Argentina's Javier Milei Confirms the Many Evil Faces of Socialism

I have long made the argument that fascism is socialism every bit as much as Communism. We Need a Deeper Understanding of Socialism, I’ve argued, and that A is A, and Socialism by any Other Name... is still socialism. Other theoretical thinkers, such as George Reisman, have said so also. But never, to my knowledge, has any prominent political leader.

Until now.

In a near-perfect pro-Capitalist speech before a world audience at Davos Switzerland, the World Economic Forum, Javier Milei, Argentina’s Radical Capitalist Leader, gave a speech that we rarely hear from the world’s leaders. In it, Milei documents socialism's many, and unavoidable, records of poverty and loss of individual freedom—and the continuing efforts to repeat socialism’s deadly ideas. Then, he explained why this is once again happening right under our noses:

Fortunately, there are more and more of us [“libertarians”] who are daring to make our voices heard, because we see that if we don’t truly and decisively fight against these [statsist] ideas, our fate entails increasing levels of regulation, socialism, and poverty, less freedom, and consequently, a worse quality of life.

The West has unfortunately already started to go along this path. I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it’s only ridiculous if you limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it’s an economic system where the state owns the means of production. This definition, in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances.

Today, states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.

This is how we come to the point where, by using different names or guises, a good deal of the generally accepted ideologies in most Western countries are collectivist variants, whether they proclaim to be communist, fascist, socialist, social democrat, national socialist, Christian democrat, neo-Keynesian, progressive, populist, nationalist, or globalist.

Ultimately, there are no major differences. They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals. They all defend a model contrary to the one [“free market Capitalism”] that led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history. [my emphasis]

Kudos to Javier Milei for ripping off the veneer of slogans and labels socialists use to deflect us from their true totalitarian socialist designs. 

Related Reading:

A is A, and Socialism by any Other Name...

We Need a Deeper Understanding of Socialism

Sanders' Brand of Socialism is Old Fashioned Fascism

Correcting Michael Coburn: Fascism and Marxian Socialism are Not, Fundamentally, Opposites

QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘

Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Accountable Capitalism Act’ Reprises Benito Mussolini

The Great Reset = Red Fascism

Venezuela: From Stalin to Mussolini

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism is Totalitarian—George Reisman for the Mises Institu

Juneteenth, the Offspring of the Fourth of July

 In 1852, amid July 4th celebrations of America's independence, the great American intellectual and Abolitionist Frederick Douglass called on America to live up to the great principles of its Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and abolish slavery within its borders. In June of 1865, America finally did just that.

On June 19th, we celebrate Juneteenth as a National Holiday—and justly so. This is the day that, in June 1865, Union soldiers reached the last enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, with the news that slavery had been abolished and that they were now free.

The abolition of slavery, an evil institution that American inherited at its Founding, is a major cause for celebration and among America’s finest hours. The day the last slaves were liberated certainly rises to the level of deserving of a national holiday. But it must be remembered that the principles of the American Founding made possible the end of slavery. If not for the Fourth of July, we’d have no Juneteenth. Professor Jason D. Hill, author of We Have Overcome, aptly calls the abolition of slavery America’s Second Founding.  

By all means, celebrate Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day. But put it on a par with Constitution Day, which celebrates the document that Frederick Douglass called “a glorious liberty document.” Like The U.S. Constitution, Juneteenth owes its existence to the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy behind it. 

It’s a damn shame that it took almost a Century for the promises of the Declaration of Independence to reach all Americans of African descent. But it did, finally erasing America’s most glaring birth defect. 

Happy Juneteenth.

Related Reading:

Juneteenth and 'America's Original Sin': What The Seattle Times Gets Right—and Terribly Wrong

If Not for the Fourth of July, We’d Have No Juneteenth.

The ‘1619 Project’ Fraud Begins its Poisonous Infiltration into American Politics

A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig

QUORA: ‘Why do law schools teach constitutional law but not the Declaration of Independence as an animating principle?’

The 'New American Socialists' Dilemma: The Declaration is as much anti-Socialist as anti-Slavery

Biden Cancels America

On Juneteenth, Let’s Celebrate the Atlases of Abolition by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard 

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE SLAVES IF EMANCIPATED? By Frederick Douglass' Monthly, January, 1862

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass | July 5, 1852

‘Greedflation’: Biden’s Scandalous Blame Shifting

In Progressives Urge Biden to Push Harder on ‘Greedflation’, the Washington Post reports that President Biden’s campaign advisers are urging him to peddle “greedflation,” the ridiculous moniker meant to blame big business for inflation. Biden and many Democrats have been using this grossly unjust smear on and off for a while. Now they want Biden to make it central to his campaign. 

Biden is just the latest in a long line of politicians who blame private enterprise for the disasters their own inflationary policies caused. (Janet Yellen also blamed consumers. But the main focus is on business, probably America’s most persecuted minority today.) 

Inflation, properly understood, is strictly a monetary phenomenon—an artificial, unwarranted expansion of the money supply, which acts as a tax, not on actual dollars, but on the purchasing power of the dollar. The resulting general rise in prices (as opposed to the isolated price spikes caused by supply chain disruptions, tariffs, and the like) is actually the manifestation of the falling value of the dollar. And everyone—business big and small, consumers, workers, and even state governments, everyone—is stuck dealing with it the best they can. There can only be one cause. The government. In the U.S. the government nationalized money over 100 years ago. So how can Biden and the misnamed “Progressives” blame business? Simple. He and they are desperate liars.

But as I said, Biden’s not the first blame-shifting scoundrel. In the 1970s, the last inflation disaster, three presidents blamed private enterprise; Nixon (wage/price controls), Ford (his WIN initiative), and Carter (Council on Wage and Price Stability). All engaged in dishonest victim-blaming. All were morally despicable. And so is Biden’s latest campaign scheme. Every American should be morally outraged. No one should be duped; I will not be. The current inflation is a result of Biden’s spending/monetary policies layered on top of Trump’s spending/monetary policies. And that’s it. 

Related Reading:

Joe Biden’s Despicable ,Unjust Blame Game

Memo to Jersey City Mayor Fulop: The Federal Reserve, Not Supermarkets, is to Blame for 'Hidden Food Inflation'

Economics in One Lesson—Henry Hazlitt

Did the New York Times Just Vindicate Reaganomics?

Blaming the Victims: The Government’s Theory of Inflation by Robert Higgs

Inflation occurs, by definition, when the economy’s aggregate volume of money expenditure grows faster than its aggregate real output. The excessive growth of money expenditures can have, again by definition, only two sources: either the velocity of monetary circulation grows excessively or the money stock itself grows excessively (or both). Our current inflation is attributable almost entirely to excessive growth of the money stock.

Because the excessive growth of the money stock and the inflation it causes do not happen simultaneously, some people always fail to perceive the relationship. Increases in the money stock take some time before their effect on the volume of expenditure becomes significant. But once the actual lag is recognized, the relationship is seen to be very close.