“The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.”
–John Foster Dulles
In the belly of the beast, a lone nation-state strikes out against the growing trend for a one-world government.
September 30, 2024 – The nation-state model seems to be a victim of its own success. Nations rise, then fall. Sometimes, however, a nation can change course and become resurgent.
That’s what happened in the United States in the 1980s. After a decade of high inflation and what then-President Jimmy Carter (who turns 100 tomorrow) called a “malaise,” the economy turned around.
It just took the optimism of Ronald Reagan, some marginal tax cuts, and a willingness to crush inflation with high interest rates.
Looking around the world today, something similar is going on in Argentina. But it’s on steroids. Self-described libertarian economist Javier Milei got into office on a promise to take a proverbial (and sometimes literal) chainsaw to rules and regulations.
In the first year of office, it’s working.
Inflation is falling quickly. Many government employees have been laid off. GDP is growing. And despite not having a political party to work with in the legislature, Milei has been able to create a coalition of lawmakers willing to cut the size of the state.
We’re talking real cuts, too. In the United States, our political leaders look at a government program expected to grow 10% over the past year as a “cut” when its future growth is only 5%.
Recently, Milei took his fiery brand of libertarian populism to the United Nations, where he used the forum to bash several UN-supported ideas such as net zero carbon emissions, Covid-era lockdown procedures, and more ideas that seem based not on economic reality, but on inching towards a one-world government.
As you know, from his home in Buenos Aires, longtime friend Joel Bowman has been following the Greatest Political Experiment of our Time on his substack page.
Today, Mr. Bowman gives us a review of Milei’s UN performance. Enjoy ~~ Addison
oes to the UN
Joel Bowman, Notes From the End of the World
What time is it, dear reader…
…when the 2020 global covid quarantines are considered a “crime against humanity”?
…when “net zero” carbon emissions targets are exposed as “ridiculous policies, promoted with Malthusian blinkers […] which harm, above all, poor countries”?
…and when the United Nations itself is labeled a “multi-tentacled Leviathan, which aims to decide not only what each Nation-State should do, but also how all citizens of the world should live”?
Yep, you guessed it! It’s time for another speech from Javier Milei, in which the Argentine presidente gives members vampires of the United Nations the unfiltered feedback they so richly deserve…good and hard.
Casual Hypocrisy
So it was that, after signaling to the world that Argentina is “open for business” by ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, Sr. Milei took his message of “life, liberty and economic prosperity” uptown to the UN’s headquarters coven in Midtown Manhattan.
There, in front of a disgruntled clutch of triggered bureaucrats and sniveling meddlers, Sr. Milei reeled off a dirty laundry list of grievances that have resulted in “the loss of credibility of the United Nations in the eyes of the citizens of the free world.”
We could almost hear the blood clot from all the way down here, at the other End of the World.
In front of the UN’s General Assembly, Sr. Milei underscored, for starters, the organization’s casual hypocrisy of tolerating dictators of convenience:
“In this same house that claims to defend human rights, they have allowed bloody dictatorships such as those of Cuba and Venezuela to enter the Human Rights Council, without the slightest reproach.”
Milei also called out the duplicity of an organization that is always and everywhere ready to signal its higher virtue, to bend the knee to popular collectivist causes, but which casts its own stones from the biggest glass castle of all:
“In this same house that claims to defend women’s rights, they allow countries that punish their women for showing their skin to enter the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.”
Likewise did the man with the motosierra denounce collectivist policies that have undermined economic growth around the world (especially in developing countries), the systematic violation of property rights, and in particular the UN’s insidious 2030 “Pact for the Future,” signed this past Sunday, which he described as:
“…nothing more than a supranational government program, of a socialist nature, that seeks to solve the problems of modernity with solutions that undermine the sovereignty of nation states and violate the right to life, liberty and property of people.”
So far, so good…
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The Blazing Pyre
Milei even managed to sneak in a couple of quotes from Thomas Paine and Frédéric Bastiat, which must have had the dastardly diplomats scratching their shiny eggheads in uniform wonder. (“Aren’t they intersex, post-modern, installation artists of some kind? Yes, yes. I thought so.”)
And yet, despite his laissez-faire swagger, Milei remains decidedly human. Which is to say, like the rest of us, he is prone to err… to interfere… and to leave bad enough not alone. From our pequeño lugar, Milei appears too willing to be drawn into needless posturing regarding the escalating situations in both the Levant and the Eurasian Steppe. In his speech this week, he reiterated support for the US military industrial complex’s pet causes once again. (We’ll keep a close eye on this “Milei-tary” blindspot in future Notes…)
Likewise, one must be mindful of the company one keeps. Your editor is not so naïve as to think politicking on the world stage does not involve a little horse-trading from time to time… which may partially explain Milei’s willingness to oblige photo ops with champing Euronags like President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Certainly, cavorting with the who’s-who of globalist elites will do little to assuage concerns that Milei is merely “managed opposition.”
By almost any measure, Milei has produced astounding economic results here in his native Argentina… and he is right to push back on supranational organizations bent on lecturing the poor of the world as to their own sovereign concerns. Ditto the woke agenda and climate nonsense. As for swashbuckling foreign military misadventures, the world already suffers an abundance of deep state war hawks, who never saw a brushfire they didn’t wish to fan into a global conflagration. No need to add fuel, even if only rhetorically, to that blazing pyre. Better to abide by M. Bastiat’s sage words, quoted above.
The Agenda of Freedom
That being said, it is a fool who makes the perfect the enemy of the good. For now, Argentina’s posturing vis-à-vis Raytheon’s favorite conflicts in far-flung lands is, in a practical sense, of secondary concern. (Even if he were to go “Full Militard,” and declare war on all foreign governments he doesn’t like, the fact remains, as Milei himself boldly declared in his historic inauguration speech back in December: “¡No hay plata!” (Argentina has “no money.”)
Milei was best, as usual, when he was squarely on the side of free markets, free minds and free people. Fitting, then, that he should conclude his speech by extending an invitation to form a new agenda, founded in liberty and open to all:
Argentina will not support any policy that implies the restriction of individual freedoms, of trade, or the violation of the natural rights of individuals, no matter who promotes it or how much consensus that institution has. For this reason, we want to express – officially – our dissent on the Pact of the Future, signed on Sunday, and we invite all the nations of the free world to join us, not only in the dissent of this pact, but in the creation of a new agenda for this noble institution: the agenda of freedom. ~~Joel Bowman, Notes From the End of the World
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan
P.S. Tomorrow, we’ll have some choice words about the UN’s Pact for the Future – an undemocratic, collectivist money grab if there ever was one. Stay tuned.
How did we get here? Bill Bonner and I penned a few alternate takes on the financial, economic, and political history of the United States from Demise of the Dollar through Financial Reckoning Day and on to Empire of Debt — all three books are now available in their third post-pandemic editions. You might enjoy one, or all three.
