Poor Tamas Fellegi. Hungary's envoy to the International Monetary Fund had to spend last week enduring endless lectures on democracy and fiscal responsibility from the unelected head of an international financial organization that is largely funded with money stolen from the US taxpayer.

And poor Viktor Orban. Just over twenty years ago the young Hungarian had the temerity to stand up at the reburial of the hero of the 1956 uprising to demand that Soviet troops leave and that the communist regime agree to hold free and democratic elections. The communists didn't like him very much. Orban and many other anti-communists of that era were fighting unelected Moscow-based occupiers who stole his country's sovereignty and ruined its economy for ideological reasons. Now, as Hungary's prime minister, he is fighting against an unelected Brussels and Washington-based force that seeks to steal (what's left of) his country's sovereignty and ruin its economy for ideological reasons.

The Europeans -- and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- are bearing down on the Hungarian government, attacking its "authoritarian tendencies" and demanding that Orban restore democracy. Charles Gati, a State Department official in the administration of Clinton's husband, has gone even further, opining in the pro-opposition news weekly 160 Ora that, "there are opportunities indeed to remove this (Orbán) government -- if possible in a democratic way, if not then in some other way."

...


Maybe Hungary should just tell Lagarde, José Manuel Barroso, and Hillary Clinton to "stuff it."