El Economista – I hope to go wrong half way, but I see a very complicated future for us Argentines. And it is not about the pandemic itself, that already brings us enough headaches. This is a topic in which only those who are knowledgeable in the matter should say, that is, prestigious immunologists, infectious diseases and doctors. In this sense, I consider the considerations of the distinguished doctors Pablo Bonvehí of the CEMIC and Jorge Geffner of the UBA to be highly relevant. In both cases they maintain the importance of isolation to avoid contagions, although they stress that all the jurisdictions of our country should not have the same treatment, which is why they suggest applying federalism, that is, decentralization, also in this regard.
For his part, the French medical doctor and parliamentarian Claude Malhuert, after whipping clearly and precisely the detractors of liberalism that he argued are the consequence of paying more attention to Robespierre than Tocqueville, proposed in this instance to leave aside the quarantine for the case of France. At the other end of the recipes is Anthony Fauci, also a medical doctor, a health adviser to the current US government, who insists on maintaining isolation against the current of what the President of that country has been preaching recklessly.
So you cannot tar with the same brush, it depends on the circumstances that one is going through but, as has been said, always attending to the experts and avoiding the chatter on the part of those who do not know medicine and much less pandemics.
But the concerns of who writes these lines go far beyond the health problem and are part of the irresponsible and exponential monetary expansion, the treatment of new tax burdens, the attack against businessman, the unscrupulous treatment of debt, the characteristics from the new appointments in the government and the consequent sidereal increase in public spending, the alleged slap at the Justice, the elimination of the corresponding office as a plaintiff in corruption cases, the anti-republican idea of delegating the treatment of the budget to the Heads of Cabinet and the always absurd and counterproductive price controls on which I spoke in a column in this same medium.
In this context, despite my immense sympathies for liberalism, I have repeatedly suggested that I believe that this is not the time to insist on the establishment of a liberal party since we are extremely behind in the cultural battle. The latter is exemplified by a Swedish who wants to communicate in his language with a Spanish-speaking audience for which the first requirement is that the recipients of his message understand Swedish, otherwise the speech will be useless. That happens unfortunately in our environment, in general it is still not understood what we liberals are talking about. There are many duties that we must do by proposing in-depth debates to the effect of running the axis of the debate that in time will compel politicians to modify their discourses.
The political plane should not be confused with the academic one. The politician must make proposals that people accept and understand. Speaking to them in Swedish is not conducive if the audience does not understand that language. Our country was at the forefront of the civilized world from the promulgation of the liberal Constitution of 1853 until the collapse with the fascist revolution of the 30’s, notably accentuated since the military coup of 1943, a situation that we maintain to this day and that we must reverse.
I believe that support and initiatives should be offered to the current opposition that has been formed thanks to the number of people who clamored to maintain essential republican principles and not as support for the resounding failure of the previous government. Splitting up that opposition will not allow the necessary space and time required by the aforementioned cultural battle.
In summary, I hope I’ll be wrong but I see revolts of greater magnitude and grotesque than those we have experienced up to the present. It is imperative to support current foundations and institutions established precisely to wage that cultural battle. We must take into account the thinking of Marxist Antonio Gramsci: “take culture and education, the rest is added.”
