Hungary, 1956: Freedom or Death

by Lee Duigon

When I was seven years old, Hungarian state police opened fire on a student protest and launched the Hungarian Revolution. That was on Oct. 23. By Nov. 10, Russian troops had crushed the uprising and the victorious communists broke all their promises to reform the government. Hungary would not be free until the Iron Curtain crumbled, a whole generation later.

These events sparked an exodus of 200,000 refugees—not counting the ones who tried to escape, but couldn’t. I became friends with a boy whose family literally had to crawl under and through barbed wire entanglements, guarded by Russians with machine guns, to get out. Some of them migrated to New Brunswick, NJ, where there was already a thriving Hungarian community. Some of them joined our church, sent their kids to our schools.

By and by their stories came out and most of us heard them. Imagine that the government of your country is so oppressive, so violent, that you’re willing to risk your life to get out of there. Just a few years later, thousands of refugees from Cuba had similar experiences. Their stories were abundantly reported and most of us heard them. And most of us understood: here were people who had faced death in order to be free. Hard for us to imagine, here in America—where we took our freedom for granted.

What must the children of these brave and desperate refugees—children now in their seventies, or older—think of America’s current, hot, flirtation with socialism, led by the Democrat Party? They probably think we’ve lost our minds. We can imagine them asking, “Have you forgotten what we told you? Do you think we made it up? Do you think we endured all those hardships, faced all that danger, for no reason? Freedom is better than socialism! So much better, it’s worth risking your life to get it!”

They know communism for what it is, experienced it first-hand. And want no more of it.

A friend of mine who grew up in Budapest recalled how, once a week, all the children in her school were marched off to the theater to sit through propaganda films about the wonderfulness of communism, the goodness of a government that 200,000 of them had crawled through barbed wire to escape. When she grew up, she left for America. She has little tolerance for Far Left propaganda: no vote for Bernie Sanders there.

How could we have forgotten this?

Our public schools, our colleges and universities; our Free & Independent Nooze Media Inc.; our sports and film celebrities, our Big Tech and corporate magnates; and ahead of them all and leading the charge, our Democrat Party—they want what the Hungarian people risked their lives to get rid of. Bigger and more intrusive, ever more intrusive, government; higher and higher taxes; tighter and tighter restrictions on our rights—they’re out there every day campaigning for it.

Why?

As the daughter of a Budapest police chief once said, many years ago, “But dahling—it wasn’t communism for me!” It must’ve been nice and cushy for those happy few on top of the heap. Which is where all our own Far Left loonies expect to wind up, once they turn America into Venezuela.

Once you steal an election, the rest of the job comes easily.

One big difference between now and 1956: there will be no place left to run to, when the curtain comes down on America. The Hungarians, the Cubans, who wanted to be free came here.

But where will we go?

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Click the link and stop in for a visit, while it’s still allowed. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net