My Chat with Dr. Balázs Orbán, Political Director of PM Viktor Orbán (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_719)
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Summary
Balazs Orban is the Political Director of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's office in Hungary. He is a lawyer, a political scientist, and a member of parliament. He s also the author of The Hungarian Way to Strategy, a book about how to create a unique strategy in the modern world.
Transcript
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Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad for the Saad Truth. Today I have with me Balazs Orban, who is the political
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director of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary. I will read his bio in a second, but first let me say
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hello. How are you doing, Balazs? Hello Gad, how are you? Very good, very good. Let me just read your, I won't read
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your long bio, but you are a lawyer, political scientist, and member of parliament. You are also, as I said,
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the political director of the Prime Minister, you are on the board of Matthäus Corvinus Collegium,
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I like to simply say it, MCC, much easier to remember, where you were kind enough to invite
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me a couple of years ago because there was the release of the translated version of the Parasitic
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Mine in Hungarian. Last year we met together with Jordan Peterson because we were both speaking at the
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Budapest Demography Summit in September, so I've had a few times to visit Hungary. I've fallen in love
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with the place. Anything else you'd like to add to your bio before we drill down some questions?
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I'm happy to hear that you were one of the most favorite fellows here at the MCC.
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I just loved you very much, and I have your book here.
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Well, given that you're kind enough to show my book, this is your book, let me read it. You were
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kind enough to actually offer it to me when I visited Hungary, the Hungarian way of strategy,
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which I'd like to talk about what is the unique Hungarian way to strategy, but you have another
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book that I also want to mention. Do you pronounce it? Is it Hussar? Is that how you pronounce it?
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Yes. The Hussar cut the Hungarian strategy for connectivity. I had to, I was telling your
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colleague, I had to look up what that term meant. It's a cavalry move in the military,
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so maybe we could start there. Both books are offering the premise that there is a unique
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Hungarian way of doing things, whether it be connectivity or strategy. Maybe we could start
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Yes, indeed. So in reality, we are a landlocked country, not a big one, and a thousand years
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old country, and in the middle of Europe. But sometimes we do feel that we are kind of an
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island, culturally and from a civilizational point of view, island of difference, if I may
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say we are surrounded by a liberal ocean, you know, everywhere else, in all our neighborhoods,
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they are pushing forward liberal, progressive ideologies and policies, and we do things really
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in a different way. And we are very proud of it and hope it's going to be sustainable, much
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more sustainable than the progressive way of doing, and not just sustainable, but also successful.
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Do you think that, because I was going to say that maybe because of the Hungarian history,
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certainly in the recent past, having been exposed to other types of parasitic ideas like communism
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and so on, that there is maybe a natural built-in inoculation against some of these ideas.
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Could that be one of the main reasons why your trajectory is different from, say, Western Europe
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that may not have experienced the full brunt of some of these bad ideas?
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Yes, and I think it also comes from more ancient period of times, because the Hungarian tribes,
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who used to be Eastern tribes, they came to Europe and they came to the current territory of Hungary
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more than 1,100 years ago, they brought their unique language, their unique purpose of surviving
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and managing their life on their own. We are all surrounded by German and Slavic and other type of
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and Muslim populations, civilizations. So we don't have any relatives, we are not related to anybody else.
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So I think in a Hungarian mindset, it's like a very old, very old way of thinking is about that,
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you know, there is such a thing that Hungarian language, there is such a thing that Hungarian way of life,
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and it makes sense to fight for the preservation of it.
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And there are some other forces, big forces, and they want to occupy us, they want to convince us
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to do things in a different way, and we don't want to follow their intentions.
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And I think it was, there was this kind of ancient reaction, what we experienced during communist period of time,
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and what we experienced now, if, you know, Brussels tried to, it tries to dictate us some policies.
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Yeah, the, certainly the open door policies that you've steadfastly been against.
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Is your feeling that, so, because of course, as you probably know, Canada is probably on the opposite spectrum of
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that policy, and I, frankly, it's been about 20, 20 plus years that I've been warning about some of the,
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you know, maybe irreversible changes that are happening in Canada, because of the open door policy,
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is your sense that most Hungarians are fully in line with your view, precisely because
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you're so afraid to ever lose your distinct language.
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I mean, by definition, it is distinct in that there's only, I think, three languages
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that are completely orphaned in the tree of languages.
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I think it's Finnish, Hungarian, is it Estonian or Slovenian?
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And so because of this unique character, my sense would be that most people are probably in line
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with your rather strict, more closed door policy when it comes to immigration, correct?
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It's an interesting story because it's not a party political issue at all.
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So it's not the case that, you know, voters of the Fidesz party, they are, so let's call them
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anti-migration and the voter of the opposition liberal parties, they are pro-migration.
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So in reality, there is a national unity behind the government's migration policies.
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80-90% of the society is supporting the government in this regard.
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And I don't want to disappear in the history, but this also comes from historical experiences.
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We once were occupied by the Ottomans for like 150 years and how we are here now in Budapest
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and Buda castle was occupied by the Turkish or Ottoman tribes through a trick that first
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they came as peaceful visitors, but then they changed their clothes and we realized that
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So it's like, if we see this from a civilizational point of view, that you should be able to protect
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And this is the starting point for having a respectful and peaceful and normalized relationship
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with the foreigners, this is decoded very deeply in the Hungarian way of thinking.
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Obviously, the historical experience of America and Canada and some other Western European countries
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The meaning of nation is different, even in Europe.
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So in the middle, middle age period of time, Catholics from coming from different Western
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European countries, they felt themselves closer to each other than with the Protestants.
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But in Hungary, it's like the Protestants and the Catholics were living together and
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they all felt very close to each other because they were Hungarians.
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As I was preparing, I went for a walk before our chat and I was thinking, what are some parallels
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that I can draw between the Hungarian experience?
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So there's both in my Lebanese heritage and in my Jewish heritage, something, and actually
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my wife is Lebanese-Armenian, so I can also bring her in, that is similar to the Hungarian
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I mean, Lebanese people seem to be boxing above their weight class, so to speak, in that
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you hear so much about the Lebanese wherever they go.
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So there's as many in the diaspora as there are in Lebanon, if not many more, yet they're
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successful business people, intellectuals, artists, and certainly Jews.
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There's only 15 million Jews in the world, and boy, do they box above their weight class
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in terms of the influence that they have, Nobel Prizes and so on.
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Armenians also have historically been a minority.
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The Lebanese-Armenians are a small minority, and yet they've also...
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So I wonder if there is a strong parallel here in that once you have a people that are dominated
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by a much greater majority, you always turn a bit insular and inward because you have to
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And I think it's very important because we have to put an enormous amount of intellectual
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energy to understand the Western civilization, because it's crucial for understanding the
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And we have to understand that although we are many Westerners, are part of the same civilization,
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So our habits, our way of thinking about politics, about how we think about our values, it's completely
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And if we don't understand this, that we will be stuck into a serious type of confrontation.
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I'm very often with the prime minister in Brussels, in the European Council meeting.
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And I have also personal experience to hear this from other leaders of European countries,
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that for them, the idea of nation means something different.
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And for this reason, for them, migration is not a threat at all, because it's just a change in the paradigm.
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It's a different concept, which is not based on similarities in religion, similarities in language,
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similarities in shared history, but based on something else.
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For example, I don't know, human rights or constitutional rights or so on and so on.
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And for them, it's a very normal way of thinking about the future.
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But countries like this or civilizations like this or like nations like this for Israel,
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for Hungary, for Armenia, it's a different cafe house.
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Indeed, I want to draw a few personal links that I have with Hungary,
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and then we can discuss some additional uniquely Hungarian policies when it comes to safe fertility and so on.
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But if you and I remember, I think in my first lecture that I gave at MCC,
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I might have mentioned this, that some of my favorites,
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so my background originally was in mathematics and computer science.
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And so Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician.
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John von Neumann was Hungarian, one of my absolute favorite guys.
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And he was a real polymath in that he could navigate through game theory and economics and statistics
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The professor that I had for the most number of courses throughout my entire university education
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It was Professor Mackay, who was originally Hungarian.
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One of my good friends now was my former MBA student.
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But if I get the pronunciation wrong, you'll correct me.
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Yes, there is the Puli and there's the Kommandor.
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I absolutely, you know, when I first went to Hungary, I was, and I was walking around Budapest.
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I was thinking that I'm going to be seeing Kommandors walking everywhere.
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And for those of you who don't know what a Kommandor is, it's an unbelievable looking dog.
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One more link to Hungary and then you can comment.
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I used to be a competitive soccer player myself.
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Now, this is before my time, but I am a historian of soccer, so to speak.
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And of course, the early 1950s soccer team with Pushkash and the rest of them was an unbelievable team.
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Can we ever hope that Hungary can return to such a glory or was that a one shot and never to be returned?
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So I played the number 10 position, although I didn't wear number 10.
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And I actually discussed this, Balazs, in the first chapter of The Parasitic Mind, where I say that my love of freedom doesn't just apply to, you know, freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech.
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I played that position because it's the guy who goes around trying to exploit spaces, play freely, right?
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And whenever I had a coach who would tell me today, you're playing a bit on the left side of midfield and you have to do this and that, it's as if you decapitated me because you're putting constraints on my ability to create.
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If we're going to compare, if I dare compare myself to someone who is a great player, it's probably be De Bruyne, right?
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He just kind of floats around, you know, very skillful.
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I mean, forgive me for asking, but you must be well into your 30s now, yes?
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38, and yet you still have the courage to go out there because I've tried to play.
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But the second that I try to do a quick acceleration, things very, very quickly go wrong.
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If you are either a striker or a central defender, you don't have to run at all.
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You just have to wait for the ball and then kick it.
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So it's like I think my position is much better than yours.
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There is one player that I know from today's generation.
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It's the midfielder who plays for Liverpool, who's quite a lovely, silky player.
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I suppose he's probably the top player right now from Hungary, correct?
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He is very, very smart and very good player with a very good technique.
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But, you know, I think that it's like it's not a coincidence that the Hungarians are very good in sports.
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Unfortunately, not now, not among the best ones in football.
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But in the Olympic Games, the number of medals compared to the population, we are among the top nations.
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Just last year, we had two new Nobel Prize winners, which is amazing.
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Not just one for a small country, but two in two different categories.
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So I think, but it also goes back to this Hungarian thing, because we really think that if we want to survive, we have to be the best.
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So it's like not possible to survive this surrounding with this unique culture and unique way of thinking if you are not the best in sports, in education, in science and so on and so on.
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And everybody in Hungary wants to be the best of the best.
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Well, when I visited MCC, I quickly realized that arguably one of your greatest, I don't know if he was a fellow at the time, who's, I mean, a non-Hungarian was Sir Roger Scruton, right?
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Who's studied, you know, the philosophy of aesthetics and so on.
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And the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'm going to link aesthetics to two areas of the Hungarian reality.
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So as I was walking around, I mean, most of the time I spent was in Budapest, but we also got to go to other places.
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And there is this pronounced focus on aesthetics, right?
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So whether it be the door handles or the manholes on the street, you're thinking, boy, somebody spent a lot of time making the manholes on the streets look so beautiful.
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So there is this really glorious sense of the importance of aesthetics, which then if I link it to soccer, you know, the 1950s team was a very stylish team, right?
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And I always joke with my Italian friends that, I mean, I could argue the same thing for Italians for many things, but not for their soccer.
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When it comes to their soccer, they're not at all aesthetic.
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I mean, the French play stylish, the Dutch play stylish, of course, the Brazilians, the Hungarians, but the Italians don't carry the aesthetics to their soccer, but apparently the Hungarians apply it everywhere.
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Yes, that's probably that's probably that's true, even in the field of soccer.
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But it's like Hungarian players, they do have very good skills and they are like this push cash type of thinking.
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Like, think about my prime minister, you know, like he is doing the driblings in politics.
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He is like really a superstar, whether you like him or not, but he has like 35 years of history, you know, 16 years in opposition, 16 years in government.
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He's the doyen of European politics and so on and so on.
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So it's like, but we also have to put a lot of energy into being always disciplined, like not just dribbling, but protecting the defense line or defense or make the defense like the Italians.
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So it's like, if you have skills, it does not mean that you cannot learn from others.
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So we also have to learn we need some Italian or German type of defender.
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Let's come back for a second to to some unique Hungarian policies.
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And then I'd like to ask you about sort of your daily life as a, you know, the political director of the prime minister.
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But before we get to that, one other policy I'd like to discuss earlier, we discussed a bit, you know,
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But, you know, the second visit that I when I went to Hungary was, as I mentioned earlier, for the I think it's biannual, right?
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The Budapest Demography Summit, which was organized by President Novak.
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Now, I know that one of my friends, which I know that, you know, I mean, Elon Musk is very concerned with fertility issues.
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So you guys have this unique policy whereby you link the exemption from paying taxes to having babies.
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And I think if I'm not wrong, and I'll ask you in a second to take the floor.
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Once a woman has four children, income taxes disappear.
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So if you have three children, then no income taxes.
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Unfortunately, now that's just the government goal.
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So we think that, you know, if you look on the fertility rates everywhere, the entire Western civilization,
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or if I may put it that way, all developed countries are in trouble.
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So, so it's like, and, and migration, that kind of migration, what our countries experiences now,
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it's not a strong sign of strength, as it used to be in the case of Canada or United States,
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So if we want to preserve our countries and, and get prepared for, for next generations,
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And, and we don't need to convince the people to, to want more children than they want.
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But actually, it's like, according to all statistics, people want to have more children.
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It's just, it just doesn't happen for many reasons.
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So according to the Hungarian understanding, the government's duty is to have those young men
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and women who want to get married and want to have babies.
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But it's, it's, it shouldn't be their, it's their private decision, of course,
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but, but the state should recognize their kind of sacrifice and should support them financially
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So this is why we have an enormous amount of programming, more than certain measures,
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tax cut, tax incentives, special loan programs, um, uh, uh, special, uh, uh, buying program
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for cars, uh, you know, everybody can decide whether they want to stay, whether the mother
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want to stay at home for like three years, or she can go back to work immediately.
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So it's like a real family friendly environment where it's everything.
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But if you decide to have, um, a marriage, if you decide to have a family with babies,
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And are you able at this point to definitively gauge whether the policy, you know, you were
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And of the 13 measures, I think you said, do you have a sense, which is the one that's
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I'm thinking here as an econometrician and as, as a statistician in terms of gauging
00:27:05.780
So it's approximately we spend four to 6% of our GDP to family support programs.
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Back at that time, fertility rate was the lowest in Europe.
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And, um, and so it means in a Hungarian standards that since then we have 200,000 more babies who
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would never be born without this family support program.
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200,000, that's the second largest Hungarian city.
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So it's, uh, compared to the Hungarian standards, it's, it's quite a significant number.
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Number of abortions also halves without changing any regulation.
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In general, what we try to monitor always is that, you know, if you have babies, the, the,
00:28:18.100
the average level of income for you as a family, it goes immediately down.
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So it decreases because you have a bigger family and, um, and, and no one is earning money.
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So what we're trying to work, we are not at that level, but what we want to achieve as
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a goal, this is our, this is our hope that in just a couple of years time, we will be able
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to reach that, that if you have children, this, this, uh, level of income will not decrease.
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So it will be comparable and you will even bad, even have better financial situation than
00:29:08.160
This would be the game changer position that you can say that although I have, uh, children,
00:29:14.640
I'm better off than without children, because in reality, this is now the opposite in every
00:29:22.960
If you have children, it's a, it's, it's a burden.
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So the state should be able through different measures to counterbalance, uh, this, we are not
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at that level now, but this is what we every year trying to monitor very closely, whether
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we are closer to that goal or, or the distance is getting bigger and bigger.
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Obviously now Europe, it's a, we are in a serious situation because of the war, there
00:29:55.340
So the middle class is suffering in every country.
00:29:58.100
So we have to mobilize a lot of financial resources to keep that level for families that we can say
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that, um, the, the, the price of the war and of the bad economic decisions of Brussels is
00:30:18.560
Have other countries emulated the Hungarian model when it comes to this fertility issue?
00:30:24.960
Well, those governments in Europe who are coming into power, like, uh, like the Italian conservative
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government, the Polish government before they were, um, uh, defeated by the liberals or some
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French politicians, they keep talking about the same things, mainly tax incentives for, for
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families, but, um, but, uh, but there is no such, uh, policy elsewhere, not no such complex
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family policy, uh, measure system than in Hungary.
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That one more policy question, and then we'll talk about sort of your personal day to day,
00:31:05.260
and then we'll wrap it up because I know you have a hard stop.
00:31:07.680
Uh, another policy that I remember reading about, especially from my perspective as the author,
00:31:13.400
of the parasitic mind is that the government has, I don't know if it was withdrawn its funding
00:31:19.740
to certain disciplines that would typically be some of the disciplines that are most likely
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to be the promulgators of these parasitic ideas.
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And how do you respond to the people who say, oh, by you doing that, you are infringing on free
00:31:44.000
And we actually organized a national referendum on LGBTQ, so gender ideology.
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And we asked the people, I think we are the only country, um, on earth who did that.
00:31:55.660
And with an overwhelming majority, like it's really a non-party political issue.
00:32:02.020
So even those who are, who are not supporting the government in other issues, they voted against
00:32:07.780
gender ideology in schools and kindergartens and, uh, uh, restrictions for protecting our
00:32:16.120
So it's, um, it's, it's, I know it's controversial, but, but this is what the Hungarian people,
00:32:24.420
And actually it's still, the fight is still, uh, going on because this woke ideology is
00:32:30.160
coming, coming, uh, to Hungary from, from media platforms, Netflix, Disney, and so on.
00:32:41.680
So we have to every year, uh, introduce new and new measures to protect, um, our children.
00:32:48.480
I think it's not an anti-freedom, uh, statement at all, because our position is clear.
00:32:53.860
If you are an adult person, um, you can do whatever you want.
00:33:01.320
So the children shouldn't use for ideological purposes, full stop, uh, without the consent
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So it's like, uh, the state shouldn't do, uh, this and full stop.
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And then if they are adult, they can do whatever they want.
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So I think this is the only way how you can protect, uh, your children.
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And the situation is very, very hard, very complicated.
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The online word is causing a lot of harm on, on, on the children.
00:33:32.960
So even how to use the mobile phone and the telecommunication technology in the, in, in
00:33:39.900
the classrooms, this was a, this was the latest debate in Hungary.
00:33:44.400
And we banned the usage of mobile phones, uh, for students in, in, in the classroom, because
00:33:49.940
that's the only way how you can preserve the quality or, uh, or, or increase the quality
00:33:57.260
Well, I think we're seeing, we're seeing that in a growing number of schools, as you probably
00:34:01.220
know, Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist wrote a book, right?
00:34:04.940
The Anxious Generation, where, you know, his whole raison d'etre is to try to do exactly
00:34:10.940
that I read, I read this book and I, I, I, uh, I, um, try to give an advice to the Hungarian
00:34:18.000
politicians as well to follow, uh, his, um, his ideas.
00:34:25.560
Uh, last set of questions and I'll, I'll let you go.
00:34:31.400
Like, so for example, for me, before I, before I turned the floor to you, what speaking about
00:34:36.260
freedom earlier, whether it be freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech or freedom on a
00:34:40.480
soccer field, I'm someone who really loves to vagabond.
00:34:48.080
Then I'm going to get to speak to this lovely Hungarian guy.
00:34:54.280
And, and, and once you put too many restrictions on me, I call it in my latest book on happiness,
00:35:01.880
You are suffocating me now as a political director, I'm presuming that you suffer from
00:35:07.920
scheduling asphyxia because you have meeting after meeting, after meeting.
00:35:11.140
So walk us through a day of the world of Balazs Orban.
00:35:16.880
Actually, I should, I should live the, the, the life of God's side ways.
00:35:24.280
I should, I should change, change the lifestyle immediately.
00:35:28.480
So I'm, I'm responsible for, for a talent management institution, MCC, what you were mentioning
00:35:38.960
So there, there is a duty how to, how to do the management work.
00:35:46.660
But in politics, I, this is why my position is, is called the political director because
00:35:53.660
I don't, it's not my duty to get involved in, in, in any branches of, of government.
00:36:01.420
So I'm not responsible for energy policy or for, I don't know, educational policy in details.
00:36:09.520
There are some, some government members who are responsible for that.
00:36:13.960
My job is to try to help the prime minister to, to understand the word.
00:36:21.640
And I'm having a think tank inside the government, which wants to analyze what's going on, bring
00:36:28.640
in new ideas and, and, and monitor what's going on in intellectual life.
00:36:33.400
So it's actually, my job is to watch very closely, God Sod's, and monitor him and his, his fellow
00:36:43.700
people and what they think and what they read and what they, what they tell us about the
00:36:49.080
Well, my next book, in case you are watching me is one that hopefully you will invite me
00:36:53.380
to, it's maybe not a nice thing to solicit an invitation, but that it's only a measure
00:37:00.620
I already invited you it's, it's, it's already happened.
00:37:04.440
So suicidal empathy, the next book is exactly in line with, I mean, if you like, it's part
00:37:12.800
Because if the parasitic mind is about how bad ideas can parasitize our cognitive system,
00:37:18.340
suicidal empathy is how it can parasitize our emotional system, right?
00:37:23.240
Because we become overly empathetic in ways and toward people that don't necessarily reciprocate
00:37:37.600
Balazs, it's such a pleasure having you stay on the line just so we could say goodbye officially
00:37:44.500
If President, Prime Minister Orban ever wants to come on the show, I know he's very