I know volumes have been written on Kissinger. I’m trying to find if mises.org or other libertarian forms have addressed him at length.
I can’t say Kissinger is liberal. He hugged Mao Zedong and said that China looked nice during the cultural revolution…
If we are picking large political figures in the modern era, which are not often mentioned as liberal, then I offer Menahem Begin as a creative choice of interesting subject.
Edit: Kissinger is mentioned in one of my books written by Chinese libertarian who was in prison, and she really dislikes him.
I understand Netanyahu is denationalizing everything in sight.
Venture bros ftw
Come on people, he had a role in defusing that whole cold-war demenza by actually trying to get closer to . Who knows, perhaps without that move the Chinese would have been more reluctant to move towards more economic freedom, and without the Chinese reform neither would have moved even at the glacial pace it is moving, nor would the have fallen so fast.
On that account only, I’d say that Kissinger was actually much more preferable form a libertarian point of view than any other political figure since…wow, in a very long time actually. I actually like comparing him with his idol, Prince Metternich, in my opinion the greatest Statesman (yes, form a libertarian point of view) ever.
I don’t understand how Chinese reform accelerated the fall of the USSR. From what I’ve read the USSR had already jumped off the economic cliff, they didn’t need anyone to push them.
Well, it could be argued that seeing an hyper-communistic regime such as make an orderly change toward a higher degree of economic prosperity and freedom, broke the ideological spell of communism for most of the citizens. Whichever illusion they still had that communism could work if they just held on a little longer was dissipated.
And than again, even if very poor by western standards, the USSR was still the riches country of all those which it had around (taking exception of Finland and, perhaps, Turkey), and the Chinese reform showed the man on the street that there was such a thing as a better world within plain view (because, you know, western TV stations where just lying about prosperity in the west).
Thus the Chinese “second big step forward” could have spelled the death of the communist ideal. I’ve read once on National Geographic of the citizens of a Siberian town on the Amur that wondered how could the Chinese city at the opposite bank of the river have managed to get from a clearly inferior city to their won, to a modern, skyscraper-filled metropolis just 15 years later.
That is how could have bee to the what West Berlin was the DDR (or Hong-Kong to itself).
PS: And than perhaps the was not doomed after all. If Gorbatchev had pushed form economic reforms, instead of political reforms, perhaps the Soviet Empire too could have been ‘saved’. was certainly in much direr straits when Deng began to liberalize the economy. But avoiding a Chinese-style reform (in roder to avoid that practical declaration of bankruptcy of the comunsit ideal) could have been precisely what motivated Gorby to go for political reforms.
After all, only a libertarian would make a plan for “Food Control Genocide”.
Anymore gems you want to crack out?
Netenyahu’s intentions were to reduce the size of the Israeli government, given that the Israeli economy can no longer support the burden of Israel’s warfare and welfare state, but I’m not sure there has been any progress.
Factual errors? Bring them on.
Natanyahu’s privatization schemes are practically all fascist in nature, benefiting only his political opponents who identify anything that is not nationalized in the Marxist tradition as Capitalism.
and the evidence for this sweeping statement is?
Oh really?
from: http://www.israelpost.co.il/newmail.nsf/eng/postalmission?opendocument&L=EN
The Israel Postal Company Ltd.
As part of Israel’s postal reform, the government decided that the Israel postal authority would cease to operate as a statutory body and all of its operations would be transferred to a newly created state owned enterprise, “The Israel Postal Company”.
So in this case, they didn’t even bother to take the fascist route. They simply closed the old agency, founded a new company with tax payers money, declared it a public company with monopolistic privileges, and behold… You have privatization according to you.
I stand corrected. I did not know this.
One article full of factual errors and venom is this:
I wrote a longish post pointing out a few, but it did not get through. No matter. Anyone who lived through the events he described knows he is raving like a madman, or a paid propagandist. When Im less tired, if you are interested, I’ll point some out.
In particular, his description of the situation in 1948 and 1967 is totally from fantasy world.
Oh well. So he got that wrong, and elevators wrong. Nobody’s perfect.
Ah nice, that’s just about my favourite essay ever.
Then you will love Grimm’s Fairy Tales
OOPS!. I meant the phone company. Sorry. It’s been a while. ANd you can buy shares in the phone company if you wish.