|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There’s a socialist wave in Latin America. Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil recently elected leftists.
These politicians at least distance themselves from thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but all propose socialism-lite policies giving government more control over more people.
Why don’t people in Latin America learn from the mistakes of the past? Gloria Alvarez, a social media star from Guatemala, is running for president of her country to try to educate people about the damage socialism does.
People do need educating.
“It’s like Stockholm syndrome,” says Alvarez in my new video. “When you ask people, ‘Who should take care of health, education, football, arts, whatever?’ They always answer, ‘government.’ How are you going to not have corruption if you leave everything in the hands of the government?”
Alvarez’s campaign is based on social media. Her TikTok announcing her campaign garnered 1.5 million views.
I’d like to think I taught her how to do that. Alvarez was once a Stossel TV Fellow. I’m hiring another now.
We helped Alvarez make a video about socialism that got a remarkable 15 million views.
But she knew about socialism well before that. She went to a libertarian university, Francisco Marroquin. “One thing that they do is teach socialism and communism. They make you read Marx and Engels … This is lacking in most national universities. People push for socialism because they don’t study it.”
One survey found that most millennials support socialism. But “when they were asked to define or describe socialism, none of them could!” says Alvarez. “They don’t know socialism’s massive failures.”
How can they not? The collapse of the Soviet Union and misery in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba aren’t visible enough?
Apparently not. Socialists still win elections.
“We’re all part of that same mentality that the government has this magical power to control the economy, tell you how to live your life and definitely not let you be free because you’re too dumb or too poor to be responsible for your own life,” says Alverez.
“We have two different Latin Americas, the ‘moochers and looters’ that Ayn Rand defined in ‘Atlas Shrugged,'” and then the “60 million Latin Americans who voted with their feet and live in the United States. They work and send money back home. In some countries, like Guatemala, these remittances are the number one source of income. This proves that we don’t need governments to take care of our poor. If there is freedom, private property, rule of law, then Latin Americans thrive!”
But people keep failing to learn.
Chile once prospered by embracing capitalism. Their leader, Augusto Pinochet, met with Milton Friedman and other free market economists. They persuaded him to cut tariffs and taxes and to privatize state industries and Social Security. When Pinochet took over, Chile was poorer than the rest of Latin America. Adopting free markets soon made Chile the richest country.
Unfortunately, Pinochet was also a vicious dictator who murdered opponents. His cruelty has allowed leftists to smear economic freedom ever since.
“You cannot enforce free markets through a dictatorship,” says Alvarez.
Recently Chile elected a leftist president, Gabriel Boric. He wants to abolish the private pension funds that helped make Chile richer! He wants free public transport, universal health care, higher taxes on the rich and to end student debt. A national vote to adopt a progressive constitution was defeated, but he’ll return with similar plans.
“If you don’t keep educating new generations in the philosophical aspect of why individual freedoms are sacred,” says Alvarez, “eventually you will have a generation with material wealth that forgets the importance of these values, and then they go out and say, ‘Let’s have socialism!'”
That’s why she keeps making videos.
Her presidential campaign is really just an education campaign, since at 38, she is two years too young to legally become president in Guatemala.
But I’m glad she’s spreading the word.
“Freedom implies … that nobody else makes decisions for you,” says Alvarez. “People don’t like freedom. They like their populist messiah promising them bull—-.”
90% or more of the people are clueless.
At least 50% of the people are of below average intelligence. They can be educated to make good decisions and run their own lives, but it’s easier to teach them to hate the “more fortunate”.
You say Pinochet was a murderong fascist. dictator who did a lot for his country”s economy. Emilio F. Iodice made a similar observation about Mussolini.
You might think reparations for blacks would turn every hispanic into a Ronald Reagan Republican, but I guess people think ‘Governments never run out of money, and I’ll just stand in line until I get my share of free stuff.’
Yes, thank you John.
The other side of the same coin is Islam and its followers.
http://media-quest.com/Islam101.pdf
“Learn about Islam. That is the most important thing for people to do. Learn who it is that you are not.” – Samuel Lurie
I traveled. worked, and lived in Latin America for years of my life, and asked this same question on the street.
It seems as if many in Latin America are under the impression that a government is supposed to give them something (almost anything will suffice) chickens, pigs, roofing tin, rice, masa.
The communist promise the most (little things) and usually deliver. In a $1.00 for you $5.00 for me, $1.00 for you $5.00 for me fashion. But the poor get at least something, or at least feel they do.
Stripping their countries natural resources and begging from the USA is how this operation is funded.
Here in the USA many people are happy if a government doesnt over tax, and stays the heck out of their personal business.
When these new arrival illegals are given the right to vote in USA elections (and they will be given that right) they will vote the same stupid way they voted in their counties of origin.
Too many are wedded to paternalistic government that they can’t see the opportunities here come from respect for other people’s property rights. That handouts are actually someone else’s rightfully owned property doesn’t cross their minds … because we don’t constantly remind people that this “stuff” isn’t rightfully theirs.
The confusion comes from the fact that most pay taxes. But that’s dishonest because one could just ask for one’s taxes back. Secretly most seek the unearned, hoping to get more than they pay at the expense of their neighbors or … rich guys who “don’t need” all that money.
This is first and foremost an ethical battle. The entitlement mentality comes from the altruist-collectivist idea that we should be pooling our wealth for the needy … when, of course, that’s just to disarm the productive that we intend to loot.
All that political steering in Latin America brought to you by the Catholic Church of Rome.
We must control freedom to save freedom!
I don’t know much about Gloria Alvarez but the internet says that she has been influenced by Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism and Libertarianism.
It is important to point out that Ayn Rand was NOT a Libertarian and she scathingly rejected Libertarianism in no uncertain terms. Ayn Rand called herself a “radical for Laissez-Faire Capitalism” not a Libertarian. Objectivism and Libertarianism are incompatible.
“Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see “The Anatomy of Compromise” in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)” – Ayn Rand
Great….more word salad Rand Spam. You don’t learn do you.
Like I’m going to spend my day reading Randian Gobbledegook.
If you think all that Rand wrote is gobbledegook, you should read Atlas Shrugged.
You will feel as if she was reading todays newspaper.
She told the future.
I escaped from Cuba. I know this very well. My parents generation left us a poorer and dysfunctional state. Millions of exiles, and oppression and abject poverty. What else people need than to look at Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela? Sad.
The high tariffs were a large cause of our Civil War. Also John Calhoun was leading a nullification group until Andrew Jackson told him to shut up. Learn your history.
Unlike in New Orleans after Hurricane Katriina after the recent Hurricane in Florida they were arresting Looters but New Orlrens was under that Ray Nagan and now he is in Prison
Thank you for providing these details. 95721658