Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

How fear is consuming a once confident and creative ideology.

For a quarter of a millennium, liberalism as a theory and as a political movement has been dedicated to the cause of social and political freedom and the pursuit of happiness as a material end. Liberalism continues to pursue those ends, but differently understood and by different means. The result is diminished freedom and happiness in all Western liberal societies. The world that classical liberalism made, neoliberalism, and now progressive liberalism are presently unmaking in the name of liberalism.

None of the countries that comprise the Anglosphere—including Great Britain, the United States and Canada, Australia, and others—is as happy a place as it was before liberalism in its updated form went to work on it. But the U.S. is, by almost every standard, the least happy and the most neurotic of them all.

The fact is confirmed by the angry and frequently crazed political polarization here; the racial tensions and the riots; the looting and destruction that American liberals are willing to tolerate and even to excuse; the intellectual chaos and mental and moral confusion produced by “woke” colleges, universities, and the public schools, then promoted in the media; the new liberal biology (comparable to the old Soviet biology) according to which a man can become a woman and give birth to a child and which purposefully complicates the formation of sexual identity among the young.

It is confirmed by the growing restlessness and rebelliousness of middle and lower-middle class Americans angered by the readiness of government at every level to resort to blatantly unconstitutional means to control and, when necessary, to punish the general population; the industrial and commercial regulations imposed on businesses and communities aimed at reversing warming temperatures around the world; federal policies that promote huge economic disparities by subsidizing the enterprises of the wealthy classes while expanding welfare payments to the poor ones (what the late political analyst Samuel T. Francis called “anarcho-tyranny”); recklessly irresponsible immigration policies that have let poor aliens take jobs from native-born citizens while further promoting a polyglot society in which there will soon be no ethnic and cultural majority and therefore no national identity, all to the further cultural confusion, instability, and anxiety of every group; liberal social policies that for the past six decades have been weakening the institution of marriage, discouraging the formation of legitimate families, and promoting the dissolution of existing marriages…

«El dinero corrompe, sobre todo a aquellos que no lo tienen.»
Peter Alexander Ustinov

En China, como en otras partes del mundo, los empresarios sobornan con frecuencia a los jefes del partido y del gobierno a cambio de favores o beneficios. El acceso al dinero incluye sobornos a poderosos funcionarios del partido para acceder a privilegios, como financiamiento barato, concesiones de tierras, derechos de monopolio, contratos de adquisición y exenciones fiscales.

Naturalmente, la corrupción en China no es muy diferente a la de otros países. El peligro radica en su creciente interés en tierras y recursos naturales de países menos desarrollados y su activa inversión en tierras de continentes como Latinoamérica y África donde prácticas igualmente corruptas son una oportunidad predadora para el PCC chino en su apetito por el poder totalitario.

Un reporte reciente, comisionado por el Congreso norteamericano titulado "Riqueza y actividades corruptas del liderazgo del Partido Comunista Chino", revela la naturaleza de la corrupción en la nación asiática y la manera como los funcionarios y sus familias acumulan riqueza gracias a sus posiciones y conexiones en el PCC.

De acuerdo con la investigación, liderada por David O. Shullman, actual jefe del Departamento Nacional de Inteligencia de EE.UU. los esfuerzos del gobierno chino para eliminar las prácticas corruptas de su país, no son suficientes porque se reducen a imponer una dudosa disciplina política y la supuesta pureza ideológica (purgas) para mantener el control del partido y ocultar así, la desenfrenada delincuencia financiera.

Sobornos y “regalos”

While democratic societies, along with their economic and political systems, have freedom, welfare, and prosperity of their people as objectives, dictatorial regimes and any other type of authoritarianism use poverty as a mechanism to increase the citizenry’s dependence and control. Poverty, as shown by Cuba and Venezuela’s situation and the path Bolivia and Nicaragua have chosen to follow, is the tool of 21st Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, to oppress the peoples.

In democracy that -as a minimum- is founded on freedom, respect for human rights, equality before the law, separation, and independence of the branches of government, and accountability, sovereignty rests in the people and those who govern them are temporary mandataries and stewards responsible of improving the quality of life of their constituents. Any bad situation, hard to handle, or a crisis points out to the loss of popular backing and emergent liabilities.

With the 1999 merger of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Luz Ignacio Lula da Silva, when Chavez ascended to the presidency of Venezuela, the expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship was disguised as populism, anti-imperialism, and a war against poverty. Political leaders, parties, and institutions of democracy were attacked for the lack of better results to favor the poor. The expansionists benefitted from the wealth and reserves built up in democracy and used Venezuela’s oil and wealth, the Lava Jato corruption scheme funded by Brazil, the excessive international borrowing of funds, and crime to dazzle everyone with their effectist actions that did not solve anything.

Las noticias provenientes de los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales abruman la salud mental de millones de seres humanos en el mundo entero, cada día que pasa pareciera que la maldad triunfa como política de estado contra los vulnerables, siendo compartida con saña por quienes cultivan el odio contra los desposeídos del sur global.

Confieso que no soy fan de los estudios esotéricos, pero debe haber algo de cierto cuando sus cultores opinan que “los meses de marzo y abril empiezan con uno de los tránsitos planetarios que más miedo les da a los expertos en astronomía: Mercurio retrógrado”.

Pareciera que la humanidad entró en un impasse donde se perdió la memoria histórica y se invirtieron los valores contemporáneos de democracia, libertad, de compasión por el ser humano, ideales consagrados los dos últimos siglos de nuestra era contemporánea, tras el sacrificio de millones de vidas que permitieron al ser humano adquirir principios civilizatorios: la paz, la democracia y el bienestar de los pueblos.

No se si el tango Cambalache de Discépolo (1934) interpretado magistralmente por Goyeneche cobra plena vigencia en este siglo XXI, cuando vemos ahora a gente opinar que “los dictadores tienen buena pinta y hasta son buena gente”, en referencia a Vladimir Putin, quien ha sido el invasor de Ucrania y generador de las muertes y desaparición de más de un millón de personas. Igual suerte bajo sus designios han sufrido Chechenia, Georgia, Moldavia.