Elections have consequences. This is why I left Budapest, my home for the past four years, to return to the United States, my home.
Viktor Orbán’s landslide defeat in April, and the unsettling atmosphere of vengeance that has overtaken Hungary since Péter Magyar became prime minister, likely means the end of the Danube Institute, the government-funded think tank where I worked. This would be a tragedy—the Institute was center-right, but not particularly partisan, and produced excellent work—but the new regime is now cleansing public life of much of anything that Orbán and his Fidesz party touched, with the fervor of a pack of political Savonarolas. It was time to go.
I moved to Budapest in 2022 after an unhappy divorce, accompanied by my adult son, who remains in Europe, in graduate school. I had done two fellowships at the Danube Institute, and was curious to learn more about Viktor Orbán’s political ideas. Were there things we American conservatives could learn from him? I meant to find out.
