Born American, but in the Wrong Place

1
Born American, but in the Wrong Place

• On Principle, Special EditionApril 2006by
  Peter W. Schramm
• Prologue
• My father, William Schramm, was not a mechanic or
  an engineer, but in post-war 1946 Hungary he
  somehow managed to build a car out of scrap
  parts. It was nothing more, really, than an
  engine with four wheels and a flat-bed in the
  back. Apart from military vehicles and Dads
  creation, cars on Hungarian streets were an
  extreme rarity. They just werent available and,
  even if they had been, there were no jobs and
  hence no money with which to purchase one. A
  young man in those days, my dad already had quite
  a few responsibilities and mouths to feed. And,
  of course, I was about to be born another very
  hungry mouth to feed. But Dad has always had an
  enterprising and entrepreneurial spirit. So he
  built this car, and he went around combing the
  countryside for junk to sell or trade. We
  survived.
• On one such excursion, he came upon a man
  standing in front of what appeared to be a broken
  down Volkswagen bug. The novelty of the situation
  and the look of exasperation (or maybe
  desperation) on the mans face were enough to
  make Dad stop. The driver of the vehicle turned
  out to be a decommissioned U.S. officer who
  happened to have been born in Hungary. He was
  taking some time off to tour the country. Dad was
  able to help him get the car going again, and the
  man offered to pay Dad in dollars. You must
  understand that, at that time, a few American
  dollars were like bags of solid gold. But Dad was
  too proud to take the moneydespite how much he
  needed it. The man was grateful, however, and he
  offered Dad his business card. It read, "Dr.
  Joseph Moser, DDS, Hermosa Beach, California."
  "If you ever need anything," the man said with
  real meaning, "dont hesitate to call." Dad did
  not refuse this offer. He took the card and gave
  it to my mother for safe-keeping. She would hold
  on to that card for the next ten years.

2
Revolution in Hungary

• It is now late 1956 and I am weeks away from my
  tenth birthday. The Hungarian Revolution against
  the Russian Communists is now in full swing.
  According to estimates, more than 20,000 freedom
  fighters and 1,500 Soviet soldiers are killed
  within a two-week period. Wethat is to say my
  parents, my sister (then four years old) and
  Ishared a small apartment on the plaza near the
  eastern railroad station in Budapest with my
  grandparents (Dads parents) and my uncle (Dads
  brother).
• Since one of the important things the
  revolutionaries did was to take over this
  railroad station, the Soviets had placed several
  tanks there, and we could not leave our
  apartment. There was quite a lot of heavy
  fighting right outside of our front window. There
  were bodies everywhere. One was just in front of
  our window for more than five days. After about a
  week and half of this, we could finally go
  outsidebut just for the essentials. As we walked
  around, I remember a grim fascination I had with
  the back of a Russian personnel carrier that was
  stacked with skeletons. It seemed that they were
  each covered with about two inches of black
  velvet. I later came to learn that these poor
  souls had been burned alive by a Molotov
  cocktail.
• Apart from these horrors, there were all of the
  ordinary and accompanying difficulties one might
  expect in such circumstanceswhere to get clean
  water, food, sanitation, etc. Worse, it was clear
  that though the Soviets had finally pulled out of
  our immediate area, they were winning. The
  Revolution was going to fail, and they would be
  back. The horrors that our family had faced for
  so many years in Hungaryfirst under the Nazis
  and then under the Sovietsdid not compare with
  what was ahead of us if we remained there. It was
  one thing to tolerate injustice when you were not
  accustomed to anything else. But the Revolution
  had stirred an almost forgotten longing in my
  fathers heart hope.
• Hungary had not been a pleasant place for the
  Schramms to live for quite a long time. Dad was
  born in 1922, right after an awful war in the
  heart of Europe. Things were hard. His father, an
  active participant in the 1919 Communist
  revolution, was hounded by the Fascists then
  ruling. By the time my father reached his teens,
  the depression hit hard, followed by World War
  II, or what Churchill called the second part of
  the thirty years war. World wars are unpleasant
  for small countries surrounded by large and
  ambitious ones. Hungary was no exception.

3

• Forced to take a side, Hungary chose Germany, all
  the while hoping for (what they called) the West
  to win. My father was placed in the air
  artillery. He liked it there because they could
  pretend to shoot down American planes, all the
  while knowing that the B-17s were flying well out
  of range. They couldnt hurt the good guys, yet
  they did their duty. That was as good as life got
  in those days. Besides, the Americans usually
  just flew over western Hungary on their way to
  Germany. They very rarely dropped their bombs in
  Hungary.
• The only thing worth bombing in Gyor where I was
  born and where we lived (it had a population of
  about 100,000 and was just east of Austria on the
  road to Budapest) was a factory that had been
  converted to build Messerschmitt planes. It
  employed about 10,000 people by then, my father
  among them. When the Americans decided to bomb
  the plantin 1944, I thinkthey first dropped
  thousands of leaflets informing people not to go
  to work that day because they were going to level
  the plant, and they didnt want people to get
  hurt. They said the bombing would begin at noon.
• My father believed the Americans. He didnt go to
  the factory. The Germans, however, insisted that
  everyone go into the factory and start
  production. They rounded people up, including my
  father, at bayonet point. The Nazis explained
  that those who wouldnt go in would be lined up
  and shot. Everyone but about a dozen people went
  in. The recalcitrant dozen were lined up against
  a factory wall. The Germans prepared a firing
  squad. As they were about to commence their
  grisly work, the American bombs started to fall.
  It rained fire and steel. Everyone ran away from
  the factory grounds, including the German
  soldiers lined up as a firing squad. Almost no
  one who had gone into the factory survived. The
  dozen, my father among them, survived. It was
  noon.
• The war was hard on everyone and the wars end
  brought little relief. When the Communists took
  control of the country in 1949, my parents
  little textile shop (about half the size of my
  living room) and everything that was in it, was
  taken from them. They were considered the
  "bourgeoisie," and therefore dangerous to this
  new kind of tyranny now in control. My father was
  later sentenced to prison for a year for "rumor
  mongering" (someone claimed he called a Communist
  a tyrant, which he did). He got out, washed
  windows for awhile and made illegal whiskey. He
  lived, and his family survived.

4

• In that same year, 1949, my grandfather was
  sentenced to ten years hard labor by the
  Communists for having a small American flag in
  his possession (much like the kind we wave at
  July 4th celebrations or with which we decorate
  the graves of our fallen heroes). Dad tried then,
  unsuccessfully, to persuade my mother to leave.
  But their ties to family and friends were too
  strong, and she would not hear it. At my
  grandfathers "trial" they asked him why he had
  the flag. Was he a spy? He replied that it
  represented freedom better than any other symbol
  he knew and that he had a right to have it. When
  my grandfather got an early release from the
  labor camp in 1956, he came back to us looking
  like a victim of the Holocaust. Still, the first
  thing he wanted to know was whether we still had
  the flag. Of course, we did not. It had long ago
  been confiscated. But my father did not want to
  break his fathers heart so he somehow managed to
  secure another one. We took it out of its hiding
  place and at that tender age I learned the very
  adult lesson of the complexity of telling the
  truth. Seeing that flag somehow erased much of
  the pain and torment those years of imprisonment
  caused my grandfather. That flag restored in him
  something like hope. In my father, it also
  stirred up righteous anger.
• Now, with the revolution failing, came the final
  straw for my Dad. On one of his trips out to
  secure some bread, a hand grenade landed next to
  him but, miraculously, it did not go off. The
  spark that should have set off that grenade set
  off my father instead. He came home and announced
  to my mother that that was it. He said he was
  going to leave the country whether she would come
  or not. Mom said, "O.K., William. We will come if
  Peter agrees. Ask Peter."
• My mother tells me, though I dont remember
  saying this, that I told my father I would follow
  him to hell if he asked it of me. Fortunately for
  my eager spirit, hell was exactly what we were
  trying to escape and the opposite of what my
  father sought.
• "But where are we going?" I asked.
• "We are going to America," my father said.
• "Why America?" I prodded.
• "Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the
  wrong place," he replied.

5

• My father said that as naturally as if I had
  asked him what was the color of the sky. It was
  so obvious to him why we should head for America.
  There was really no other option in his mind.
  What was obvious to him, unfortunately, took me
  nearly 20 years to learn. But then, I had to
  "un-learn" a lot of things along the way. How is
  it that this simple man who had none of the
  benefits or luxuries of freedom and so-called
  "education" understood this truth so deeply and
  so purely and expressed it so beautifully? It has
  something to do with the self-evidence, as
  Jefferson put it, of Americas principles. Of
  course, he hadnt studied Jefferson or Americas
  Declaration of Independence, but he had come to
  know deep in his heart the meaning of tyranny.
  And he hungered for its opposite. The embodiment
  of those self-evident truths and of justice in
  America was an undeniable fact to souls suffering
  under oppression. And while a professor at
  Harvard might have scoffed at the idea of
  American justice in 1956 (or today, for that
  matter), my Dad would have scoffed at him. Such a
  person, Dad would say, had never suffered in a
  regime of true injustice. America represented to
  my Dad, as Lincoln put it, "the last, best hope
  of earth."
• I would like to be able to say that this made Dad
  a remarkable man for his time and his
  circumstance. For, in many ways, Dad truly is a
  wonder. But this is not one of them. He was not
  remarkable in this understanding. Everybody in
  Hungaryat least everybody who wasnt a true
  believer in the Communiststhought that way. For
  some it was instinct. For others, it was habit or
  family teaching. For some it was through book
  learning. Indeed, most Hungarian kids at that
  time (myself included) had read Uncle Toms
  Cabin, Last of the Mohicans, Tom Sawyer, and
  Huckleberry Finn. Jefferson understood this too
  when he penned those famous lines in the
  Declaration. The wonderful thing about
  self-evident truths, in a way, is that they dont
  have to be taught. Or do they? They dont have to
  be taught in the same way, for example, that we
  teach grammar. It isnt an artificial order of
  things that we impose upon ourselves. Still,
  these truths must be understood. For if they are
  not fully understood (as they frequently are not
  by those who take them for granted), they are
  easily forgotten. Dad just never had the luxury
  to forget.

6
Journey to America

• Of course, we could not tell anyoneincluding my
  grandparents and unclethat we were leaving. To
  do so would have put both them and us in danger
  in tyrannies you really cannot trust anyone. It
  was better for them that they not know where we
  were so they could answer honestly and
  convincingly when questioned. We therefore had to
  leave with essentially nothing. My sister and I
  each had a doll and a small bag of clothes. My
  parents had one small bag between them. And my
  father had seventeen dollars in his pocket in
  single dollar bills, which he had been hoarding
  for years good as gold he always said. The
  trains were packed with many other people
  similarly outfitted. Everyone was headed for the
  Austrian border but we all kept our heads down
  and said nothing to anyone. The Russians were
  stopping the trains and looking for people. As
  young as my sister and I were, we knew what that
  meant. We tried to keep quiet. I remember that
  many people exited the train at one particular
  stop, and Dad shook his head. He knew what they
  were going to try and he knew that, in all
  likelihood, it wasnt going to work for most of
  them. He had a different plan for us to get to
  the border.
• When we exited the train we had a fifteen mile
  walk ahead of us. We meandered through a large
  expanse of agricultural land, avoiding, as best
  we could, all haystacks (where Russians were
  known to lie in wait). We came upon nearly 200
  people along the wayall doing exactly the same
  thing and all saying virtually nothing about
  itjust nodding and pushing along. I remember a
  particularly difficult thing we had to do was to
  avoid the sound of a crying child. That was a
  well known Russian trick. We did, however, come
  upon a boy whose father had been shot. He was
  immediately welcomed into our growing and
  informal group of which, it seemed, my father had
  become the leader. His plan had been sound.
• We crossed a little bridge in the middle of the
  night. Someone heard the sound of German on the
  other side of the bridge. It was the Austrian
  border post! As we stepped over a line, the
  Austrians asked us to show them our weapons. I
  remember being utterly surprised to discover that
  every single man in our group immediately began
  to drop pistols, knives, etc. We had just
  finished an expedition of the brave.
• We had entered the town of Nickelsdorf, Austria.
  They proceeded to move us to a big barn for the
  night where we slept, and slept soundly. The next
  morning we were moved to an Army camp near
  Innsbruck. For nearly a month, we were fed and
  housed there. Dad went out and got a job. I
  occupied myself in the normal pursuits that
  occupy 10 year-old boys. I even managed to get
  myself into a fight with another boy who had
  taken my belt. In the scuffle I ran through a
  plate-glass swinging door and sliced open my
  chin. This caused my mother to faint, and my
  father to have to rush me to an Austrian
  emergency room for treatment. As if my parents
  didnt have enough problems!

7

• Occasionally, officials from the various
  embassies of different countries would come by
  and attempt to catalogue where the refugees were
  planning to go and why. It was not as simple as
  finding a ride to the place you wanted to go,
  after all. Much was involved. First, they wanted
  to know if you had any relatives in any other
  country. We did not. The man from the German
  embassy encouraged us to settle in Germany. We
  would be made citizens immediately because our
  name was German. Dad told them we were not
  German. He was sure of what he wanted. But we did
  not, as I said, have relatives in America. The
  representative from the American embassy asked
  Dad, "Dont you know anyone in America?"
  Eventually, my mother reminded my Dad that we did
  know someone in America. She ran back to the
  bunks and out of her little satchel pulled out an
  old and rumpled business card. This reminded Dad.
  "Yes," Dad said, "I know this man." He showed the
  business card of Dr. Joseph Moser, D.D.S.,
  Hermosa Beach, California, to the man from the
  embassy. Dad explained that we had had no contact
  with him in all those intervening years. Anything
  could have happened to him, and it was possible
  that he would not have remembered his offer to
  help. As luck would have it, he was still where
  his card said he was and was willing (thank God!)
  to sponsor us.

8
California Here We Come

• Within a week of contacting Dr. Moser, we were
  shipped off to Munich and then took a plane to
  New York City. We landed just before midnight on
  December 24th, one day after my tenth birthday.
  Because the plane landed for refueling in
  Newfoundland, the children on board were given
  Christmas presents. My sister got a doll, and I
  got a toy Army jeep. This was the extent of the
  presents for that Christmas, except for the
  freedom that we were about to enjoy. On Christmas
  morning we were taken to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey,
  for processing.
• One of my early and poignant impressions of
  America came when a number of the Hungarians at
  Camp Kilmer were groaning and moaning, in
  Hungarian of course, about the food they were
  served. They were particularly appalled by the
  cornflakes, which, in Hungary were not considered
  fit for human consumption. I recall that there
  was a soldier there who was mopping up the
  floors. He was quietly doing his work as the
  Hungarians carried on and ignored him in their
  typically boisterous manner. Finally, the soldier
  could not take it anymore, and he turned to us
  and said in perfect Hungarian, "If you dont like
  it here, then get on a plane and go home." A
  deafening silence followed the shock. Although I
  suspect he may have been an intelligence officer,
  the soldier later claimed that he had grown up in
  Hungary because his parents had been travelling
  musicians and that they had died there in a car
  accident. Whatever the case, his point was well
  taken. We were humbled by this man, and the
  complaining stoppedor at least leveled. We were
  grateful to eat our cornflakes.
• A few weeks later we took a train to Los Angeles
  where we were met by Dr. Moser and his family.
  Sponsorship meant that they had to guarantee that
  we would never become a burden to the American
  people. He had to house us and feed us for
  awhile. Mom and Dad both got jobs right away. Dad
  got a job at the local newspaper lifting heavy
  things, and Mom cleaned houses. Soon we had a
  little beach shack where we lived for about a
  year and a half. By that time, my parents had
  managed to save a couple thousand dollars and
  were able to purchase their first restaurant. We
  were on our way to the American dream.
• Dad came into the restaurant business because it
  was his impression of Americans that they seemed
  like nice enough people but they were lousy
  cooks! He bought the restaurant on Pico Boulevard
  for 3000 with a bank financed loan. The whole
  family went to work right away. We had to tear
  the place apart before we could open it. After it
  was opened, my sister and I washed dishes as Mom
  and Dad cooked and waited on tables. I remember
  that "stuffed cabbage" was one of the most
  popular dishes on our menu. I had been typing the
  menus for my parents for nearly two years before
  a regular customer who had been eating this
  dishthe most popular on the menufor the same
  number of years finally pointed out to me that
  the menu actually read, "stuffed garbage."
  Clearly, English was not our native language.
• Since I didnt speak a word of English when we
  arrived, I was placed in the 6th grade based
  solely on my math scores. There I was put into
  the back of the room where the teachera nice
  man, who, I am almost certain, was named Mr.
  Friendassigned a red-headed and freckled boy
  named Jeffrey the task of teaching me how to
  read. I would read the words according to
  Hungarian phonetics. Jeffrey would correct me and
  try to explain what they meant. I would imitate
  him. After a few months of this painstaking
  labor, I began to understand some things. The
  first English sentence that I remember
  repetitiously saying was, "Get out of here!" This
  I mimicked from some kids who screamed it at me
  after I stole their foursquare ball, which
  happened daily. Somehow, without the help of
  advocates clamoring on my behalf for "bi-lingual"
  education, I managed to get on that year. My
  triumph came at the end of the school year when I
  beat the class bullywho had been beating up on
  me as if I were a punching-bag and was amazingly
  named Butchin a fight. All the kids were
  applauding as they gave me a book of baseball
  heroes and everyone, including Butch, signed it.

9
The Education of an American

• I was about high school age when we moved to
  Studio City and bought a bigger restaurant.
  Schramms Hungarian Restaurant was right across
  the street from many of the movie studios, and we
  catered to many actors. But it was not the lure
  of the film industry that prompted me to go to
  Hollywood High School rather than North Hollywood
  High School, which was just a few blocks from my
  house. It was their ROTC program. Hollywood High
  had one, and North Hollywood did not. Ironically,
  my last semester of ROTC was cut short because of
  another Hungarian student. He had just
  transferred in from another high school, and we
  were the same rank. He was determined to be
  Battalion commander and so we squabbled over the
  title. It seemed a ridiculous fight to me after
  awhile, and I had had my fill of it. I dropped
  ROTC and took an international relations class
  that was offered the first thing in the morning,
  the same time as ROTC, so that I had not yet had
  the opportunity to take it. I enjoyed the class
  the teacher was much more serious than most.
• Apart from my ROTC experience, I can remember
  only one other important lesson from high school.
  I had an English class that was taught by a poor
  lone woman, a spinster. No one liked her because
  she was serious. We scalawag students (the boys,
  I mean, for the girls were of a sweeter
  disposition), in whom the quality of mercy was
  strained, mocked this woman behind her back. But
  in class we were the mirror of all courtesy
  because we knew she was a serious teacher and a
  demanding lover of her subject. We were attentive
  and gave her her way. Her considerable presence
  demanded it.
• As the class was nearing an end, after we read
  both Caesar and Hamlet, she told us we would have
  to memorize 40 lines of Shakespeare and recite
  them in class. I choseunimaginatively
  perhapsthe lines by Hamlet that begin, "To be or
  not to be, that is the question/Whether tis
  nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and
  arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms
  against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing, end
  them. To die, to sleep." Unimaginative or not, I
  worked hard for many days to master these lines.
  The process of memorization was difficult and,
  when I finally got around to reading it
  aloudletting my ears really hear the words, the
  cadence, and the rhythmI recall a wonderful
  moment when the monster ignorance left me. I
  understood what I was reading, what I was
  hearing. I dont mean that I understood the deep
  metaphysical meaning, but I finally understood
  that these were not wild and whirling words. They
  were beautiful, they had meaning, and I
  understood them. I was about 17 years old, and
  through learning Shakespeare, I knew that I had
  finally come to understand English. While I would
  still think in both Hungarian and English, my
  dreams were now in English. And Shakespeare, in
  and of himself, was a wonderful and magical
  discovery for me.
• But what did I learn in school about this great
  country to which I had emigrated? Unfortunately,
  even in the early 60s (before the onslaught of
  "political correctness" so popular among the
  faculty of my generation) I am sad to report that
  it was nothing very serious or substantial. In
  some cases, it was probably even untrue. While my
  interests turned toward history early on, oddly,
  I was not very interested in American history. It
  was not made to seem interesting. Further, I had
  learned, to my surprise and against my own
  inclinations and perceptions, that America was an
  amazingly hypocritical place. I was told by a
  history professor that all I needed to know about
  Abraham Lincoln was that he was a racist. Nothing
  else needed to be known about him, he said. I set
  my sights on studying European history because it
  had great stories about straightforward tyrants
  who were unaffected by hypocrisy.

10

• When I say I set my sights to study European
  history, you must understand the sense in which I
  mean study. I had always been a voracious reader.
  My ever-growing book collection was long a source
  of exasperation for my father and continues to
  this day to be one for my wife. I started
  accumulating books when I was in my early teens.
  I had always made a little money working for my
  parents, and instead of spending it on cars or
  clothes, I would buy books. There is something
  special about owning and reading your own books.
  I never liked to use libraries. Perhaps it is a
  natural reaction to the communist propaganda of
  my youth, but I think that some things just
  shouldnt be shared. At least not with just
  anybody. I like to smell and fondle books, keep
  them, set them back on their shelf, sometimes to
  just let them fall open to where they may and
  read into them again. I fancied that these books
  became friends, and I just couldnt bear to part
  with them. But my reading was done on my own
  because I enjoyed it. I did not think of studying
  as an occupation or work. I did not contemplate
  the possibility of or even understand what
  college was.
• When I graduated from Hollywood High School in
  1964, I was one of 740 students in my class. We
  had to use the Hollywood Bowl for the ceremonies
  because there were no facilities on campus that
  could accommodate that kind of crowd. I had no
  idea what college was all about, but many of the
  people I knew were going, and my grades were good
  enough to get in at San Fernando Valley State
  College (now California State University,
  Northridge). I could commute and keep working for
  my parents, so I enrolled. When I started
  college, I just took classes that I found
  interesting. I really had no plan or major in
  mind, but eventually, I discovered, you have to
  pick one. So I picked political science.
• I took a lot of political science classes from a
  professor named Noonan. He was an ordinary
  liberal, but he seemed like a smart guy, and I
  had enjoyed his classes. He was teaching all the
  classes having to do with European politics. I
  was sitting in the back of one of his classes one
  day while he was pontificating about French
  politics, or some such thing, and a woman in the
  class (she happened to be an Israeli woman)
  raised a question that referred to God. Noonan
  stopped cold and replied with dripping
  condescension, "Anyone who believes in God ought
  to get out of my classroom." The woman was
  speechless. I was simultaneously speechless and
  appalled. I wasnt quite sure what to do. Was he
  serious? In the end, the woman and I were the
  only ones who left the room. She was in tears. I
  was burning mad. I immediately went down and
  changed my "major" to history.

11

• Throughout these years, partly out of my
  experience and partly out of genuine curiosity, I
  maintained an interest in American politics. I
  was active in standard Republican Party politics.
  I campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964. The
  anti-Communist positions of the GOP were a
  natural draw for my family and me. We didnt
  think the Democrats fully appreciated the enemy.
  But my politics beyond that, obviously, were not
  well developed. As a result of my activism in the
  Young Republicans, I attended a few seminars for
  something called the Intercollegiate Studies
  Institute. They provided an opportunity for
  students from colleges all around the country to
  meet and study with some of the leading
  conservative professors. It was in 1965 at one of
  these summer seminars that I first met Harry V.
  Jaffa. He was teaching a class on Shakespeare,
  and a fellow named Martin Diamond was teaching a
  class on The Federalist. At about the same time,
  I came across the first edition of the journal
  Intercollegiate Review and the still-young
  National Review. Similarly, I came into contact
  with students and teachers from Claremont, who
  were (and are) among the most serious souls I had
  ever had the pleasure to meet. One of the first
  was Bill Allen. I met him at an ISI seminar in
  the Summer of 1966, and we became friends. We
  both worked on getting Ronald Reagan elected
  governor of California, although he had a more
  serious position in the campaign than I. I began
  to see that it was, in many ways, more
  interesting and important to think about politics
  as those in Claremont were doing than to be
  active in politics as I had been. I endeavored,
  in my own way, to do just that. But it never
  occurred to me that I would join them in
  Claremont in any formal way. I thought that what
  they were doing out there was so important and so
  elevated that it was in many ways beyond me.
• But I spent a lot of time hanging around in
  Claremont, though I was still enrolled at
  Northridge. You must understandI didnt know
  what graduate school was nor did I even
  understand the concept of graduating from
  college. I just liked reading and studying and
  talking with people who did the same. I was a
  free man without a plan.
• Now in the midst of all of this, the 1960s are in
  full swing. My father and I had clear views on
  mattersparticularly as they related to Freedom
  vs. Tyranny, America vs. the Communists and the
  necessity of the Vietnam War. We both were in
  favor of the war. The demonstrations made us
  angry. The chanting, in particular, was
  offensive. No matter what they were saying, when
  left-wing groups would get together and chant, it
  always sounded like "Sieg Heil!" to us. I
  remember being especially angry when they started
  spelling America with a "k," as if it were a
  fascist country. I have clear memories of my
  parents really thinking that the country was
  falling apart. My Dad, especially, thought that
  the Americans were not fighting an intelligent or
  manly enough war in Vietnamthat they were
  nickel-and-diming it instead of going in like
  they meant to win. It was pretty clear after some
  time that I was not going to be drafted, but I
  joined the National Guard anyway. There were
  fights and demonstrations and even bombings going
  on at school. Still, it is hard for people of our
  background to lose our sense of humor. I remember
  one incident when Dad and I were watching the
  news on TV and some American pilot had been shot
  down after doing something that my father
  considered particularly stupid. He was convinced
  that if the Americans lost the war it would be
  because of the kind of stupidity that comes from
  approaching tyrants with too soft a hammer. We
  continued watching this and as my father was
  insulting the manhood and intelligence of all
  natural born Americans they proceeded to
  interview this pilot. They asked him how he got
  himself into this situation and as he took off
  his helmet and began to speak I had a great laugh
  at my fathers expense the pilot spoke in the
  thickest possible Hungarian accent! That was the
  last time my dad insulted the general manhood and
  intelligence of Americans!

12
The Ugly European

• In 1968 (four years after entering college so,
  theoretically, when I should have graduated) I
  decided to go to Germany to learn German. Why? I
  just thought it would be an interesting thing to
  do. Remember, I am a free man without a plan.
• I lived in Munich. This was my first trip to
  Europe since leaving it at age ten. Although my
  reason for going was to learn German, my reason
  for staying was to learn something about
  Europeans, their habits and their ways, and their
  rich history. In the end, I learned a great deal
  about how Europeans see America, and therefore
  learned much about why I love Americans. But
  above all, I learned much about Europeans and why
  I was no longer one of them.
• What I learned then has remained true, and helps
  explain some of the recent disagreements over
  Iraq specifically, and American foreign policy
  generally. Certainly the French, for example,
  have geopolitical reasons of the highest sort for
  wanting to break the American monopoly of power
  in the world. But there is something even more
  important at work herecertain different
  dispositions, different intellectual and moral
  habits. Many Europeans, as I observed for the
  first time on my visit in 1968, note our power
  and wealth, but have contempt for (what they see
  as) our ignorance. These two things combine into
  resentment, and that resentment is fed by a deep
  well of continental philosophy, a view of the
  world that Americans dont share. This seemed and
  seems to me to be the crux of the matter.
• Well, it was a tough and lonely year in Germany.
  At age twenty-two I enrolled at the University of
  Munich to better my German (and to sit in on some
  philosophy seminars). Since I had only about
  seventy-five bucks in my pocket when I arrived, I
  needed a job. I got one through the only friend I
  had there. His name was Tibor Tollas, and he was
  a Hungarian poet-in-exile. He had become a friend
  of the family because he always ate at our
  restaurant while he was in Los Angeles. Tibor
  only had two fingers on each hand. The Nazis had
  cut off the ones on his left hand. He lost the
  fingers on his right hand to the Communists,
  partly because of his views and partly, they
  said, for the sake of symmetry. But Mr. Tollas
  took care of me, and I was able to stay.
• The job he got for me was ridiculously difficult.
  I worked twelve-hour days, six days a week, and
  was paid seventy-five cents an hour. But this
  paid for my room in a pension (two bucks a day),
  and I got to eat for nothing since I worked at
  the main market in Munich unpacking bananas from
  freight cars. The bananas were free, and the
  owner only charged fifteen cents for soft drinks
  or a beer.

13

• The job wasnt legal, of course. They called it
  "black" labor it was off the record, I was paid
  in cash. I was hired only because I didnt tell
  them I was an American student they never would
  have hired me had they known. I told them I was a
  Hungarian refugee. They were willing to help. My
  fellow laborers were bums, German bums (we would
  call them homeless now). Although they smelled
  awful, drank too much and slept on park benches,
  I liked them. I became especially fond of them
  when I finally figured out what they were humming
  as we worked. They were singing and humming
  American songs, old songs, like "The Yellow Rose
  of Texas."
• After a few weeks of working with them I got to
  know them well enough to ask them how it was that
  they were singing American songs. Well, it turned
  out that they had been soldiers in World War II
  and were among the first Germans captured by the
  Americans. They were sent to a prisoner of war
  camp in Texas. They lived out the whole war in
  Texas, they learned English and liked our songs.
  And because this was an American prisoner of war
  camp, they were able to leave the camp, get jobs
  in town and get acquainted with real Americans.
  All four of them said it was the best experience
  of their lives. They loved Americans, they said.
• I wanted to know what it was they liked about
  Americans. They thought that Americans were
  direct and honest. They looked you square between
  the eyes and told you what they thought. The
  Americans laughed a lot, often loudly. Their view
  of life was not tragic, they were not filled with
  the passionate anxiety of Europeans. Americans
  had no angst. They didnt spend their time
  regretting the past they thought anything was
  possible. Give a man an opportunity, hell take
  it, and fulfill what ambitions he had. My German
  friends called this "practical freedom." These
  Americans lived as free men should live. They
  were modest, never overbearing, gave no quarter
  to flim-flam, and they were very generous.
  Although these men were soldiers for a country
  that America was at war with, the Americans never
  said they disliked Germans. "They did keep asking
  us, however, how we could have gotten ourselves a
  leader like the one we had. It started us
  thinking," they said.
• Everybody in America seemed young, they said.
  They had a liveliness about them, a kind of
  wide-eyed-adolescence, as if they had never
  experienced disappointment and defeat, and there
  was no reason to think they ever would. They were
  energetic and full of vigor. They thought that
  people should have the opportunity to excel in
  something. These Americans moved through the
  world as if there was no one trying to hinder
  their progress, their ambition, their way in the
  world. The Germans said that they were struck by
  the fact that the children seemed to look mature
  men in the eyes, as if they were their equals.

14

• We talked about these matters in my halting
  German. And after a while, I felt morally
  compelled to tell them that I was really an
  American and that I spoke English. Well, you
  should have seen the hurrahs and the cheers! They
  were delighted and quickly revealed that their
  English was much better than my German. From then
  on, we spoke only English.
• Over the years, and on other trips, much was
  added to these impressions. Although none denied
  what my homeless friends understood to be the
  American character, they added some not so subtle
  mixes to that opinion. What had been described as
  virtues now became vices. Many Frenchmen I met
  argued that Americans are money grubbing, all
  they are interested in is making money. The
  country is full of an endless commercial bustle.
  As a result Americans work too hard, and have no
  proper understanding of leisure. Their culture is
  minimal and only their manners are lower. They
  are unsophisticated and unlearned. They know
  little about their own history, and nothing about
  the history of others. They have never suffered,
  so they lack depth. That may explain why they
  have no great literature and are not in love with
  museums, as Europeans are.
• I remember one man who couldnt possibly
  understand how all these people of different
  backgrounds and colors could live together as
  something like citizens he wondered how it was
  possible. He concludedbecause he never
  understood its cause, the idea, the electric
  cord, as Lincoln called it, that was the real
  basis of American patriotismthat it was not
  possible in the end, that it was only a question
  of time before the place fell apart. Not enough
  ties of blood, not enough common history, he
  said.
• In the end I came to learn that what held
  together all the critical opinions about America
  was the spirit of resentment and envy. We were
  big and powerful and thought we were special. We
  claimed to establish a Novus Ordo Seclorum (see
  the Great Seal of the United States on the back
  of the dollar bill), as if we had reinvented the
  world. We scoffed at the old and tired ways of
  the mother continent. We were like children who
  werent able to appreciate the sober and cultured
  ways of the parents. These European parents were
  jealous of their energetic and ambitious
  children. The child became too powerful, too
  wealthy, too ambitious. The more the child was
  able and willing to help the parents out, the
  more resentful the parents became. And yet, the
  parents were forced to admit to themselves that
  there was something especially interesting and
  appealing in these exuberant youths, their
  liveliness and their straight-shooting ways. And
  yet again, these youngsters had to be kept in
  check by their betters.

15

• Over the years I began to see the philosophical
  basis of this European way of thinking and why
  they disliked our ways. They attempted to prove
  that all philosophical questions and human life
  can be reduced to the deep Grundproblemen
  (fundamental problems) and then to nihilistic
  despair, because in becoming fully enlightened,
  the Europeans freed themselves from all illusions
  about good and evil, and right and wrong. But we
  Americans dont think this, and we cant feel the
  despair. How could we, we simple-minded and
  practical folk, understand the depth of the human
  condition? We Americans insist on holding to the
  connection between freedom and justice, courage
  and moderation. As a result, we cant take the
  Europeans as seriously as they take themselves.
  We think that they are participants in a
  pseudo-sophisticated and endless coffee-house
  chatter leading nowhere except to the will to
  power and gulags and concentration camps. We, on
  the other hand, think that equality and liberty
  have ethical and political implications we are
  willing to fight to make men free. We are still
  optimists who laugh too loudly, and we still
  think, along with Mark Twain, that against the
  assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
• I had spent a lot of time with Germans and East
  Europeans and didnt talk to an American for the
  first four months or so. By early spring, I
  became terribly homesick. Think about the word
  "homesickness." It is an illness brought about by
  being away from home. I repeat, an illness. I had
  never been this ill before. The physical effects
  were something like seasickness my head was sick
  and my whole heart faint. I wasnt missing the
  pretty Southern California coastline, you
  understand, or big cars or hamburgers. I was
  missing Americans, a certain kind of people with
  certain qualities I liked and was at home with. I
  missed my people.
• At the first sign of the illness, I began almost
  instinctively keeping my eyes open for Americans.
  I didnt see any. As the illness progressed, I
  started consciously searching for Americans. I
  went to places where (I thought) they were likely
  to be. Alas, they were not. I kept at it. I
  pressed hard. But nothing. Things got so bad that
  I was unable to sleep. I would wake in the middle
  of the night and prowl the city with my eyes wide
  open. Nothing. I got into the habit of going to
  the main railroad station in the middle of the
  night (it was one of the few places open all
  night). I would sit and drink coffee and talk to
  whoever was there mostly Germans of questionable
  character drinking much too much beer. Sometimes
  we would talk about America but no Americans.
• One nightvery late, it must have been 3 A.M., I
  was heading home from the station, turned a
  corner and was thunderstruck. There was a man
  walking in front of me, going in the direction I
  was going. There was no one else on the street.
  My eyes focused on his back for a second and,
  within another second, I was running toward the
  man because I realizedin a kind of insightthat
  this was an American man walking. I came to an
  abrupt stop on his left side, panting, and
  blurted out something like, "Please, I am an
  American, I need to talk with you. Please. Would
  you mind if I walked with you a bit?" Needless to
  say the man was surprised. But he recovered his
  composure quickly enough and was magnanimous
  enough to allow me to walk and talk with him. The
  conversation was not about the mysteries of
  things, or the latest political news, or gilded
  butterflies, or tales of American grandness. No,
  it was about his hometown of St. Louis, and the
  virtues of the Cardinals, and why the National
  League was superior to the American (being a
  Yankee fan, I disputed this). It was about small
  things. But that was enough, and with each step
  and each sentence of the conversation, I felt the
  contagion leave my soul and began to regain my
  health. Oh, how wonderful it was, to be healthy
  again! I wanted to hang my cap on the horns of
  the moon! An hour later we parted company he
  had, in his own way, understood that he had given
  me a gift. I was whole again. I was happy.

16

• The next day (in daylight) I was walking down the
  street and noticed three men walking a few yards
  in front of me (they happened to be black), so I
  saddled up to them and was prepared to say hello,
  expecting a howdy in return, when I heard them
  speaking in Hungarian! I was shocked, but decided
  to talk to them (at first in German, they spoke
  no English) and discovered they were from Ghana,
  studying law (amazingly enough!) in Budapest, and
  were in Munich playing the tourist. Their
  Hungarian, by the way, was flawless. So we parted
  company, and as I let them walk on, I looked at
  them walking from behind. I realized they
  couldnt possibly have been Americans, and
  wondered why I hadnt seen that before. They
  walked as if they were not at home in the city or
  in the world, as if the sky would fall in on them
  at any time, as if there was a thundercloud above
  them instead of a shining sun, as if they were
  afraid to displease the gods.
• From then on, whenever I felt a touch of the
  illness grab my soul, I would venture into a
  crowd, keep my eyes open and look for men who
  stood tall, walked with purpose, were unafraid,
  and even had a kind of jocularity in their walk.
  Even if I didnt talk with them, it was good
  enough just to know that they were around and,
  whenever necessary, I could talk with them and be
  at home.
• Before actually going home, however, I felt
  compelled to at least try and visit my aging
  grandmother in Hungary. My poet friend, Tibor
  Tollas, had a one-way ticket to Budapest on the
  Orient Express, and he gave it to me. I, of
  course, paid no thought to the logistics of this
  plan beyond securing the ticket. As usual, I had
  almost no money. Never mind that this was a
  one-way ticket and I had no plan to get back.
  This was 1968! The Russians were moving into
  Czechoslovakia, and there was no love lost
  between Americans (particularly former Hungarian
  Americans) and eastern European communist
  aparatchiks. Of course, I had a passport, but I
  knew nothing about the need or procedure for
  securing visas to visit Communist countries. So I
  just boarded the train with my ticket, and off I
  went.
• The train, of course, was magnificent, and it was
  almost worth what would happen to me just to be
  able to ride it. But inevitably, I was thrown off
  the train when it became clear that I did not
  have the proper papers to proceed. The Orient
  Express made an unscheduled stop, about ten miles
  before the Hungarian border, just to throw me off
  the train! They explained that I would be
  arrested as soon as the train entered Hungary
  because I didnt have a visa. I found myself in
  the middle of some cornfields and started
  walking. I found a cab to take me to the border,
  where I could get a visa. He charged me about
  fifty dollars. I had about twenty bucks left.
  Walking into the Hungarian border station was a
  shock to my now fully Americanized sensibilities.
  There were guard towers and all the Hungarian
  soldiers were carrying machine guns. They were
  unpleasant. They did not believe me when I said
  that I merely wanted to visit my grandmother.
  They stripped me and went through my things,
  asked many questions about what I studied and
  with whom. Of course, they also did not believe
  that I was in Munich merely to learn German. They
  assumed that a larger game was afoot. Hours later
  I was ready to re-start my journey. The trouble
  is I had no way to get to Gyor there were no
  buses, no taxis, no train. I thought about it for
  a while and as I realized I would have to walk
  the twenty or so miles, I spotted a couple
  getting into their car with Canadian license
  plates on it. They were about to drive to
  Budapest. I explained my predicament, and since
  Gyor was on the way, I hitched a ride. I arrived
  in Gyor in the late evening, having been dropped
  off at the center of town. I was able to get
  directions to my grandmothers place, and walked
  the few blocks. I remembered the building as I
  approached it, walked in, found her apartment,
  and knocked on the door. My grandmother, I should
  mention, had no idea that I was coming. She
  opened the door and almost fainted. After she
  recovered, she looked me up and down (I wasnt
  exactly in my Sunday best at this point!) and
  said "Oh, My Lord, you have become an American
  gentleman." Grandma may not have been right about
  the gentleman partat least not in those daysbut
  she was right about the essentials. I had become
  an American.

17
The Re-Education of an American

• When I returned to California, I continued with
  my studies at Northridge. I also continued to
  hang out in Claremont when I could. I still did
  not know, in the sense that we expect students
  today to know, what it was that I was doing with
  myself. Perhaps that was best. I was just taking
  both lifes and the colleges lessons as they
  came. But I was to have a rude awakening.
• It was probably about October of 1970 (so six
  years after I had entered college) when I went to
  the Registrars office to register for the Spring
  semester. I was told that I could not register.
  "But why not?" I asked. Was my bill not paid, did
  I have over-due library books? What was going on?
  No, I was told, I could not register because I
  had over 200 credits and 3 majors. I had to
  graduate. I was finished. I was speechless. I am
  not embarrassed to say that I actually cried. It
  took nearly half an hour for the poor woman
  working there to explain to me the full meaning
  of what she was saying. I could not get my mind
  around the concept that I had to finish school. I
  perked up when she said that what I would have to
  do is enter graduate school. This meant I could
  continue to study. But I had no real concept of
  what graduate school was.
• I remember going to consult with Chris Flannery,
  who by then had already become a friend. We were
  students together at Northridge, and he was
  waiting for me in front of the library. Chris
  also frequented Claremont with me and knew Bill
  Allen and a few other of the guys. It was decided
  that the thing I should dosince neither one of
  us knew what to do about this preposterous
  situationwas to consult Bill Allen. I
  immediately called him and within weeks it was
  arranged through Bill and Professor Jaffa that I
  would enter the Claremont Graduate School.
• So there I was in Claremont, studying these
  important things with all of these guys who
  seemed smarter than me. Then it hit me. Why had I
  put all of this effort into studying so much of
  European history and politics? There was nothing
  wrong with it, in itself. But these most
  important questionsWhat is freedom? What is
  justice? What is equality? these were not
  answered in the history books I had been
  devouring. These were questions tackled by men
  like Jefferson, Madison, Washington and Lincoln
  and contemplated before by men like Plato,
  Aristotle, Locke, and many others. This is where
  I could get a true education. So I started anew.

18

• I took classes on Platos Phaedo, the American
  Founding, Lincoln, and Shakespeares politics. I
  was no longer studying things out of historical
  curiosity, but, rather, looking into the very
  cause of things. Life seemed to be in full swing
  trying to figure out Greek grammar in the
  morning, the idea of consent and equality in the
  afternoon, with maybe a little basketball in the
  evening. I started making friends with American
  minds, and American statesmen. No longer were
  they introduced to us students as
  personifications of the Marxist oberbau, or their
  teachings as the result of bad potty training. We
  met them on their own terms, let them persuade
  us, if they could, of their meaning and purposes,
  and we would talk with them. These conversations
  were on-going and fluid, never ending arguments
  with fine minds of men who acted well in the
  world. It was an intoxicating education, made
  ever more pleasant because it took place with
  friends. It was here that I met Tom Silver, Tom
  West, Jeff Wallin, Ken Masugi, Larry Arnn, and
  others, who were not only smart and hard working,
  but partisans of America and the things for which
  the country stood. We fed off one anothers
  hunger, cajoled one another, pushed one another,
  and always moved one another toward what was
  beautiful and good and true. It was here that I
  started understanding what my father had always
  understood. It was here that I began to see what
  it meant to try to establish a Novus Ordo
  Seclorum. I began to see that all governments
  previous to ours had been established on accident
  and force, and now these American Founders
  insisted on establishing one on universal
  principles applicable to all men at all times,
  one established on reflection and choice. In
  America, human beings could prove to the world
  that they had the capacity to govern themselves.
  The Founders, according to Lincoln, proclaimed
  equality and freedom to "the whole world of men."
  It was here that I came to understand what
  Lincoln meant by the Declaration of Independence
  being the "electric cord" that linked all of us
  together, as though we were "blood of the blood,
  and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that
  Declaration." This is what it meant to be an
  American, and it wasnt all that far from being a
  man.

19
Teaching Americans

• I am told that before I was born, my mother went
  to see a fortune-teller, and the old woman told
  my mother that she would have a son and that he
  would grow up to be a soldier in a foreign land.
  I have been content to be a student in a land
  that was once foreign to me but is now my home in
  a sense that is much deeper than Hungary ever
  could have been my home. These days I continue my
  life as a student of America. The difference is
  that now a university pays me to study rather
  than collecting payment from me. I am in the
  ironic position, here at this Midwestern liberal
  arts college in central Ohio, of teaching native
  Americans (I mean native-born Americans, not
  American Indians) how to think about their
  country. How odd it seems, and yet how perfectly
  American, that they should need me, a Hungarian
  immigrant, to teach them.
• I suppose that I should no longer be surprised by
  the dismal education of students in high school.
  But I continually receive fresh reminders of just
  how bad it is. One of the things I do here in my
  capacity as Director of the Ashbrook Center and a
  professor of political science at Ashland
  University is to interview prospective applicants
  to our program. Now our program is intense, and
  we take only the best students, and they are, in
  comparison to their peers, quite accomplished and
  well read. But this really means nothing. Most of
  them have read nothing but mediocre textbooks.
  They come in with a lot of silly prejudices about
  Americathough perhaps (since this is the
  Midwest) some good habits and some sensible
  opinions mostly due to their upbringing. And
  these are the best of the students. I meet many
  more of the other kindstudents who, like me at
  that age, have no idea of what they are doing
  with themselves and certainly have no civic
  perspective.
• The United States was the first nation in the
  world to construct an elaborate system of public
  schools. All the founders understood that
  republican government demanded that the citizens
  be educated. Citizens have to choose their
  representatives wisely, they have to learn to
  become independent, to be able to earn a living.
  And they have to be taught self-control. They
  have to have the habits of mind and heart that
  are necessary for self-government. These native
  Americans need teachers. And I have become one of
  those teachers. Call it a repayment of a debt
  call it honoring my father and mother for seeing
  things rightly and thereby giving me a chance to
  be in the right place and my children a chance to
  be born in the right place. Call it what you
  will. But what I do with these American natives
  is I teach them about American politics and
  American history. I start with a simple thing
  about their country and themselves. I tell them
  that they are the fortunate of the earth, among
  the blessed of all times and places. I tell them
  this as an obvious and an incontrovertible thing.
  And their blessing, their great good fortune,
  lies in the nation into which they were born. I
  tell them not only that their country, the United
  States of America, is the most powerful and the
  most prosperous country on earth, but also that
  it is the most free and the most just. Then I
  tell them how and why this is so. That is, I
  teach them about the principles from which these
  blessings of liberty flow. I invite them to
  consider whether they can have any greater honor
  than to pass undiminished to their children and
  their grandchildren this great inheritance of
  freedom. And then we talk for a few years about
  how they might best go about doing that. And this
  is the beginning and the end of what I have
  learned and of what I teach both as an American
  citizen and a human being.
• Peter W. Schramm is Executive Director of the
  Ashbrook Center and Professor of Political
  Science at Ashland University.