus: If he could by the wave of his hand silence all the liars, prevaricators, empty political speeches and provocateurs of the world forever, he would not wave his hand."
-G.K. Chesterton

I've just come back from a fascinating and very rich set of three lectures, in which the economy, social issues, and political issues of Hungary were discussed and explored.  There was a lot of information there for me to digest, and it would be near-impossible for me to go into detail in a simple blog entry.  The overall impression, however, can be summed up in the title of the third lecture, "Hungary: A Beautiful Country in Big Trouble."

One recurring theme that ran through the series of lecture was how paradoxical the situation is here.  One prime example is how the democratic system is being run in an authoritarian way by the current government of Hungary.  Another, perhaps, might be the majority government of 1994 in Hungary, who were more concerned about limiting their own power than that of the opposition.

The one which stuck in my mind, however, was a dual paradox, in how Hungary and the US have diverged in their approach to Free Speech, and the actual effect that has had upon each country's discourse.
The United States was founded on the Classic Liberal Tradition, best exemplified in John Stuart Mill, in which speech is practically unlimited.  Even pro-fascist speech and demonstration is legally tolerated, which would probably seem absurd to the countries which have actually had to live through such regimes.
Hungary, being one such country, follows more the ideas of Empiricist Karl Popper, who puts forward the idea that to protect the general openness of society, some doors have to be closed.  Hate speech, pro-fascist speech, etc. can and ought to be legally restricted in order to protect the greater dignity of the people such speech might target.

What, however, has resulted from the divergence?  Hungary now has an openly anti-Roma party in the Parliament, and it is the 3rd largest sitting there.  The founding member of the governing party has even written an op-ed in which he equates the Roma with animals, saying that they have no place in a civilized society.

This is not happening in the United States, at least not now.  While not illegal, there is a lot of cultural pressure that tends to keep such overtly racist discourse out of the mainstream.  The paradox is, that this cultural pressure, which acts in a much more effective way than Hungarian efforts at censorship, developed in a country that upheld free speech to a fuller extent.  Such cultural pressure does not have a parallel in Hungary, even though racist discourse was outright forbidden by the Communists (who preferred classist discourse), and still illegalized by the current Hungarian laws.

It may be stretching a point to infer causality, but not beyond the realms of logic.  Hate that is left in the light of the sun is an easier target for ridicule and reason.  Hide it in the dark, and it grows like a fungus on the corruption in the human heart.