I want you to imagine for a moment a horrible disaster happened somewhere in the United States, and the only place for people to flee is a Native American reservation and they were expected to remain there for a long period of time, perhaps years and years, as they waited for their home to return to normal. I think we can all agree we'd be understanding if the Native Americans, who experienced great brutality at the hands of white settlers, were pretty upset at this prospect and were not very welcoming.

Although the analogy isn't exact, that's what came into my head when I looked at the situation in Hungary. I'm willing to bet no one reading this knows Hungarian history that well, so I'll give a run down: The Hungarians were originally an Asian-steppe people who settled in modern-day Hungary some time in the 700s. As the Middle Ages progressed, a confederation of tribes coalesced eventually in a kingdom, which later flourished during the Renaissance.

And then the Ottoman Turks came.

For about a period of two hundred years, Hungary became a battlefield as the Ottomans pushed into Europe. The Hungarians suffered from deportations, massacres, loss of land and urban centers. Even after the Ottomans were expelled, the Austrians annexed them until the end of World War I. They briefly had independence until World War II, after which they were under the auspices of the Soviets.

So you can understand why these guys are particularly protective of their country. For about five hundred years now they've been battered by other people. And now suddenly tens of thousands of foreigners, who are either descendants of or similar to the Ottomans who ripped their country apart for two centuries, are showing up on their doorstep, demanding access. They're not like Great Britain or France who almost always were in control of their own nation and even were conquerors overseas. Most of Hungarian history and culture has been on the defensive.

Like the Native Americans, morally the Hungarians should be the bigger man and let them inside. The people who are suffering now at the borders have nothing to do with what happened in the past. But it's still understandable if they're not.