Magyar Egyház, 1972 (51. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1972-03-01 / 3. szám
12 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ And now, when there are roughly two hundred times as many of us here in the country as there were in 1860, when in northern Ohio alone we count our kind in the hundreds of thousands, where are we, what are we doing for our future, how do we explain the complete failure of our community life? We must confess, eye to eye and quietly, so no others will notice, our community life is a public scandal, at the least, cause for ridicule. The Republican party installed László Pásztor as head of their ethnic coordinating committee, it has been three years since we last heard of or from him. This being an election year the party, for reasons of selfinterest, again will have him deliver speeches and, win or lose, after the elections his job once again will be — silence. — With the democrats we have not achieved even this amount of dubious success. We reached the bottom of our political life in America. After such a discouraging diagnosis the question naturally arises as to what we could do, to make our political activities more effective and dynamic. Without the slightest implication of national conceit we can state, that we have achieved high ranking in the sciences, the arts and economic success. We are the descendants of a smart and inventive people, our shrewdness and spurred elbows have become the talk of the town. How then do we explain our inabilities and the wasting of our political power in constant guerilla-warfare against one another? As long as — and many are doing so — we substitute the here and now with there and then; as long as we do not realize that, altough we were bom in Hungary, we are now American citizens nonetheless; as long as we are unwilling to forget our former ranking as lords and overlords — ranks which are no longer rightfully ours by reason of our status as emigrants, ranks we could not regain, despite fixations to the contrary, should we eventually return to the land of our birth — we will be unable to participate in the development and direction of political life in America. The melting pot will continue to boil and bubble — whether we act as cooks there or not — let us therefore send a few Hungarian cooks to the caldron to so spice and stir the brew, that our own moral character and national ethos, distinct from any other in the world, be also represented. Let our goals be the goals America strives for, that which is good for the country will also be good for us and in the end might promote the liberation of the land of our birth. There is no room here for isms, be they nationalism, socialism, communism or any other ism, these already exist in overabundance elswhere, and that people suffer there was irrefutably attested to by our own national tragedy of 1956 and its consequences, the hundreds of thousands of refugees and the tens of thousands of dead; much the same as the exiles, after the loss of the 1848 freedom fight, proved it beyond question, and they were fighting against absolutism. There are those among us who say that we have no right to sing the “Proclamation”, the “National Song” or the “National Hymn” this side of the Hungarian border. This is utter nonesense! Others, possessed with preposterous prejudice, claim that a born Hungarian commits treason by singing the American National Anthem, such a paranoid proposition is not only false and injurious, but represents a heinous crime against our new adoptive country! Vörösmarty’s “Proclamation” — with never a doubt or rue unto your country be trus — is just as valid here and now as it was there and then. Petofi’s “National Song” is perhaps even more valid here and now than it was there and then. In fact, we would do well to translate it, in accordance with American circumstances, and to acquaint our native borne American friends with its contents; who, though not yet prisoners, are already being enchained, along with us, by local hawkers of isms and international highway robbers. Kolcsey’s “National Hymn” is just as appropriate here and now as it was there and then, in fact, were we to substitute “America” for “Hungarian” in the first line, we would have “God bless America” — and America already is our country too! Let us also make a blood compact according to the example of our forbears, let us also nominate and run candidates for public office at the local, state and federal level, they must not be yesmen, puppets we completely control, but instead they must be those, who by virtue of their knowledge, education and bearing have already demonstrated their ability to succeed in our new surroundings, who in fact are successfully competing with the best of native Americans! This is no pipe dream, especially here in northern Ohio, so heavily populated by Hungarians and their descendants, but a realizable objective which, following the example of our ancestors, we can still achieve with joint effort and spiritual and financial sacrifices. The time has come — it’s now or never! Shall we be prisoners or free? That’s the question, how say ye? Hugo Pfahler
