“I didn’t come here to lead lambs… I came here to wake lions!”
~ Javier Milei
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…
Happy New Year!
There’s something about the crepuscular, the liminal, that soft and mysterious membrane through which every moment is born anew, that delights and terrifies us in equal parts.
Where the past lulls and serenades with the potent opiate of nostalgia, the future beckons with all the thrills and anxieties of the great unknown. As for tomorrow’s outcome, man finds himself serving a life sentence in the present, forever condemned to wait and see…
So as the clocks inch toward closing time for 2024 and the world awaits the revelations concealed behind the veil of time, we reflect on some of the biggest stories from the past twelve months… if only to get some footing, some toehold, that might allow us to peer vaguely into the next chapter.
This time last year, there was no shortage of questions left hanging in the air, like so many forgotten Christmas ornaments.
Will the president of the United States survive long enough to stand for reelection? Or, for that matter – and perhaps different reasons – will his opponent?
Will the Russo-Ukraine War draw to a close… or bring us to the brink of nuclear showdown?
Will the “libertarian laboratory” in Argentina prove die-hard free market advocates right… or wrong?
As to that last question, a lot hinged on the mad scientist wielding the chainsaw down at the End of the World, conducting his wacky experiments in balanced budgets, limited government and sound monetary policy. Many wondered whether he was up to the task… until he delivered a firecracker speech at the world’s largest confab of collectivist parasites. Read on for our final installment of the Best of ‘24 series…and get ready for a New Year of promise and potential!
[NB: This essay was originally published on Jan. 18, 2024, from Buenos Aires, Argentina.]
Many had wondered whether Argentine President Javier Milei was the real deal, whether his anarcho-capitalist bona fides were genuine, whether he would walk the walk when it came to delivering on his audacious promises… both to the Argentine people, and those die-hard libertarians cheering him on around the world.
Was he just another “far right” wack-job? Was he a puppet? Or worse still, “controlled opposition”?
Healthy skepticism and conspiracy theories danced a daring tango… until yesterday, when, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, El Señor gave them their answer, good and hard…
The main leaders of the Western World have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call ‘collectivism.’
We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world… rather, they are the root cause.
Addressing Darth Schwab’s coven of blood-sucking WEF vampires, Javier Milei stood and delivered. The problem, he told them straight to their sickly, wan faces, is you!
(Scandalously, Argentina’s president even dared to pay his way to the conference out of his own pocket, choosing to fly coach instead of hobnobbing with the climate activists up in first class and aboard private jets.)
A World Forum… On Edge
It must have seemed to some of the elite meddlers and undead leeches as though they had stumbled into a Golden Globe awards ceremony, hosted by Ricky Gervais. Not since the British comedian torched a roomful of gaping celebtards at the Beverly Hilton has an audience been so on edge.
But “El Capo” was not in the mood for jokes. His message struck a far more serious tone, and necessarily so…
Today I am here to tell you that the western world is in danger, and it’s in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty.
On the one hand, we “the people” are free to ignore the narcissistic gnats and carnal deviants infesting Hollywood, if we so choose. We can spare ourselves their drippy movies, mostly remakes of comic book stories aimed at society’s intellectually impaired man-children anyway. We can eschew their hypocritical “messaging” about “being an ally” and “doing the work” and “saving the planet” one tasty, bug-based meal at a time. And we can shield our children from their hysterical, anti-biological propaganda, their neo-segregationist nonsense and the rest of their rotten, “woke” agenda.
Alas, we do not enjoy the same luxury when it comes to the villainous aspirations of those gathered around the WEF cauldron, who want us to “own nothing and be happy” about it… to surrender our privacy and tattle on our neighbors… to submit to their censorial impulses and embrace their Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)… to bend to their medical mandates, abide by their restrictions on our freedom of movement and to subordinate ourselves as creatures of lowly, permission-based living, dependent on the whim and caprice of our dear WEF overlords.
Again, Javier Milei:
Today’s states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals.
With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.
It is up to us, as free individuals, to control our own fates… to choose cooperation over coercion… voluntarism over violence… freedom over force.
The Age of Heroes
To this end, Sr. Milei appealed not to the vast Victim Industrial Complex, from which so many hyperventilating social justice warriors fleece their scoundrel fees, but to a new Age of Heroes. Milei:
The capitalist, the successful entrepreneur, is a social benefactor, who far from appropriating the wealth of others, contributes to the general well-being of all. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.
In this way, as in so many others, did Sr. Milei distinguish himself from those empty suits, the faux freedom fighters not worthy to occupy the man’s shadow, never mind the hearts and minds of the people they claim to represent.
Sr. Milei’s crescendo, a call to action for “entrepreneurs and business people… around the world,” must have sounded to the collectivists present like a deafening battle cry from an advancing army…
Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state.
Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges.
You are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen.
Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral.
If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at the best price, thereby contributing to the general well-being.
Do not yield to the advance of the state.
The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself.
You are the true protagonists of this story.
Long Live Freedom, Dammit!
If we are right, dear reader, and we are in fact emerging from a Dark Age of Victimhood into a luminous Neo-Renaissance, there will be heroes like Sr. Milei who help light the way…
…but ultimately, the responsibility rests with those of us who cherish freedom to advance its cause… to spread the ideas of liberty far and wide… and to build a world in which to flourish accordingly.
Until next time…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
