Category: Current

Multiculturalism is in its essence anti-European civilisation. It is basically an anti-Western ideology. Samuel Huntington If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell Since Douglas Murray’s book was published, political developments in Europe have tended to

If we regard free elections as the celebration of democracy, we cannot rule out the possibility for campaigns to become a disgrace to that democracy. In 1843, Baron Zsigmond Kemény, the Hungarian novelist and the most incisive critic of public affairs of his day, published a pamphlet entitled Canvassing and

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT AND CONFLICTS The general elections of Hungary in 2018 have produced a third consecutive two-third majority in a row since 2010 for the incumbent ruling party alliance called “Fidesz–KDNP”, i.e. FIDESZ–Hungarian Civic Alliance and Christian Democratic People’s Party. It is rare in a democracy that a party

I do not pretend to be an expert on Peter Bauer or a specialist in the field of development economics. I met Peter Bauer two or three times at international conferences and we exchanged a few friendly words. One sixteen-year-old story, however, deserves to be mentioned. The Cato Institute created

How did I come to meet and befriend Peter Bauer? After all, I am but a doctor, and not an economist or a historian, and Peter was not interested in health, least of all his own, enquiries about which, even when ill, he brushed aside with impatience as being dull

It was the European Renaissance that formed much of what became the West’s vocabulary concerning individual freedom, humanism, political order and the idea of scientific inquiry freed from religious supervision or customary oversight. It gave rise, amongst other things, to speculation about the possibility of perfection. Neo-platonists, like Pico della

Let us assume that an alien, from Betelgeuse say, comes down to Earth to see how things are done there. He (she, it, ze, zo, zhe, zho whatever?) would find it difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the European Union is in serious trouble and, equally, that those

I find the question in the title of this session not well specified. Europe is a continent. It is not a political or decision-making unit. It is a geographical, cultural and civilisational entity. To a certain degree Europe is a homogeneous area, an area culturally and civilisationally different from the

One of the most crucial phenomena of our times is mass migration, for which we have to find sustainable and coherent answers, even within Europe. Hungary, taking into account the demographic trends in the sending states and the general regional crisis, rejects plans such as the quota system, which provide

Some time ago I reached for a book by my favourite author Claudio Magris, called Danube. What stuck in my memory was a short chapter devoted to the town of Pécs, or more precisely, in praise of the local white wine, which – according to the Italian writer – is