Welcome, welcome, welcome! Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. And welcome to today’s program. We’ve got some great guests, as always, and great to be together. Go to proamericareport.com to check out all of our great guests and sign up for the daily email. And in a few moments, we will get an update from my friend Ted Malloch. He’s got a new piece over at American Greatness and a very sobering update from Todd Bensman at the border. He’s with the Center for Immigration Studies down at the border. He’ll tell us what’s going on. Sobering. Sobering. That’s the word I’d use for it.
Well, let me tell you a quick story that will set up today’s what you need to know. About five years ago, maybe six years ago, it came to my attention, I forget now how I was introduced to the ambassador to the United States from Hungary. His name is Dr. László Szabó, and he’s a nice man. He’s a doctor. I think he’s maybe a thoracic surgeon. I don’t know if it’s cardiac, but he’s a surgeon. Nice wife, couple of kids, really impressive guy. And he came to a couple of the events that I hosted in St. Louis to speak about Hungary and to speak about what their public policies are as it relates to the family. My organization, the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, we do a lot of pro family stuff, and so we promote family policies and pro life policies. And so it was very interesting. He was a wonderful guest, a very good speaker, and very impressive. And it was sort of my first exposure.
Now, this is about five and a half years ago to Hungary and what was going on there. Hungary is a nation of about 10 million people, so it’s not too big, right? Poland has 40 million people, but Hungary has a great tradition, great history, great culture, amazing culture. And so it’s been wonderful. Anyway, also then when Katalin Novák, who was the minister for families, minister for families in the Hungarian government, she came to D.C. a couple of times. I met her. Then I was also in Verona, in Italy to speak at the World Congress on the Family, and I saw her again there. So I’ve had some exposure to the people in Hungary and the policymakers.
And they have very specific policies that they call pro family. And they identify it happily, proudly. They say, we’re going to have pro family policies. They’re not just pro life, they are very pro life, but pro family. So, for example, if your family has four children, you don’t pay income tax – at all, period. In fact, I think if you have two children, it’s a sliding scale. It starts to lessen. In other words, so they’re incentivizing through the tax code to have children. They have other policies that have to do with young people working if they’re going to get a marriage age, incentives to marry. There’s even an incentive that I’ve been told about that they incentivize the ownership of those larger vans for larger families. So they very intentionally go about incentivizing large families, incentivizing what I call pro family, pro marriage policies. And they do it very proudly. Very proudly.
So today I was invited to see the foreign minister of the Hungarian government speak. And so I did go. It was across town near the White House. It was a smaller crowd. It wasn’t a big crowd, but the chance to see him, see this speaker was pretty wonderful. And his name, which I will butcher now, his name is Péter Szijjártó. I think I’m mispronouncing it. But he’s the foreign minister. And very impressive. Of course, at the top level of the Hungarian government these folks are all fluent in English and German and Russian and of course, Hungarian. And so very impressive guy.
But here’s what you need to know. The two things that he said that I took away from it are, he said the European is, number one, what you need to know, the European Union is desperate to force its member nations to raise taxes. They believe that more government taxation, more taxation, therefore more government revenue is in everybody’s interest. And in Hungary, they have mostly a flat tax on individuals and also they have a flat tax on corporations. But as I just described to you, they use their marriage, they use their tax code to incentivize marriage and kids and other things. And the European Union doesn’t like that.
They want to make it so that there’s more revenue coming in and they certainly don’t want to let these Judeo-Christian values that they don’t agree with to be put into place.
So the first thing that the foreign minister said was the European Union wants to force expansion of raising taxes. In fact, part of the reason he was in town was to say that he was joining other nations, Poland, America, a few others and saying, hey, no international tax coordination.
Don’t try to make it so everybody does the same thing because inevitably it would be higher taxes.
The second thing that he said, with a big smile, he said everybody recognized that when Trump came into office, America First was his mantra. And he said, we have no problem with that because we’re Hungary First. And he went on to say that, as America has flailed in the world now I’m using that word he mostly described policy decisions and things and the Obama administration and all, he said it has become muddied the priorities of America. It became muddied the priorities and the effectiveness of America.
Now, he was a diplomatic he was diplomatic. He’s the foreign minister, which is akin to our secretary of state. He was very careful how he said it.
But again, the takeaway what you need to know is the other thing he broadly said was everybody in the world sees this. He said, everybody sees the change in America. Everybody sees the European Union. He said most of Europe wants to push the nations to higher tax rates and higher government revenue. They like that, so they’re not resisting like he is Hungary and others. And he said, but especially as to the second one, which is America’s standing in the world, how it’s perceived, everybody sees it.
Everybody sees it.
And he said it’s not a good thing for the world for America to be muddled. Now, again, I’m being much more point blank. I’m describing what I heard him saying. He was much more diplomatic, but that was the takeaways. And I think you can see that.
You can see it all over the world.
And one of the aspects of the situation in Ukraine is that more, I’ve been reading a biography of George Kennan, and George Kennan, who was considered one of the leading lights in the 1940s and 50s on foreign policy, was in the State Department. I worked right in office next door to Secretary of State George Marshall, General Marshall and the Marshall Plan and all that. And Kennan was clear from the 80s on, he was describing that we shouldn’t be expanding the NATO alliance into the sphere of Russia and the Warsaw Pact, because it’s just going to lead to tension. He said that.
And the Hungarian basically said, however we got to this war, Ukraine versus Russia. He said, we need a ceasefire. We need a truce. We need it to stop.
And he said the sanctions on Russia that the world think is so great, he said it’s only penalizing the European economy. He said Russia’s got workarounds, and the people that are honoring the sanctions, like Hungary and others, are just getting the short end, are the ones that are penalized.
And so he said, that’s a failure. Again, I’m extrapolating a little bit more point blank than he said. He was more diplomatic. But that was the takeaway.
And so what you need to know is the world sees what we all see and feel and the world is impacted by our leadership.
There’s an old phrase that Phyllis Schlafly used for the military. She called it military superiority. She argued that military superiority should be the principle which means you’re stronger and better, more capable than anyone. You’re militarily superior. And when you do that, you’re guaranteeing peace.
The problem is we’re not doing military superiority. We’re doing military spending superiority. And we’re spending our money all over the world and dropping billions into the Ukraine and then not tracking the money. Military superiority is OUR military being superior. And I would just extend it, cultural superiority, maybe just say national superiority. When America, when the nation is strong, then the world feels it too. And again, I guess the phrase isn’t as good because cultural superiority sounds like we’re saying we’re better than them. That’s not what I mean. I mean, that when we’re strong. Cultural strength, national strength. The world feels that. The world feels that. That’s the difference.
So what you need to know is the world sees what’s happening and they’re worried about it. They’re worried about it. And it was very insightful to hear that from the Hungarian foreign minister. Very impressive conversation, and I was very pleased to be there. So I’ll put that up on social media. His speech I think his speech will be posted sooner or later. We’ll find out. I’ll get it up there. All right, we’ll take a break.
When we come back, Ted Malloch, he’s got a new column out of American Greatness. And Todd Bensman. A sobering view from the border from Todd Bensman. It sort of gets depressing, it gets depressing fast.
All right, we’ll take a break. We’ll be right back. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
