Good morning, everyone. How much has changed in such a short time. A year ago, I stood here before you alone and told some truths about the state of the Western world that were received with a certain amount of surprise and stupor by a good part of the Western political, economic and media establishment.And I must admit that, in some sense, I understand it. A president of a country that, as a result of systematic economic failure for more than 100 years, as a result of having taken pusillanimous positions in the great global conflicts, and as a result of having closed ourselves off to trade, had lost practically all international relevance over the years. A president of that country stands on this platform and tells the entire world that they are wrong, that they are headed for failure, that the West has gone astray and that it must be put back on track.A president of that country, Argentina, who was not a politician, who had no legislative support, who had no support from governors or businessmen or media groups. In that speech, here, standing before you, I told you that it was the beginning of a new Argentina, that Argentina had been infected with socialism for too long and that with us it would once again embrace the ideas of freedom; a model that we summarize in the defense of life, liberty, and private property.And I also told you that, in a certain sense, Argentina was the ghost of Christmas future for the West because we had already lived through everything that you were living through and we already knew how it would end.A year later, I must say that I no longer feel so alone, I no longer feel so alone because the world has embraced Argentina. Argentina has become a world example of fiscal responsibility, of commitment to our obligations, of how to end the problem of inflation and also of a new way of doing politics, which consists of telling people the truth in their face and trusting that people will understand.I don’t feel alone either, because throughout this year I have been able to find companions in this fight for the ideas of freedom in every corner of the planet. From the wonderful Elon Musk to the fierce Italian lady, my dear friend, Giorgia Meloni; from Bukele in El Salvador to Victor Orbán in Hungary; from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to Donald Trump in the United States. Slowly, an international alliance has been formed of all those nations that want to be free and that believe in the ideas of freedom.And slowly, what seemed to be an absolute global hegemony of the woke left in politics, in educational institutions, in the media, in supranational organizations or in forums such as Davos, has been crumbling and a hope for the ideas of freedom is beginning to appear.Today I come here to tell you that our battle is not won, that—although hope has been reborn—it is our moral duty and our historical responsibility to dismantle the ideological edifice of sickly wokeism. Until we have managed to rebuild our historic cathedral, until we have managed to get the majority of Western countries to embrace the ideas of freedom again, until our ideas are not the common currency of the halls of events like this, we cannot give up because, I must say, forums like this have been protagonists and promoters of the sinister agenda of wokeism that is doing so much harm to the West.If we want to change, if we truly want to defend the rights of citizens, we must first begin by telling them the truth. And the truth is that there is something deeply wrong with the ideas that have been promoted from forums like this. I would like to take a few minutes, from this day forward, to discuss some of them.Today, few people deny that the winds of change are blowing in the West. There are those who resist change, there are those who accept it reluctantly but accept it in the end, there are the new converts who appear when they see it as inevitable, and finally, there are those of us who have fought all our lives for its coming.Each of you will know which group you identify with, there is surely a bit of each of you in this audience, but you will all recognize, surely, that the time of change is knocking at the door. Moments of historical change have a particularity: they are times when the formulas that have been in force for decades are exhausted, the ways considered unique of doing things cease to make sense and what for many were unquestionable truths are, finally, called into question. They are moments where the rules are rewritten and for that reason they are times that reward those who have the courage to take risks.But much of the free world still prefers the comfort of the known, even if it is the wrong path, and insists on applying the recipes for failure. And the great anvil that appears as a common denominator in the countries and institutions that are failing is the mental virus of woke ideology. This is the great epidemic of our time that must be cured, it is the cancer that must be eradicated.This ideology has colonized the world’s most important institutions, from the parties and states of the free countries of the West, to global governance organizations, nongovernmental institutions, universities, and the media, and has also shaped the course of the global conversation for the past decades. Until we remove this aberrant ideology from our culture, our institutions, and our laws, Western civilization—and even the human species—will not be able to return to the path of progress that our pioneering spirit demands.It is essential to break these ideological chains if we want to take a step towards a new golden age. That is why today I want to dedicate a few minutes to destroying those chains, but first let’s talk about what we are fighting for.The West represents the peak of the human species, the fertile soil of its Greco-Roman heritage and its Judeo-Christian values planted the seeds of something unprecedented in history. After definitively imposing itself on absolutism, a new era in human existence began. Within this new moral and philosophical framework that placed individual freedom above the whim of the tyrant, the West was able to unleash the creative capacity of man, beginning a process of wealth generation never seen before.The data speak for themselves: until 1800, the world’s GDP per capita remained practically constant. However, starting in the 19th century and thanks to the Industrial Revolution, GDP per capita multiplied by 20, lifting 90% of the world’s population out of poverty even though the population multiplied by eight times. This was only possible thanks to a convergence of fundamental values: respect for life, liberty and property, which made free trade, freedom of expression, religious freedom and the rest of the pillars of Western civilization possible.Added to this is our Faustian, inventive, exploratory, pioneering spirit, which is always testing the limits of what is possible. A pioneering spirit that is today represented, among others, by my dear friend Elon Musk, who has been unjustly vilified by wokeism in recent hours for an innocent gesture that only means his love] and gratitude to the people. In short, we invented capitalism based on savings, investment, work, reinvestment, and hard work. We managed to make it possible for each worker to multiply their productivity by 10, by 100, or even by 1000, thus overcoming the Malthusian trap. However, at some point in the 20th century, we lost our way and the liberal principles that had made us free and prosperous were betrayed.A new political class, protected by collectivist ideologies and taking advantage of moments of crisis, saw a perfect opportunity to accumulate power. All the wealth created by capitalism up to that point and in the future would be redistributed under some scheme of centralized planning, which kicked off a process whose dire consequences we are suffering today.
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Milei @ WEF
- Thread starter Hawkeye10
- Start date
The rest here:
First Impressions:
I admire the nerve required to say such stuff at DAVOS. I think I agree with everything he says about the Death Cult though I dont think he says strongly enough that the goal is our enslavement and then extinction. I agree that the West has turned rancid but I dont get the sense that he understands why, and if one does not know why it has happened I question if there is any ability to fix it. I certainly do not agree that championing greed is good, or a fix.
I admire the nerve required to say such stuff at DAVOS. I think I agree with everything he says about the Death Cult though I dont think he says strongly enough that the goal is our enslavement and then extinction. I agree that the West has turned rancid but I dont get the sense that he understands why, and if one does not know why it has happened I question if there is any ability to fix it. I certainly do not agree that championing greed is good, or a fix.