Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, November 29, 2023/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
Why The Media
Despise Javier Milei
By Ben Shapiro
So, Javier Milei is
extremely scary.
That’s what the
legacy media have
decided: The newly
elected libertarian
conservative leader
of Argentina is abso
lutely frightening.
Axios calls him a
“far-right libertarian
who’s been com
pared to (former President Donald)
Trump.” The New York Times writes, “Ar
gentina Braces Itself for Its New Anarcho-
Capitalist’ President,” and called the elec
tion Argentina’s “Donald Trump mo
ment.” “Who,” asks The Washington Post,
“is Javier Milei, Argentina’s far-right presi
dent elect?”
This, unsurprisingly, is not the way
the press treated the election of former
convict and Left-winger Luiz Inacio Lula
de Silva in Brazil. “Brazil Elects Lula, a
Leftist Former Leader, in a Rebuke of Bol-
sonaro,” The New York Times reported last
year. “Who,” the Washington Post asked,
“is Lula? What to know about Brazil’s
president.”
Milei, as we’ve said, is one scary char
acter.
So, what are his deeply frightening
positions? He has called for vast cuts to
Argentina’s government — a necessity,
since Argentina has defaulted on its debts
three times since 2001, has a $43 billion
outstanding loan to the International
Monetary Fund, and now faces another
default. They received a $57 billion bail
out just five years ago. Thanks to out-of-
control spending, Argentina has had to
print pesos hand over fist, which is why,
according to the Ministry of the Economy,
total money supply in Argentina skyrock
eted 30.7% a year from 2007 to 2022. The
poverty rate in the country is 40%.
Milei’s media appearances maybe col
orful, but that all serves a purpose: a de
termination to make massive change to
Argentina’s economic trajectory. Milei has
promised to slash and burn his way
through government, cutting 11 of 19 de
partments of the government; he cam
paigned with a chainsaw he pledged he
would use on the “parasitic state.” He
wants to draw closer to the United States
and Israel, and away from China. He wants
to dollarize the economy.
All of this should be treated as good
news. Argentina’s trajectory has been a
total disaster area for decades, despite the
glorification of Peronism at the hands of
Hollywood. And, in fact, the markets are
treating Milei’s election as they should:
Argentine stocks and bonds have jumped
on Milei’s election, mainly because he is
the first leader of Argentina in generations
who has a plan to actually avoid economic
default.
So, why the heartburn?
Because the reality is that there are
many in the United States and Europe,
particularly on the political Left, who
somehow feel more comfortable with the
socialist radicalism of Lula De Silva, Ga
briel Boric and even Nicolas Maduro than
with anyone who smacks of libertarianism
or conservatism. That’s because Argen
tina is a living example of what happens
when corporatism and social democracy
are taken to their limits: the substitution
of governments for markets, the overregu
lation of industry in pursuit of social re-
distributionism, the attempts to create
autarky via tariff protections and trade re
strictions — the endless populist promise
Please see Shapiro page 8A
Ronna McDaniel
Is Doing Her Job
Moderator Lester
Holt kicked off the
last Republican de
bate by asking Vivek
Ramaswamy, “Why
should you be the
nominee and not the
former president?”
Ramaswamy ig-
By Star Parker nored the question and
chose instead to attack
Republican National Committee Chairper
son Ronna McDaniel, calling for her resigna
tion, calling his party “a party of losers” and
placing the responsibility for this accusation
on her shoulders.
McDaniel may hold a high-ranking posi
tion in the structure of her party; she is
chairperson.
But elections are not about party opera
tives. Elections are about candidates.
The best party machine in the world,
with all the money in the world, will not
elect a candidate that voters don’t want.
Politics is about candidates, and candi
dates are about leadership, and leadership is
about truth and character.
That Ramaswamy ignored what he was
asked, to explain why Republican voters
should prefer him to former president Don
ald Trump, is far more relevant than issues
about party bureaucracy.
Reasonable scrutiny shows that the Re
publican candidate selection process is
working well.
Candidates are presenting themselves in
the political marketplace and the market
place is evaluating and choosing.
In the first debate there were eight can
didates. In the last, there were five. In the
next, three, maybe four.
I wrote in this column that when Trump
decided to not participate in the debates that
it wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would give the
others a chance to present themselves to the
public.
The greatest beneficiary of this has been
Nikki Haley, who, at the time of the first de
bate, was polling, per the RealClearPolitics
average, 3.2% nationally. Now she stands at
10.7%.
Perhaps this is really what is bothering
Ramaswamy, who was polling 7.2% at the
time of the first debate and now stands at
4.9%. I don’t think he can blame McDaniel
for this.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose polling im
ploded over the course of the year, dropping
from 28.8% at the beginning of January to
14.3% at the time of the first debate, has not
succeeded to capture hearts and minds
through the debates and now stands with
little change at 14.8%.
Trump, of course, has been hovering at
50 points beyond the rest over the whole
period.
And maybe this is where things will re
main.
But we need an open and free market for
political ideas and, to the extent that the
Republican National Committee can influ
ence this, I think McDaniel has performed
reasonably well.
Does the Republican Party have chal
lenges?
Yes, of course. But this is not because of
the RNC.
The chaos that prevailed in the House in
Please see Star page 7A
The new Arab street
is here at home
THE
RICH
LOWRY
COLUMN
The old conventional wisdom was
that the U.S. couldn’t be too pro-Israel
for fear of inflaming “the Arab street.”
The new conventional wisdom
will have to be that we can’t be too pro-
Israel for fear of inflaming “the West
ern street.”
The Arab street, a hoary cliche of
commentary on the Middle East for
decades, was a reference to public
opinion in the Arab countries, with the
strong implication that if we offended
it, the result would be massive anti-
Western demonstrations and perhaps
violence.
Well, here we are, with this dy
namic playing out throughout the
United States and other Western coun
tries. We have offended the new Arab
street within our own societies. In re
sponse, it has lashed out in mass pro
tests, intimidation of Jews, antisemitic
chants and graffiti, property damage
and anti-patriotic acts and sentiments.
It is hardly the global intifada that
speakers at these events call for, but it
is significant agitation. Left-of-center
political parties will take it seriously,
and the Biden administration — hesi
tant to speak of antisemitism without
reference to fashionable Islamophobia,
as well — has already been influenced
by it.
The Arab street in the West is not
literally Arab, although Muslim immi
grants and their children, along with
foreign students, are clearly a large
component. Woke young people who
come by their anti-Israel views via in
tersectional politics, along with tradi
tional left-wing and anti-war activists,
play a big role, too.
It makes for a noxious mix. The
West’s Arab street mobilized in the im
mediate aftermath of October 7 before
Israel even had the chance to mount
any substantial response. It inveighed
against Israel on principle even after an
unspeakable pogrom.
Of course, things have only picked
up from there. A week or so ago, more
than 300,000 pro-Palestinian protest
ers marched in London, chanting for
the elimination of Israel. That would
be a notable crowd in an Arab capital,
but it’s especially remarkable in one of
the greatest cities in the Western world.
In a nice touch that, again, one
would expect in a country in the Mid
dle East, the protest march ended at
the U.S. Embassy.
A couple of days earlier, thousands
of protesters shut down midtown
Manhattan. They vandalized a police
cruiser, writing “IDF KKK” on it, and
splattered fake blood on the New York
Times building. They kicked and
smashed windows at a shut-down
Grand Central Station.
Unlike other mass movements,
most famously the civil-rights move
ment, the protesters don’t seek to
swath themselves in American sym
bolism and ideals. Palestinian flags, not
American flags, are the banners of
these marchers. In Manhattan, they
removed American flags from a lamp-
post. And they’ve vandalized war me
morials in Europe.
In some prominent cases, we have
directly imported hatred of ourselves
via the Middle East. At a large pro-
Palestinian rally in Washington, D.C.,
the lawyer and activist Lamis Deek
praised martyrdom and resistance, and
bellowed that “the truth is the Western
world is a lie.” She comes from Nablus,
and her worldview is about what you’d
expect of someone from there.
At MIT, Israeli and Jewish stu
dents say they were blocked from at
tending class by a pro-Palestinian pro
test at the school’s main entrance. The
protest violated the rules, but when
the school ordered all protesters to
leave the area or face suspension, the
contingent of Jewish counter-protest
ers left, while the pro-Palestinians
stayed.
Were they suspended? No, appar
ently because many of them are for
eign students. The president of MIT
cited “visa issues” in not following
through on the discipline.
This is perverse. But we can never
forget the extent to which we our
selves, through determined inculca
tion in our own schools, have made
students from right here in the United
States haters of Israel and the West.
Altogether, we’ve created the condi
tions for the ongoing cataract of anti-
Israel agitation, coupled with outright
antisemitism and harassment of Jews,
that shows no signs of abating.
Why settle for an Arab Street
abroad, when you can have one here at
home?
Rich Lowry is editor of the National
Review.
(c) 2023 by King Features Synd., Inc.
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