{"id":200,"date":"2006-10-27T09:29:08","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T14:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/27\/every-day-is-1956-the-hungarian-revolution-today\/"},"modified":"2006-10-27T10:06:27","modified_gmt":"2006-10-27T15:06:27","slug":"every-day-is-1956-the-hungarian-revolution-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/27\/every-day-is-1956-the-hungarian-revolution-today\/","title":{"rendered":"“Every Day is 1956”: The Hungarian Revolution Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a><\/strong> is shotgunning out an op-ed I wrote on the Hungarian Revolution, then and now.\u00a0 Here’s the piece.<\/p>\n

“Every Day is 1956:” The Hungarian Revolution Today<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

by James Bovard<\/font><\/p>\n

Friends of freedom should doff their hats to the Hungarians this week. Fifty years ago, the Hungarian people bravely expelled Soviet tanks from Budapest and proclaimed their intention to create a democracy. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets returned with almost 5,000 tanks, killing thousands of Hungarians and chaining that nation back into serfdom to Moscow.<\/font> <\/font>But at least the Hungarians had the gumption to stand up and sacrifice their blood to cast off tyranny.<\/p>\n

I was in Hungary shortly after the 30th anniversary of the uprising. There were no official celebrations then, perhaps because the Soviets still occupied the nation and were watching warily as the Hungarians made passive economic reforms intended to make socialism efficient.<\/p>\n

The buildings in downtown Budapest appeared to have different sets of bullet holes \u2014 the first from the fierce fighting in 1944 when the Red Army drove the Nazis out of the city, and another set from a dozen years later, from when the Soviets crushed the Hungarians\u2019 demand for freedom.<\/p>\n

I have not forgotten the row of new black Mercedes cars parked outside Communist Party headquarters near the Danube River in Budapest. When I interviewed one of the regime\u2019s top trade officials, he was as smug as the day is long, oblivious to the cascading evidence of Hungarian economic failure. (The Reagan administration was cozying up to Hungary at that point, and the “experts” at the U.S. embassy sounded like pimps for the Hungarian government.)<\/p>\n

Two and a half years later, it was the Hungarians who, more than any other Eastern Europeans, brought the Iron Curtain crashing down. In May 1989, Hungarian government officials cut the barbed wire on the border with Austria. A tidal wave of East Germans and other Soviet Bloc serfs were soon stampeding through the opening. The Soviet tanks did not roll \u2014 and the rest is history.<\/p>\n

The celebrations in Budapest of the 50th anniversary of the uprising have been riotous. This is in part because Hungarians again feel betrayed and oppressed by their government.<\/p>\n

The socialist party \u2014 the direct descendant of the Communist Party that tyrannized the country for so long \u2014 now rules Hungary. The socialists secured control in elections this past April.<\/p>\n

Last month, a secret tape recording made shortly after the election leaked out. Hungarians heard Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany summarize the party\u2019s election campaign: “We lied in the morning, in the evening and at night. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Gyurcsany said that the government\u2019s claims about the economy were brazen falsehoods. The government now admits that the government budget deficit is almost twice as large as it claimed during the election campaign.<\/p>\n

The tape\u2019s release sparked widespread protests which escalated with this week\u2019s anniversary. More than 100 people have been injured, including many hit by police rubber bullets. Hungarian state radio reported that “police beat some of the protesters \u2014 including women and elderly people \u2014 with rubber batons, and some had head injuries,” according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Tibor Navracsics, one of the opposition leaders, warns, “Hungary is in a moral crisis. If people are deceived, then they can’t make responsible decisions.” The opposition is demanding a public referendum within 5 months on the government\u2019s policies. The government is scorning its demand.<\/p>\n

Gyurcsany\u2019s defenders stress that he recently won a “vote of confidence” in Parliament. The fact that weasel-like politicians did not object to political lying is not exactly a moral clean bill of health for the government.<\/p>\n

So are Hungarians too immature to realize how much deference they owe lying leaders?<\/p>\n

Here in America, students are taught in school that they are obliged to obey politicians who win elections fair and square.<\/p>\n

Then, at some point, an asterisk pops up \u2014 and people are notified that they must obey even if politicians seized power via gross deceit. Unless people can irrefragably prove that the rulers seized power wrongfully, they are obliged to submit.<\/p>\n

And how can they prove that the politicians seized power illegitimately?<\/p>\n

Only if the politicians confess. No other evidence can be admitted: the word must come from On High.<\/p>\n

This was the case in Hungary.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t matter because the socialists refuse to relinquish the power they wrongfully snared. Regardless of how politicians capture power, they still supposedly have the right to send police to bust the heads of people who refuse to submit.<\/p>\n

“Every day is 1956” read the graffiti painted by protesters in Budapest this week. Some of the protests have been violent, as has the government\u2019s response at times. Many commentators are lamenting that the big anniversary did not spur an uplifting display of Hungarian unity.<\/p>\n

But maybe Americans should look at Hungary more closely. For decades, Americans have been far too docile to the lies of their leaders. Whether it is Nixon lying about Vietnam, or George H.W. Bush lying about Panama, or Clinton lying about Kosovo, or George W. Bush lying about Iraq and Afghanistan \u2014 many Americans have responded as if they were born to be cannon fodder for the ruling class.<\/p>\n

George Bush openly proclaimed last year, “In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” The vast majority of Americans ignored the comment, if they even noticed it.<\/p>\n

But if lying is simply another perk of the presidency, then Americans should at least have the decency to stop preening about being self-governing.<\/p>\n

If the citizenry does not punish liars, then it cannot expect the truth. Hungary again reminds us that we do not need to bow down to whomever manages to capture political power.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation is shotgunning out an op-ed I wrote on the Hungarian Revolution, then and now.\u00a0 Here’s the piece. “Every Day is 1956:” The Hungarian Revolution Today by James Bovard Friends of freedom should doff their hats to the Hungarians this week. Fifty years ago, the Hungarian people bravely expelled Soviet tanks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,659,6,10,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bovard","9":"tag-bush","10":"tag-elective-dictatorship"},"yoast_head":"\n"Every Day is 1956": The Hungarian Revolution Today - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/27\/every-day-is-1956-the-hungarian-revolution-today\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Every Day is 1956": The Hungarian Revolution Today - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Future of Freedom Foundation is shotgunning out an op-ed I wrote on the Hungarian Revolution, then and now.\u00a0 Here’s the piece. “Every Day is 1956:” The Hungarian Revolution Today by James Bovard Friends of freedom should doff their hats to the Hungarians this week. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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