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March 8, 2005
A Liberal in Latin America
Tom Palmer, in a post today, encourages everyone to read a recent speech by novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Entitled “Confessions of a Liberal,” the speech covers a discussion of what it means to be a liberal, as well as the impact of liberal ideas throughout Latin America. Here is an excerpt:
Thus, the liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy. The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal. Because freedom has not been understood as such in Latin America, the region has had many failed attempts at democratic rule. Either because the democracies that began emerging after the dictatorships respected political freedom but rejected economic liberty, which inevitably produced more poverty, inefficiency and corruption, or because they installed authoritarian governments convinced that only a firm hand and a repressive regime could guarantee the functioning of the free market. This is a dangerous fallacy. It has never been so. This explains why all the so-called “free market” Latin American dictatorships have failed. No free economy functions without an independent, efficient justice system and no reforms are successful if they are implemented without control and the criticism that only democracy permits. Those who believed that General Pinochet was the exception to the rule because his regime enjoyed economic success have now discovered, with the revelations of murder and torture, secret accounts and millions of dollars abroad, that the Chilean dictator, like all of his Latin American counterparts, was a murderer and a thief.
There is obviously much more to the speech. Head over and give it a read it you have the time.
Posted by Peter Mork at March 8, 2005 9:57 AM
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» ...to be a liberal from San Diego Politics
My friend from economics with a face found this speech by novelist Mario Vargas Llosa on what it is to be a liberal. He quotes a different section on his site, but I like this one. "... there are liberals... [Read More]
Tracked on March 10, 2005 2:29 PM
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