Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Exploring Liberty from Budapest to Washington, DC, with Anna Smith Lacey
What role does cultural exchange play in creating balanced perspectives? This week, host Roger Ream is joined by Anna Smith Lacey, executive director at the Hungary Foundation and alumna of TFAS summer programs in Prague and Washington, D.C., to explore her remarkable leadership journey from Budapest to Washington, D.C. Anna reflects on her upbringing in post-communist Hungary and its influence on her understanding of liberty, highlighting the transformative impact of TFAS programs in shaping her views on socialism and freedom. Through nuanced discussions, Anna provides insight into the intricacies of cultural exchange, offering a distinct perspective on the pursuit of liberty by both Americans and Hungarians across generations.
Anna Smith Lacey serves as executive director of the Hungary Foundation, an organization dedicated to strengthening the connections between the United States and Hungary. Prior to this role, she served in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry as U.S. Desk officer and as political attaché at the Hungarian Embassy. She was a contributor to the Hungarian Weekly Magazine, Heti Válasz, where she covered American politics. Anna was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, and earned her Master’s degree in International Relations at Corvinus University.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact. Today I'm your host, roger Ream. Today I'm excited to welcome Anna Smith-Lacey to the podcast. Anna is an alumna of the TFAS Summer Institutes in Prague and Washington DC and of the Hungarian American Coalition's Internship Program. She serves as Executive Director of the Hungary Foundation, an organization dedicated to strengthening the connections between the United States and Hungary. Prior to this role, she served in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry as US desk officer and also as a political attaché at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington DC. She was a contributor to the Hungarian weekly magazine Hedy Vález, where she covered American politics. Anna was born and raised in Budapest, hungary, and earned her master's degree in international relations at Corvinus University. She is also a licensed tour guide in Budapest. Welcome, anna, and thank you for joining me today. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Roger, thanks for the invitation.
Speaker 1:I'd like to begin by having you talk about the mission and the programs of the Hungary Foundation.
Speaker 2:Well, the Hungary Foundation was established in 2013, so I took over in 2016 to lead it and I'm very humbled by the task. We're an endowment-based, primarily grant-making organization. What we do is basically bolster the exchange of knowledge and professional skills and students and researchers between Hungary and the United States. What I like to say is that we're helping to train bridge builders between the two countries, and really the goal is to increase traffic on that bridge. So we sponsor fellowship programs for BAMA students and also for mid-career professionals and postgraduate Hungarians, and recently we started a fellowship for Americans as well, because we realize that there's a ton of coverage about Hungary out there which lacks some clarity and prudence and understanding, and for that you really do need to understand the country's history, the country's language to a certain degree, the geography of Hungary and its very particular position, and so we started the Budapest Fellowship Program four years ago, and that's a new addition to our portfolio.
Speaker 2:And we also dabble in digital programs. We launched an app three years ago called Hugo. Hugo is the Hungarian digital hussar who shows you, if you download it to your phone, shows you all things Hungarian. In the United States. We have over 1,500 points of interest now, anything from Hungarian bakeries to Hungarian scouts, to folk dance classes, to service providers who are Hungarian. So if you're listening to this podcast from Chicago or the West Coast or Ohio and you download the app, you'll be able to see the incredible Hungarian footsteps all around America.
Speaker 1:It may have been on your website that I read that the US has the largest Hungarian diaspora. Absolutely, absolutely so that would be a good reason for this app, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, you know, hungarians have been present at the beginning of the United States. There's a famous Hungarian hussar, Michael Kovács de Fabrizi, who has a statue in Washington DC up in Northwest, who was commissioned by George Washington to found and lead the cavalry units with Pulaski in the Revolutionary War, and he fought in the Revolutionary War in the Southern Theater and died defending Charleston from the British, and so he has actually a field on the grounds of the Citadel and Charleston, south Carolina, named after him. So we've been there from the beginning, and that thread of Hungarians' love for freedom and Americans' love for freedom that has been there from the beginning is something that we continue to work with.
Speaker 1:You mentioned a new fellowship program for Americans. Yes, what type of American are you looking for to build that fellowship?
Speaker 2:to go there we're looking for an American who is curious, who is open-minded and who has the humility to learn what Hungary has to offer in terms of historical lessons about human nature, about the way certain kinds of political systems like the communist system that we had for almost 50 years works, and has a hunger to communicate those lessons to a wider audience. So we recruit for our junior Budapest Fellowship Program recent graduates who are somewhere, you know, in their mid-20s and for our more senior fellowships as part of the Budapest Fellowship Program, mid-career professionals, and they bring their own interests, whether it's energy policy or history or national security or NATO, and we place them at host institutions in Hungary where they research full-time. But we also have crafted a very, very robust framework program for them where they learn several times a week Hungarian, because it's a very difficult language. But once you understand some of the basics of the language, you really start to understand how the Hungarian mindset works and it gives you a level of humility as well. And then we teach them Hungarian films, Hungarian literature, Hungarian history from the beginning. So from the state founding of Hungary in 1000 until recent history, the NATO accession, EU accession and transatlantic relations we take them all around Hungary, to the smallest of the northeastern villages to the second capital of Hungary, Debrecen. We give them walking tours. You mentioned I was a tour guide myself.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot that you can learn just by walking around in Budapest and just being completely immersed in the history, because you have ruins going all the way back to the Roman times, medieval times. You have churches that were used during the Ottoman invasion, Hungarian Catholic churches that were converted into mosques and then were converted back to Catholic churches. You have Protestant churches, Lutheran churches, Calvinist churches. You have a tremendous presence of the Jewish community in the heart of Budapest, and some of the synagogues that have been recently renovated are a real testimony to Hungary's multicultural and diverse, ethnically and religiously diverse background. And you really only understand that if you're there physically. So it's a 10 month program, it's fully funded and we also take them right outside of Hungary to the Hungarian pockets that are no longer part of Hungary. It's one of the great legacies of Woodrow Wilson that one third of our population is outside of Hungary.
Speaker 1:That is, in Romania and Slovakia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you mentioned that America has the largest diaspora living outside of Hungary, that is, in Romania, in Slovakia, in Serbia, even in Austria, and some of those commute for work, but some of those are historic Hungarian populations. And it's really important for an American to understand that when we talk about minorities and minority rights, we mean a very different kind of minority rights, and those are indigenous minorities who have always lived there but the border moved above their heads, sometimes within the span of a lifetime, several times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very arbitrary, very arbitrary.
Speaker 2:But history is history and geography is geography. As much as America's fate, I believe, is defined by the fact that you're a continent-wide nation now and you're protected by two oceans and two relatively friendly powers on both sides, in the north and the south. We haven't had that luxury for centuries. That creates a very different kind of mindset. It comes with a strong fighter mentality, a strong stand your ground, don't tread on me mentality, and it comes with a lot of lessons that Hungarians have learned about sovereignty and what's important in terms of your own national identity.
Speaker 1:Well, that sounds like a great opportunity, that fellowship, and something we should promote to our alumni.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'd love to have that opportunity.
Speaker 1:We started a program in Central and Eastern Europe in Prague in the early 90s and in those early years I remember we were having lots of Hungarian students and still have students from Hungary. You came in 2007. Right, I think, the program we sponsor there in Prague. How'd you hear about us? Do you remember what was the experience like?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think I heard about the Prague program through your in-person recruiting at Corvinus.
Speaker 2:I think that this is like before Instagram, before a lot of the online social media was big, so part of it might have been some early. Oh yeah, so glad I did, because it was a wonderful three-week experience and I was chosen as the graduation speaker and that was a tremendous opportunity in my life because I never had to speak in English to a wide audience before and I was extremely nervous. I don't think I even remember that five-minute speech, but so many people came up to me afterwards and encouraged me and reassured me and were just so friendly and positive in terms of the feedback and I learned a lot about the principles of the free market and the American political system at that summer university.
Speaker 1:We selected you to speak at our 50th anniversary dinner at the National. Building Museum here in front of five or 600 people and you did. Just was a marvelous remarks you made there, thank, you.
Speaker 2:Well, it was a moment in American politics when there was a lot of self-inflicted shame and guilt and negative perceptions about America's role in the world.
Speaker 2:Some of that is justified, but I think there was a lack of self-confidence for a lot of people, especially on the right, and I think it was important for Americans to hear it from a foreigner that you do have a role to play, a positive role to play, in the world, and that was the vision of the American founders. And of course, it always came with caveats that you know you're trying to have friendships towards all nations but first and foremost you need to guard your own security and no entangling alliances and such. But America's mission was never just America. The founders thought about this country as an exemplary experiment and I think America has a lot to teach the world based on its own experiment. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be disrespectful towards other nations and not respect their own version of history and their own national identities and their own struggles. But I think there's room for a healthy exchange and I think there's room for America to play a leading role in foreign policy and global affairs, because if America does not, then others will.
Speaker 2:China, russia and other less democratic and less friendly nations towards our country.
Speaker 1:That was 2017, I believe, and today it's just such a turbulent time in our politics, intellectually as well as in the day-to-day politics. It's a fight going on over aid to Ukraine. Now, for instance, in Congress, that's cutting across party lines, and it's going to be interesting to see how that turns out. And I don't want to get too deeply into it, but maybe I'll just ask to what extent is the war in Ukraine impacting Hungary?
Speaker 2:It's important for Americans to understand that when Americans fight wars far from its shores, whatever happens in that particular theater will always affect Americans less than the nations who are around that particular country. So at the beginning of the war in Ukraine it really really was visible through some of the refugees that were flowing out of Ukraine all families, women with children, no males, because they were recruited and drafted to fight. It was very palpable in Hungary that there is a brotherly movement to help help our neighbors, because these were legitimate refugees from a legitimate war. I saw the entire Hungarian society, completely independently of party lines, and who thought, what about the war itself? Helping? That included, of course, government help, a tremendous amount of government help, but also Hungarian citizens welcoming to their homes for God knows how long Ukrainian refugees. Some spoke Hungarian, some did not. That included my family, and I know a lot of other families who have chosen to house Ukrainian refugees in their own homes and didn't know if that particular family will stay for a month and then go off to Germany or Sweden or neighboring Austria or stay for several months, Because at the beginning of the war we didn't know if this is going to be a blitzkrieg or this is going to be, you know, an extended hybrid war, which I believe it is and will probably be, for God knows how long we were at John Winthrop's Christian Charity. At the Liberty Fund Seminar that I had a pleasure of participating as one of your alumni programs, that spirit of true Christian charity was very, very visible at the beginning of the war and it lasted for a long time Now.
Speaker 2:At the same time, I wanted to mention to you that one of the most formational intellectual experiences I had at the DC program that I participated in, which was then called ICBIS, is the role of foreign aid, and I never read any. First of all, in Hungary, the economics education is very, very Keynesian, very, very state-centered. So Hayek was news to me. A lot of the libertarians were absolutely new to me, and this particular reading on foreign aid and at the time I was already preparing to a role in diplomacy was a libertarian reading on foreign aid and it really made me think twice about why nations should give, how nations should give for how long and with what limitations.
Speaker 2:And so I think, when you mentioned the debate that's going on in the United States about foreign aid to Ukraine, I think that's a very, very legitimate debate to have how, for how long, under what circumstances? What are the stipulations for the government itself in terms of transparency, in terms of spending? Is it more of a land lease type of agreement that the United States has a history of doing, or is it an unconditional love and support, no matter how you deal with the money and whether it is accounted for or not? And then you have to ask the question does it help, ultimately, peace or does it continue to fuel a war? And I think those are very, very complex questions. Those are very legitimate questions to ask and it affects Hungarians' lives very deeply because you know, if Putin decides to drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, that will affect neighboring Hungary for sure. The effects of Chernobyl reverberated all around the region, so that's a very serious thing to consider for the United States, and to hear what the nations surrounding Ukraine think is a useful exercise.
Speaker 1:Are you still doing a fair amount of writing? I know you've done some.
Speaker 2:I do a fair amount of editing and helping others to write. Well, that's something that I have done. I love writing. I love communicating to both countries about both countries. I think there's a lot to learn both for Hungarians that Americans can teach them, and vice versa. I'm at a stage in my life right now where parenting is taking central stage and it's more difficult to come up with your own long, coherent thoughts and it's easier to help others formulate their own.
Speaker 1:Your focus has to be on the strategy and the programs and the mission and the foundation and running those smoothly. After Prague, you came to DC in 2008. You talked a little bit about that, but your internship was at the American Enterprise Institute, which sounds like a great opportunity. You took two courses. Did you Economics and foreign policy courses?
Speaker 2:Yes, and again the foreign policy courses on some of the more critical aspects of how America does foreign policy or should do foreign policy was really eye-opening. Aei was a fantastic place to intern, not just because of the free white tablecloth lunches that were really the main draw for the intern community to intern at AEI.
Speaker 2:But to me it was the debates we had with all the interns at those lunchtime breaks about the role of government, about the role of the free market, about the self-regulating or lack of self-regulating aspects of the free market. I never really had exposure to radical libertarian ideas at that point and I'm not considering radical in the sense negative, but it was a good thought exercise for me and I ended up meeting a friend there who is to this day one of my closest friends and we raise our children together now, so a lot of very meaningful friendships have also developed out of that experience and I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1:And then you've had other opportunities with us. I know the public policy fellowship in 2012, a couple of our co-partner programs with Liberty Fund, including very recently in Philadelphia, which you mentioned. Did you have value in those opportunities for continuing education through TFAS?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and one of the things that I think TFAS does remarkably well is the continuing education aspect is that you're not dropped after the program. I think you have a very well thought out alumni mobilizing system in which you draw alumni back as mentors, you draw them back as hosts at their host institutions for the internship programs, but also make sure that you continue to engage the alumni intellectually, whether it's having the alumni speak at professional panels or train them or continue to provoke thoughts. I think a really, really important aspect of TFAS and organizations that do this, you know, for a long period of time, sometimes struggle with this. It really speaks to your leadership, roger, and the fact that you have been able to retain some of your senior staff for so long. You know people like Michelle A I mean Michelle has been there for almost two decades now. That knowledge and that experience is really unique and very, very few organizations are able to do that.
Speaker 2:At the Public Policy Fellowship, I really appreciated some of the financial coaching that we have received, which was, I think, very unique and very timely at that stage of our lives how to invest, how to save, why to invest? Why to save? I remember very clearly our discussions that we had at our Gettysburg trip. It's very humbling and extremely interesting for me to understand how this nation was able to come together. After Gettysburg and when you still go to Gettysburg, it's one of the very few places still where you see Union flags in the gift shop and Confederate flags in the gift shop and you see both sides well and respectfully represented, because it really is a tribute to the fact that you can overcome a very, very deep division in this country. I have had doubts about whether that is still possible.
Speaker 2:When the BLM riots were starting, I was very disenchanted by seeing what radical socialist ideas did to this country in the matter of a couple of months and when I saw the statues being torn down of American heroes that I have seen, honestly, during Soviet times, done by the Soviets. I told American friends, look, what you're doing to your own country's history is self-mutilation. This is the level of destruction that only Soviet tanks were able to do in Hungary and you're doing it to yourself. It's not right, it's not true and it's not sensitive to the overcoming process. That was hard for this country. That was real in this country. For me, gettysburg was a very uplifting place to be a sober, very sad place in one sense, but also very uplifting that we can put this behind us in one sense, but also very uplifting that we can put this behind us and we as Americans can overcome division.
Speaker 2:The two Liberty Fund seminars that I was able to participate in as alum the one on charity was very useful for me because we're an endowment-based, grant-making organization, so I have to think about it all the time when we give. How do we give in a way that it inspires excellence, not dependency? How do we equip students and fellows and other organizations with skills so that they can then become themselves agents of change and then give that skill over to people? And I see that in all of our programs. When we are able to train people in a way that maximizes their own human potential, they will want to give that back to others, and now they themselves are teaching others in Hungary, and that's what ultimately want to do. We would like to train Hungarians and Americans who can create the change around them that we would like to see, that is open-minded about critical questions, that speaks in a sophisticated and prudent way about matters that are complex and that are respectful of history and geography and the realities of our times.
Speaker 1:That was all just wonderfully said and said as I think perhaps only someone who is not a native-born American can put it your comments about the Civil War and coming together as a nation. I do want to talk about the Zell Kahlman Fellowship Program that the.
Speaker 1:Hungary Foundation runs. You send just really outstanding young people from Hungary to our programs in the summer, sometimes in the semester. I think we'll have four this summer, as I recall, and they are bright young people fluent in multiple languages typically Talk a little bit about that program and then I want to talk a little bit more about some things about Hungary.
Speaker 2:So we started the Sailcom on Fellowship I think five years ago and it really came out of our strive for excellence and we wanted to provide the best available opportunity for Hungarians where they, in a short amount of time, can learn as much as possible, both intellectually and professionally, in the United States and take that home with them and use it in Hungary for whatever project or nonprofit or government role that they end up in or business role. And TFAS's programs were really the best crafted and most intense and most well-rounded because they get the professional skills through their internship, they get the intellectual input through the courses that they take and they get the networking aspect that I think very, very few programs can match in DC, because at this point, having run these programs for decades and decades, you have senators and members of Congress who are TFIFAS alums, but also many in the business area. We wanted them to have peer-to-peer networking experience but also high-level mentorship as well, which you all provide. Even if I wanted to create this program in-house, I could not have because you've done it for so long and you have fine-tuned it for so long.
Speaker 2:What we do with the Selkámon Fellowship is pick four outstanding Hungarians, and it's not difficult because there are a lot of outstanding Hungarians who are well-traveled, who you know might have been to China already at state-sponsored Chinese scholarships, and then they come to us and want to see the other side of the world, and that always is something that inspires me Speak multiple languages.
Speaker 2:Because we have the Erasmus programs, you know, in Europe that are a free exchange program, basically for European Union member states, and a lot of people have spent already a semester abroad, so they know how to manage their time, they know how to hit the ground running. The students that we pick are very motivated to learn more about America, specifically to learn from Americans, but they do. We're in the business of training the best of the best Hungarians and making sure that they understand what America has to offer to this world, including Hungary, because I truly believe you know what Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, that the cause of America, to a great measure, is the cause of all mankind, and that's why we founded, after my T-Facts experiences, the Common Sense Society in.
Speaker 2:Budapest, which now has chapters in the United States, the Netherlands and the UK. I really do believe that when Hungarians come here, if they understand some of the founding principles and some of the debates the very legitimate debates that this country had about federalism and, you know, a more centralized government or a more localized government, they will understand something about the general nature of government that is very useful for their own life. What we provide to the Selkhamen Fellows outside of their TFAS programs is bridging some of the gap of understanding between what the American system is and how that translates into the Hungarian system. So we sit down and read through a series of reading seminars just with the Hungarians, alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and we focus on chapters that are on the role of civic associations in political life and the role of churches and the separation of church and state and the vibrant Christian culture that American democracy had, and that's some of the things that Tocqueville observed as one of the key distinctive features of American democracy. It's really important, I think and we have heated debates with the Hungarians, especially atheists, about this oh, it's enough to have morals, but when you dig down, okay, well, where do those morals come from? How do. I know this moral is actually something that is worth following. That's where the heart of real citizen debates are.
Speaker 2:What they take away from these readings and from their summer experiences is a can-do mentality. They really are encouraged as human beings because Americans are, on average and still by and large, extremely helpful, very friendly, still by and large extremely helpful, very friendly, kind. A lot of Hungarians are shocked by the fact that 35, 55-year-old professionals would speak to them and want to help them. Why would they want to help them? Well, because you're a human being worthy of helping, because you're ambitious, you're young and you put in all the work, and that is incredibly encouraging for Hungarian young professionals and students.
Speaker 1:You've talked about the value of our program for these fellows, but they offer so much to our students too. You know to have these students from Hungary. You know when I talk to the American students during the program and toward the end of the program. You know what are the highlights of the program. Often they cite the chance to interact with students from other countries and we have a small contingent from the Netherlands.
Speaker 1:We usually have a Polish student, estonian and a smattering of other countries, but the Hungarians are just outstanding that you bring to our program. So we thank you for that. Thank you, it's a mutual advantage.
Speaker 2:I think it is because Hungarians have something important to tell. We don't tell them what that is, and they come from various backgrounds, various walks of life, but for them to find their own voice, and just the courage to voice what's in their head, is a major step. There's this inferiority complex that most Eastern Europeans come to and bring with them to the United States, and one of the most important jobs that we have at the foundation is to do away with that and make them understand that you have something worthy to say. Because for an average American kid, from kindergarten on, they're told that speak up, you know, organize, do it, you'll be fine. It's okay if you fail. In Hungary it's not that okay if you fail. If you fail it's kind of awkward. You really don't speak up because the teacher is the only one who knows the true stuff.
Speaker 2:So all of that, it's a huge difference. It's something that they need to overcome, but once they overcome, they excel. And that's why I'm so encouraged whenever they pick for some kind of academic excellence award or something in the pool of 300 Americans and internationals as Hungarians, because that means at a very basic competitive environment they're able to excel as Hungarians, because that means at a very basic competitive environment they're able to excel as Hungarians against Americans. And that includes a tremendous amount of work on their part that is invisible for a lot of their peers.
Speaker 1:The 20th century was a very tragic century for Central Europe and for Europe. There was a reference earlier to 1956, of course, and Budapest has one of the best museums of communism, built, as I know, I guess located in what was the headquarters for the Nazis and then for the Communist. Party and the jails in the basement. But the students you're bringing now of course don't have any kind of firsthand experience. You're a first generation after the fall of communism.
Speaker 1:And do those events of 56 or following until 1989, how does that impact the mentality of young people today in Hungary? Or does it? They hear about it? They learn about it in school, I assume.
Speaker 2:Right. But they also hear about it from their own families and that's important, and they know what happened to grandpa and grandma and they know that there was a hush-hush period in the country or there was a period when they lost family members because of their political views or because of their Jewish origins, and those are very real stories and I always encourage Americans to talk to their own grandparents and great-grandparents, if they have some, because those experiences would be useful for Americans to have. In Hungary I think the past is so visible still as much renovation and restoration as we've done in the castle area and all around Budapest, which is marvelous. If you walk in downtown Budapest, you still have some old, you know, dilapidating buildings that have bullet holes in the wall.
Speaker 1:And those are 56 memories.
Speaker 2:It's very, very real and it's hard to deny. And you don't necessarily have to go to the museum, the House of Terror Museum, to understand those stories. Now it's useful if you do, but at a gut level, at a personal level, these stories are very much alive in young people's history. I was born in 85, so right before the regime changed, but I grew up in freedom you know, but I remember not having too many options in the grocery store.
Speaker 2:I remember not having too many options when it came to clothing and you know, one of the biggest culture shocks that I had when I first came to this country was Walmart. I mean, we were talking about this at the Liberty Fund conference. Walmart is kind of the worst and the best of American capitalism. You have the range of options but you also have tremendous excess that people end up buying into. Life was much simpler in the 90s. For me, the fact that we didn't grow up with social media, we didn't grow up with the internet and had a real childhood where we climbed trees and threw rocks and had real human relationships that you had to mend and repair and build up was kind of a protected period for a generation. This current generation doesn't have that because they were born into freedom, they were born into welfare relative welfare and they were born into a very highly saturated social media environment.
Speaker 2:What helps, I think, counter all of this is real human bonding and that starts, I think, in the family and that starts with real human histories and when I started in a more concerted fashion, interviewing literally my parents and grandparents about certain periods of history so that I can put things together.
Speaker 2:That really made me a more humble person, because once you realize as a 20-year-old or 30-year-old what people had to overcome just to live, you really do live your life differently. And I think most of the Hungarians that we bring over and that we help through our fellowship and scholarship programs have gone through that exercise. It makes them a more humble Hungarian. Of the Hungarians that we bring over in that we help through our fellowship and scholarship programs have gone through that exercise. It makes them a more humble Hungarian, but I think it makes them more effective advocates for all the right things. I have to tell you this because it's some of the things. That was one of the most striking experiences in the US that I had. I haven't met a living, breathing Marxist, an actual outspoken, hardcore communist who was proud of his or her beliefs until I came to Bard College in upstate New York through a different scholarship that was not too fast.
Speaker 2:And it was shocking to me that you have people here, you know, in torn Gucci jeans with parents, you know editors at the.
Speaker 1:New York-based newspapers.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to specify and they're trying to convince me that socialism is a great idea. It's just never been implemented in almost 40, 50 countries all around the world through various ethnic and religious contexts, and it has caused death and destruction everywhere it was tried and implemented. How much more trial and implementation do you want to go through? The largest country in the world, china, is a communist country. It's a one-party system. Even today, we have more people living under communism today than we had during the Cold War because of the Chinese population. Those responses were just brushed off and that lack of reality check for hardcore left-wing American students at the time was really scary for me. Students at the time was really scary for me and I always wondered okay, well, these kids are living in a bubble, reality is never hitting them. What do they do after they leave campus? And then I went and worked in New York and went to Brooklyn and I realized where do they go?
Speaker 2:But in a serious way. I think students on campuses these days have a lot of reality to face and to be shielded from. That is not great for anyone.
Speaker 1:Those examples are just so real. I mean, we used to have East and West Germany. You know the same people divided by a line. One side will try communism, socialist economic system, the other side will try freedom. And the differences are so real. North and South Korea I mean, the people in South Korea are several inches taller now than people in North Korea just from a dividing line being put up and trying two different systems. You're right. What's happened in Venezuela and so many other countries is just tragic. You mentioned the lack of choices in the grocery store when you were a young girl and lack of clothing. I have to just end, since we're running out of time, by saying you have a beautiful jacket on today. Is that a Hungarian?
Speaker 2:Yes, march 15th 1848 was when the Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburg Empire broke out and we celebrated that last Friday and throughout the weekend. It's actually a revolution that America was cheering on, not officially, not through government foreign aid, but through a lot of private aid, through a lot of personal contributions to help the cause of the Hungarians. And then one of the revolutionary leaders, lajos Kossuth, actually came over to the United States on a USS Mississippi. So a US government commissioned carrier and gave a speech, the second foreigner after Marquis de Lafayette to give a speech to the joint sessions of Congress. He gave a speech to Congress when he came over in the early 1850s and we're not far from the Civil War right. So the debate, that a very real debate and division between the North and South about abolition and slavery was raging. He was smart enough not to go into that and to leave that up to the Americans and not to take sides. He was smart enough to read the Federalist Papers before coming here, read the US Constitution, read the Federalist Papers before coming here, read the US Constitution, read the Declaration of Independence and then advocate for the cause of Hungarian liberty against tyranny based on that. And so he really appealed to American principles when he was here and he was wildly popular.
Speaker 2:When he came over and touched ground in New York, you couldn't fit a single more person on Broadway. There were so many people. There were Kossuth flags everywhere. There were thousands and thousands of people. He was a huge hero. He was like the Benjamin Franklin of the day for the Hungarians. Children being born were named after him, hundreds of poems were written for him. Counties were named after Kossuth. In America, streets were and these were not by Hungarian-Americans, these were by Americans. The American Museum there at the time had Hungarian flags everywhere. This was a huge moment for Hungarians to show that we are connected, hungarians and Americans, by our love of freedom. You know what we try to do with the Hungary Foundation is to continue that dialogue and look at ways how we can benefit from that dialogue.
Speaker 1:Perfect note for ending this podcast. Thank you so much, Anna, for being with me today. It's been a pleasure to chat.
Speaker 2:Thank you, roger, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
