Roger Cohen hates and detests Javier Milei, and all that he stands for. The New York Timesman acknowledges that the President of Argentina has “cut inflation to 32 percent from over 200 percent annually; and produced a budget surplus in a country where, in 110 of the last 123 years, there was a deficit.” He concedes that “Milei inherited a 54 percent poverty rate” and that “the official poverty rate has been almost halved to 28.2 percent,” although he casts aspersions on the accuracy of that latter statistic. This man is practically a miracle worker. Yet, Mr. Cohen is determined to drag him into the mud. Why? I speculate that he views Milei's success as a rejection of the bigger government that Cohen has long been comfortable with.
What are the specifics? He calls him an “obsessive laissez-faire economist.” Yes, Milei certainly supports laissez-faire capitalism, but he is not “obsessive” about it. That implies he has some sort of fetish about this system; that he is compulsive, fanatical about it. No. Rather, he favors the free market since it is the embodiment of justice. It consists, solely, of voluntary interactions between consenting adults (apart from girl scout cookies, trading baseball cards and kiddies’ lemonade stands). No other system can even come close to making any such claim. Mr. Milei supports capitalism, moreover, since empirical evidence (North and South Korea, East and West Germany; Cuba, Venezuela) demonstrates over and over again that it leads to prosperity.
Yes, Javier Milei has fired a number of Argentinian bureaucrats. They were drawing a salary for stultifying that nation’s economy. Roger Cohen calls this an “assault on the federal bureaucracy.” No, it was not an “assault.” It was a liberation of the Argentinian entrepreneurial spirit.
This representative of the Grey Lady characterizes Milei as a “rabble-rousing leader…” No, he rouses no rabble. Rather, he is the duly elected president of a great democratic nation. His party did rather well in the recent by-elections without rousing any rabble. Did Barack Obama or Joe Biden raise rabble?
This editorialist accuses the political leader of “Deploying hatred and fear, seemingly at ease with wars.” Yes, Milei does indeed hate communism, the system that has murdered tens of millions of innocent people (Mao, Stalin). To be sure, he also fears it, knowing full well what it has done. It cannot be denied that he is “at ease” with some wars: but only defensive ones. If country A unjustifiably “assaults” country B, the latter (Israel) has every right to defend itself militarily. But to put matters in this way is merely to express hatred and fear of his own.
Cohen praises “Evita, Perón’s wife, … for her role in a movement that gave … workers paid vacations. But this benefit, in the free economy, comes about in spite of politicians like her and her husband’s dirigisme policies. Paid vacations are an aspect of a burgeoning economy; they would have come about far sooner without Peronism. But, in the event, this policy was imposed upon the Argentines. Thus, it functions as a type of the minimum wage enactment, and causes unemployment and impoverishment, not wealth.
Javier Milei’s magnificent leadership has spread so far and wide, Cohen reluctantly reports, that there are even some “French politicians seeking advice on how to become the ‘French Milei.’” But this writer denigrates this magnificent accomplishment: “OK, are you ready to raise the retirement age, not from 62 to 64, but from 62 to 68, and make that clear before the election?,” he challenges. Under laissez faire, however, the government would have nothing to do with retirement ages. That would be determined via bargaining between employer and employee. Nor would there be any compulsory governmental retirement policy, such as social security. This is profoundly undemocratic. It is predicated upon the false notion that people are too stupid to save for their old age needs. But if they are so foolish, how can we allow them to vote? On the other hand we most certainly do give them access to the ballot box. This demonstrates we think they are not unable to provide for their retirement years.
This journalist then complains that “there are still homes with no running water.” Give the man a break; he has so far moved mountains, but not all of them. Our author refers to “A soup kitchen in one of Buenos Aires’s slums, where Milei’s policies seem to have brought little change.” Little change? But what about wrestling the inflation and poverty rates practically down to the ground? What about Luz “Vázquez [who] had consisted of working odd jobs for a pittance. Now she earns around $1,400 a month.”? Cohen has the effrontery to complain even of such a gigantic improvement, on the ground that due to this great job, this single mother is “missing a lot of things from [her] son’s childhood.”
Cohen also accuses Milei of “brutality,” and of being “a fanatical mocker of human rights.” Brutal? What brutality? Mr. Milei had nothing to do with the disappearances phenomenon. Nor does he at all “mock” the human right of being free of murder, rape, theft, kidnapping, fraud, etc. The only “human right” that he quite properly “mocks” is the so-called “human right” of some people to steal from others under the guise of distributionist government policies.
Cohen charges that Milei is all about “a return ‘to the law of the jungle.’” This is the familiar criticism of “dog eat dog capitalism.” He continues: “Milei, however, could survive in that jungle.” No, no, no, it is socialism, fascism and communism that are the spawns of the “jungle.” Every element of free enterprise – buying, selling, renting, investing, saving, employing – with no exception, is based upon mutual agreement.
In the view of Cohen, Milei is guilty of a “deregulatory frenzy.” Frenzy? What a way to describe the freeing up of the Argentinian economy! At one time, Cohen himself tells us, a law, “… issued in the final days of the last military dictatorship, prohibited the export of large fruits like watermelons unless they were packaged in a netted bag, or a white bag without markings sewn shut.” This led to crops rotting in the fields. Milei called a halt to this craziness. That is “frenzy?” What a choice of words by this wordsmith.
States our columnist: “Social assistance programs — including income support to worker cooperatives, assistance to victims of gender-based violence and aid to soup kitchens — have been cut by $12.8 billion since Milei took office; that equals hardship for many.” In the free society, worker cooperatives would sink or swim based upon their own effectiveness; they would not be able to dip their greedy paws into the pockets of the taxpayers. The proper role of the government would be to stop all violence (except for the defensive variety), whether based upon gender or not. Assistance to victims, and soup kitchens, would be privatized. “Hardship for many?” That was before the advent of Milei, not afterward.
Cohen accuses Milei of being a “screw-loose free-market pundit.” Are Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Gary Becker and Adam Smith also “screw-loose?” They also supported free enterprise. Are all those who favor economic freedom “screw-loose?” Are there any “screw-loose” socialists? Enquiring minds want to know.
Reports this scribbler: “The world was saved by just a centimeter,” Milei said, ‘and that was the bullet that did not hit Trump.’ He also said, ‘I am proud to be the most Zionist president in the world.’ There it was, his foreign policy in two sentences: unconditional support of the United States and Israel, period.” If this is not a non sequitur, there is no such thing as a non sequitur. It simply does not at all logically follow that just because Milei is happy that Trump was not assassinated, that he is some sort of lap dog to the U.S. president. Nor does Milei give “unconditional support” to Israel. If I can put words into his mouth, he wishes that country, the only civilized one in the Middle East, would more closely adopt capitalism, and more thoroughly rid itself of its socialist past.
Cohen accuses Milei of “convey[ing] lurid fury,” being “hyperactive” and “apoplectic,” engaging in “hate,” having a “messianic” complex, indulging in “rage.” Tsk, tsk, tsk. Yet more name-calling. He even stoops so low as to somehow blame the present Argentinian administration for the sorrow of some cows whose calves have been taken away from them for branding. Please, give us a break. Roger Cohen ought to be ashamed of himself.
