"Long Live Liberty, Damnit!"
"Scenes of freedom in the national theater
here in Argentina's capital...
by Joel Bowman
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
~ Victor Hugo
Buenos Aires - “It’s a minarchist revolution!” declared one guest... “A tyrannical overthrow!” retorted another... “The end of the road for the political caste,” rallied a third, “and not a moment too soon!”
The weekend’s MexiChrisMakkuh festivities were just getting going. Three dozen guests from over half a dozen countries converged in our modest Buenos Aires apartment to munch tacos, quaff malbec and – as so often happens these days – debate the hot button socio-political topics of the minute.
Gender pronouns and culture wars in the US... the fall of the ANC and race riots in South Africa... the temperature of the earth half a century from now and what (if anything) should be done about it...and of course, the local topic du jour, the rise and rise of self-described anarcho-capitalist, Javier Milei, to the highest office in the land down here in Argentina.
Long Live Liberty, Damnit! Ordinarily, when it comes to being into politics, we’re mostly into being out of them. That is to say, we tend to think of the whole fetid cesspool as an occupational hazard. We check in from time to time the same way someone living in the Australian Outback checks his boots before he puts them on (redback spiders love the dark, warm hiding spots.)
Left to our own devices, we’d just as soon spend our days flânuering the city’s many cafés, parks and plazas, book in hand, whistling a cheerful tune. And yet, we are drawn to the idea of liberty in our time or, as the newly-elected Argentine president has it, “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!” (“Long live liberty, damn it!”)
You see, it’s hard to “live and let live” when The State is hellbent on spreading misery and corruption into everything it touches. And in a country where the currency is inflating away at an annual rate of ~200%, where the bloated bureaucracy bleeds into every aspect of life, where prices are controlled, markets are regulated and commerce severely restricted, all in favor of the parasitic political class, the leviathan becomes more than just a minor inconvenience, a splinter in the craw, an intellectual abstraction...
So when we see videos like the one below, in which the audience at the nation’s prized Teatro Colón greet their incoming president with a spontaneous outburst of...“¡Libertad! ¡Libertad! ¡Libertad!”...it’s impossible to ignore the swelling feeling of optimism for the future of this once-proud nation and its long-suffering people. Play video here.
In the first few days of his presidency, Mr. Milei has taken his trademark motosierra (chainsaw) to the rotten limbs of the administrative state, hacking hollow branches and abolishing whole ministries. Within 48 hours of entering office, he had:
Cut the number of under secretaries from 182 to 140...
Slashed the number of secretaries from 106 to 54...
Halved the number of ministries from 18 to 9.
Also announced: the suspension of all government subsidies to media outlets... the end of all government permits for importer-exporters... the end of all energy and fuel subsidies.
Hmm... a free press... free trade... and a free market. Piece by piece... brick by brick... the State is being dismantled and liberty is being returned to the people of Argentina. The world is watching. “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!”
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