Kicking off his opening speech in Dallas at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that Texas is called the “Lone Star State” for a reason, as it stands for independence, freedom, and sovereignty.
“If this is true - and it must be true, as I look around - then we have something in common, even if Hungary is over 5,000 miles from Dallas. My country, Hungary, is the Lone Star State of Europe,” he said, adding that his invitation to CPAC must have really triggered liberals all around the world.
“I can already see tomorrow’s headlines: ‘Far-right European racist and anti-Semite strongman, the Trojan horse of Putin, holds speech at conservative conference.’ But I don’t want to give them any ideas. They know best how to write fake news,” PM Orbán said.
Under the Obama administration, he continued, Hungary came under pressure to change its constitution and “delete Christian and national values from it.”
“They hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you and the America you stand for. We all know how this works,” PM Orbán said. In his view, “a quitter never wins, and a winner never quits,” and this is why conservatives around the world should unite forces and share experiences.
According to the prime minister, the worst horrors of Western Civilization originate in regimes that tried to separate us from our Judeo-Christian heritage.
“The horrors of Nazism and Communism happened because some Western States in continental Europe abandoned their Christian values. And today’s progressives are planning to do the same. They want to give up on Western values, and create a New World, a Post-Western World,” PM Orbán said.
If we want to win, he said, we must learn how to play by our own rules as “politics are not enough, this is a culture war. […] Hungary is an old, proud but David-sized nation standing alone against the Woke Globalist Goliath.”
Focusing on Hungary’s migration policy, Prime Minister Orbán said that Hungary was the first country in Europe to say no to illegal migration, and we managed to stop the invasion at our southern borders. Hungarian people “rejected the false claim that migrants cannot be stopped, and forced us leaders to act. And we stopped illegal migration.”
“We have actually built that wall! And it stopped illegal migration,” PM Orbán said, adding that the migratory pressure is rising: Hungary has already suffered more than 160,000 illegal border-crossing attempts this year.
On family policy, a rock-solid pillar of the Hungarian government’s politics, PM Orbán pointed out that “progressives claim all over the world that families shouldn’t be protected,” and they say that “there is no such thing as family, because love is love and family is family. If you cannot define family, nothing is a family.”
Listing several pro-family measures in Hungary, PM Orbán illustrated that it is possible to double the number of marriages and halve the number of abortions in 10 years.
While Hungary has built a “physical wall” to keep out illegal migrants, and a “financial wall around our families,” we also built a “legal wall around our children to protect them from the gender ideology that targets them.”
In PM Orbán’s words, “the Hungarian Constitution now protects families and children.” In Hungary “the mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our kids alone,” he concluded.
Getting to taxation policy, an area where Hungary has recently had much disagreement with the current U.S. administration, PM Orbán warned the audience that “progressives always want your money: They love higher taxes.”
On the other hand, the Hungarian government “believes that people should have their money in their own hands,” and this is why Hungary introduced a 15% flat tax on personal income and the lowest corporate tax in Europe of just 9%.
Concluding his speech at CPAC Dallas with the war in Ukraine, Prime Minister Orbán said that “Ukraine is our neighbor, we are in full solidarity with them.”
“The attack of Russia against Ukraine has forced close to 1 million refugees to Hungary so far. Currently, [there are] more than 10,000 refugees every day,” he said, adding that it is only through American-Russian peace talks that there will ever be peace in Ukraine. “I cannot tell you what to do; it is your sovereign decision. I can, however, tell you one thing: Only strong leaders are able to make peace,” the prime minister said.
In his closing remarks, Prime Minister Orbán said that currently “the West is at war with itself,” but “we have a different future in mind. […] We must take up the fight. Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance.”