- Welcome to Kibbe on
Liberty, we're talking
to Gloria Alvarez, freedom
fighter in Latin America.
She's going to explain to us why Marx
is such a corrosive
influence in Latin America
and what people that
believe in liberty can do
to connect to the next
generation, check it out.
(rock music)
It's awesome,
- Yes.
- Are we ready?
- [Producer] Yeah, we're ready.
- Are you ready?
- Yes, I'm ready.
- Okay, Gloria, good to see you.
- Good to see you, I'm so glad to be here.
- We are both in New York
City because you are speaking
at the Atlas Society tonight
which is an organization
sort of inspired by the
philosophy of Ayn Rand.
- Yes.
- What are you gonna talk about?
- Well, they asked me to talk about
the influence of Ayn
Rand in my personal life
and the journey that I made
throughout Latin America,
trying to promote her ideas to an audience
that has never been exposed to objectivism
or even true, free market capitalism.
So when I first read Ayn
Rand, it was 10 years ago
with Atlas Shrugged and
it's such an honor for me
to be speaking on the 10th of October,
the anniversary of that amazing novel,
and since then, on my radio shows,
first in Guatemala and then
in the rest of Latin America.
I started promoting her
ideas, trying to disguise them
without talking about
capitalism or objectivism,
I would be like, well you
know guys, if you are looking
to study a college career that
your parents don't approve,
Maybe I don't know, you
wanna be an astronaut,
or you wanna be a chef,
instead of like a lawyer.
I have this amazing book
called The Fountainhead
and it's about this architect
who, he wanted to stick
to his vision on how to make buildings
and so if you're looking
for good arguments
to defend your cause, read that book.
And messages like that
was the way that I started
talking about free markets,
the power of the individual,
don't wait for the
government to solve your life
because they're not interested in that.
In fact, the poorer and
the more ignorant you are,
the cheaper it is for the
governments to buy your vote
so try to
look for your own path.
I also promoted a lot of her scholarships.
Teaching Guatemalans how to go online
and find opportunities
abroad, getting scholarships
to open their horizons and
then there were libertarian,
a step out of Francisco
Marroquín, which is a university
that we have down there
that promotes these ideas.
And now it's a pretty
common concept that everyone
at least has heard of.
- Yeah so in this country,
Hollywood types are more drawn to Anthem,
which is her small novelette,
and The Fountainhead, which
is really about artistic
integrity, that the establishment,
the government shouldn't
tell you what your art is
and you should sort of follow
your own path.
They're less comfortable with
Atlas Shrugged because that's
about the virtue of, sort
of entrepreneurship and
production, and that kind of thing.
And they don't get that because
economics is not their thing
so,
I like the fact that
you're trying to translate
objectivism into something that people
can actually connect with.
- Yes.
- Which is what she did,
she wrote a book, right,
it was a novel.
It was a who done it, it
wasn't until later when
she sort of wrote these
philosophical tomes,
that are more for a niche market,
like people that really want to dig deep.
- Yeah for me it was very
transformative, because when
I studied in Marroquín, you
have to have economic classes,
and Mises philosophy, Hayek
philosophy, so I already
have read Milton Friedman and
Bastiat, and public choice
theory.
But when I read Atlas
Shrugged I was like, "My god,
this woman, she integrated everything."
This book is about religion,
and sex, and the power
of the individual, and
the political struggle,
and the hypocrisy of
societies that I'd been seeing
all over Latin America.
Business men that behave
with their countries in a way
that they wouldn't even behave
with their own companies,
they finance the political
campaigns of people that
they wouldn't hire to be their
managers in their business,
so everything, it's reflected.
And also in my personal
background, my grandparents
and my dad is from Cuba,
and my other grandfather
was from Hungary, so everything
that I read about communism
in that novel was also the same
things that my grandparents
taught me about of the
former Soviet Union and Cuba,
which is now what is
happening in Venezuela.
So people are like, "Oh
my god, you're so bright
at understanding this reality."
And I'm like, it's not that
I'm so bright, it's that
if you look at history you
understand that it's always
the same formula.
- It's fascinating how
vividly socialism has failed
again, and again, and
again, and yet we continue
to be romanced by this idea.
And that's a lot of what
you're trying to do,
but before we move on,
because I want to talk about
Francisco Marroquín, cause I
don't think that most folks
watching this even know what that is.
But one of things that Ayn
Rand did in Atlas Shrugged,
you mentioned public choice
theory, and she very clearly
lays out the way that
government and DC insiders
sort of corrupt
entrepreneurship and businesses,
instead of competing for
customers or trying to create
a better product,
you go to Washington and you
get legislation that screws
your competitors. It's
sort of public choice 101,
but she got that,
I think before Buchanan
wrote his stuff, I'd have
to do the math on that.
So she did, she sort of wrapped it all up.
But you used the word
libertarian and objectivist,
and public choice, but of
course when we communicate
with people they don't
know what that stuff is.
And so what is the... when
you're talking to young people
in Guatemala or in Venezuela,
I know you spent some time
in Venezuela as well,
what's the story, the value
proposition, that you connect
with them on that's different
than socialism top
down, one size fits all?
- Well I go to the psychology
and the self esteem,
because what I found doing
radio and being in contact
with young people, is that
the root of the problem
is that young people in
Latin America are taught,
since they are little kids, to be victims.
You are always the victim of
the gringos who have always
invaded us, and
dictate our public policy,
or we are the victims
of the Spanish Conquista,
which happened 500 years ago,
or we are the victims of the oligarchs,
it's always someone else to blame.
And also we have the
component of Catholicism.
Catholicism embraces poverty
as a virtue in itself.
So if you are poor it's
okay, because your house
in the heavens, in the next
life, is gonna be bigger,
it's gonna be better.
Whereas if you're rich
or if you're wealthy,
that gets condemned.
And that is inbred in our psychology,
so if you don't change
that and you go straight
to talk about economics,
they're not gonna care about it.
You first have to go to the
core of the self esteem,
of why you as an individual
matter, why your dreams matter,
and actually why the best
thing that you can have
for your society is being
a productive human being.
Because if you're a parasite
and your society is full
of people who are always
looting from the rest,
then your society's not going to progress.
So I also did a lot of work
on that, on self esteem,
on domestic abuse,
on don't
quiet your...
your questions about life,
try to express yourself,
try to be very curious, and read.
And that's what works, and once
you have that level covered
then you can propose the economics.
- Yeah, we haven't done
enough on that and I watch
the Left in our country,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
beats almost a single drum
about dignity, economic dignity.
And I know from reading Ayn
Rand and from just practical
life, that you don't get dignity
because a politician gave
it to you, you don't get
dignity because there's some
program that says you are
now a dignified human being,
you have to work for it.
And it's really uncomfortable,
and you have to strive,
and you have to fail, and
you have to do all the things
that characters in Ayn Rand
novels do, in order to achieve
something.
And I think that is our
opportunity, like yes
it's uncomfortable,
yes freedom isn't free,
but if you really want to
have a flourishing life,
you can't get that from politics.
- Exactly and that's the
advantage in Latin America,
because in Europe and in
the U.S., at least there
is the fake facade that the
welfare state works, right.
If you break your knee
someone is going to help you
in the hospital, or if you
go to public schools there
is electricity, there are
books, there are computers.
So it's like an opportunity
cost, a competitive advantage,
because in Latin America
governance and politicians
are so corrupt, that the
welfare state just doesn't work.
So you can show it to people
right, it's like listen
this is not working so you
have two options, you can spend
your life as a victim always
demanding some miracle
from the populist messiah
to fix your life, or you go
and you do your own thing.
Which actually most people
in Latin America do,
our informal economies are huge, like 60%
in countries like
Mexico, 80% in Guatemala,
which indicts to us that
people really try to do
their own path, or they come to the U.S.
- Yeah, well let's talk a
little bit about the context
for Latin America and
let's assume our audience
doesn't know a lot about it, but
the rise of Marxism,
and Che Guevara,
and socialism as an
alternative to the status quo,
is not necessarily a rejection
of free market capitalism,
it's a rejection of something else.
- Yeah, well, you can not
understand Latin American history
without I think, three things
that we already mentioned.
First the Spanish Conquista,
a difference than how was the
colonies of the Anglo Saxon
world in the United States,
where private property was
enforced and that equality
under the law was established.
In Latin America the rule of
law was completely different
depending on the group
that you represented.
If you were indigenous there
were laws for those groups,
if you were an African
American, if you were a son of
the Spanish families, so we
have never had rule of law.
Always the law has been fixed
according to the groups.
- Insiders and outsiders.
- Insiders and outsiders,
this creates economic gaps,
because for example I come
from a country where 60%
of the population, if they
look indigenous, cause there
was no DNA test, you were
not allowed to have private
property.
So if you're not allowed
to have private property
you don't educate yourself
economically, right.
And that will create the
gaps that then become
the resentment of some
voters, which use socialism
and Marxism as a revenge.
Now if we move forward
to the 20th century,
when the Soviet Union
started to try to have power
all over the world, the satellite
country where they spread
socialism through Latin America was Cuba.
Cuba was the first success
of the Soviet Union,
and since then in 1959
when Castro and Che Guevara
arrived in Havana, they tried
to replicate that model.
So we had Marxist Guerrillas,
very violent Guerrillas,
all over Latin America.
In Guatemala, Salvador,
Nicaragua, in Sandinistas,
in Peru, the Sendero
Luminoso, and the worst of all
of all of the them is FARC from Colombia,
which mutated from Marxist
Guerrilla to drug cartel, right.
So this was the model until
the Soviet Union collapsed,
when it collapsed and there
was no more money to finance
these Guerrillas, some of
the leaders that you now see
in Latin America, like
Lula da Silva from Brazil,
and Castro from Cuba,
gathered together and said,
"We need to re-formulate
stuff, this is not the way
that we're gonna get to
power, not more violence."
So they left Marx and his
violent logic, and they adapted
Antonio Gramsci.
He was the founder of the
communist party in Italy.
And what Gramsci said is, "You
know what Marx was a little
bit wrong, the way that
Marxism really perpetuates
in a society is when you
do cultural hegemony.
So this mean permeate the
culture with a new understanding
of life, with new concepts.
For example there is the
people, and there is the group
of the anti-people, and you
can call it whatever it is,
like the the oligarchs versus the people,
the white versus the indigenous.
The goal is to polarize,
when you polarize society
and you have now the dynamics
of democratic elections,
because that was the other
thing, Latin America always
had military dictators until the 80s.
In the 80s most of our
countries left the military
dictatorships and we
started having democracy,
so now you have to
seduce the voter, right.
And you have to seduce
it and vote for you.
But then also the Berlin
Wall fell, so we had union
collapses, and we all moved to
this concept that capitalism
was going to arise, a true
free market was going to
finally happen.
So in the 90s, in Latin America
you had these presidents
who promised free markets
and capitalism, but actually
what they did was a lot of
cronyism, and they privatized
a lot of companies but
they created oligopolies
and monopolies where
competition was not free.
In response to this, another
economic gap starts happening,
a lot of inequality, and the
first country where this bursts
is Venezuela, in 1998 with Hugo Chávez.
Since then until now, 15
countries in Latin America
have voted democratically for
socialism of the 21st century.
And the disaster is everywhere.
- So Chávez tried violent
revolution and then he became
a Democrat, and he
spoke to the Campesinos,
he was talking about us versus them.
Do you think, and I don't know
if there's a perfect answer
for this but,
was Chávez always a Marxist
or was it an opportunistic
Marxism.
- No actually how it
happened is, Chávez makes
a coup d'etat in 1992 that
fails, and then in 1994
Fidel Castro invites him to
Havana, Cuba, with an excuse
that they were going to inaugurate
the Simón Bolívar house,
because another thing that
these guys have done is,
they take our founding
fathers who are actually very
classical liberals. Simón
Bolívar admired the founding
fathers of the United States.
But they take these figures
and they mutate them to become
Marxist. When he invites him
in 1994, he explains to him
the whole plan of trying to
win democratic elections.
But Chávez wasn't Fidel's
first choice, he wanted Lula
from Brazil, but then when
he saw that Chávez had
more chance of winning in
Venezuela, they started investing
in him.
In the intellect, what
Cuba provides is always
the intelligence, but Cuba
has always needed resources.
So when the Soviet Union
collapsed they opened to tourism,
right, and they opened to drug dealing.
And then the oil of Venezuela
financed that strategy.
And that's when Chávez
starts becoming Marxist.
- What is the alternative
to that, because I think
a lot of these successes
in terms of actually
democratically electing socialists,
is a reaction to something
that's not great.
It's a reaction to insiders
kinda gaming the system.
I actually think we have the
same dynamic in this country,
not just AOC, but that entire
generation of Millennials,
they grew up watching Democrats
and Republicans bail out
Wall Street and they're like,
"I guess that's capitalism."
- Exactly.
- So the alternative to
capitalism, well I guess
that's socialism, but there's
some problems with that
so let's call it democratic socialism.
Is that the same dynamic in Latin America?
- It's exactly the same, we
come from feudal economies
where different oligarchies
in the big industries,
like coffee, or cement, or
beer, have had huge monopolies
and they have been getting
favors from the government
since the 19th century,
and people confuse that
with capitalism.
So they say, "Okay, it's the
time of the people, enough
with the conservative
oligarchs, that also don't want
to talk about serious
issues that are happening
in our countries, right.
Like abortion, the war
on drugs, prostitution,
trafficking of people, these
issues the conservatives
have for decades ignored
and they think that if they
just shove it down like a big
carpet, it's gonna disappear.
So the Left takes these new
brands of, "Oh if you are gay
come with us, if you worry
about the environment come
with us, if you want to
legalize marijuana so
you can smoke pot come with us."
And all these flags makes
socialism attractive
to Millennials, so you're
like stuck in two extremes
that at the end benefit from
each other, because socialists
hate free markets and because
of the lack of free markets,
these oligarchies can be in power forever.
So it's like two aspects
of the same extreme,
and that's why the libertarian
proposal and the objectivist
philosophy can do a lot to offer it.
That's why I wrote two books, like,
How To Talk To A Progressive,
and How To Talk To A Conservative,
in the sense of saying,
"Listen this is the libertarian
offer, neither the socialists,
neither the conservatives
are talking about these proposals.
- Yeah, so you went to
Venezuela, and that's not a safe
thing to do, what year was that?
- 2015.
- 2015, so things were
already falling apart.
- Oh yes.
- Tell me what you saw on the ground.
- Well in the moment that
I arrived the first facade
that I saw in the airport,
was the duty free.
They keep having all this
big brand posters like,
Chanel and Givenchy
and the models.
And when you look from afar
the duty free, you see it
like it's full, but when you
come close it's all filled
with this little shampoo
bottles that you would see
in hotels.
There are no brands, there
is nothing, it's like they
just filled it so it looks
like something is there.
I came out of the airport
and a van with no plates
and completely dark glass
started following me,
I learned that that was
the SEBIN, which is like
the KGB of Venezuela.
They followed me everywhere.
The minute we crossed Caracas,
you start seeing favelas
and they explain to me that
these favelas have multiplied
in the last two decades.
Like places where before
there were only mountains
with trees, now are full of
favelas, when you get in the --
- What is that?
- Oh, favelas is like slums.
- Okay.
- It is like slums in
the mountains, so they
have multiplied in these years.
The minute you get in the
city, you start seeing
like I guess what Rome had
to look after the barbarians
just destroyed it, you
can see that it was a huge
city, with beautiful avenues
and parks and buildings,
but everything is falling apart.
Like what you see from
Havana, there is no painting
for the buildings, or nothing.
I arrive in a hotel, one of the few hotels
that still operated in
that time, and they had
water shortages and electricity
shortages, depending
on the time.
What I also saw, I went to a
supermarket, a nationalized
supermarket and they have
military outside, so they give
you a ration card and you can
only go two times every week.
And they tell you what you
can acquire, but then when
you get there, there's
nothing, so what they do is
they cover it with dark plastic
where the meat should be,
where the cheese or the
vegetables, and they put photos
of Chávez and it's like you're sacrificing
for the revolution.
So I put my cell phone in my
belt and I started filming that
but if they catch you doing
that, that's like a felony
and you go to jail.
So I filmed that to show
the world how the scarcity
was doing.
When I did my conferences they
sent people to try to boycott
me, they send this poor
old man and I was on stage.
And I tried to start my
conference and he was like,
"You liar, you capitalist
pig, you're hired by the CIA."
Because it's always this
rhetoric, anti-Yankee rhetoric,
which doesn't make any sense
right, because these guys
always say, "Oh we're
going to put an end to
the United States."
But suddenly when everything falls apart,
the Yankees were even
under the floor, organizing
the chaos, it's so ridiculous.
So what I did is, because this
man wouldn't let me start,
I said to him, "You know
what, come to the stage,
why don't you finish telling
me everything that you need
to say, yes I am a capitalist
pig, yes I am paid by the CIA,
what else?"
And the moment that he saw
that I was filming him,
he was like, "Don't film me."
And he run out.
And I was in the National
University of Caracas,
there were like 600 students,
and also what I saw there
is a how they
condition you, not by force, but by fear.
Cause it was one of him
and it was 600 of them,
and all of them were like
this, until the moment that
I filmed the guy and he
left the room, 600 voices
like finally stood up and
they were like, "Yeah."
And I was like guys, "Never
forget that you are more
than they are."
So it reminded me of 1984 of
Animal Farm, like you see it.
It reminded me of everything
my grandparents had told me.
Like I was seeing it in my
eyes for the first time.
When I moved from Venezuela
and I went to Bogota,
I arrived in the Bogota airport
and it was like visiting
another galaxy, it's like
in Star War's when you go to
a really poor planet and
then in the next minute
you are in a very rich planet.
And when I arrived in Bogota
I started crying and I said
to people, "You have no idea
what's going on over there."
And the desperation,
conferences that I did in places
like this, would get
packed with young people,
and they were like, "No
one tells us these ideas."
Because even the opposition is socialist,
they're like vegetarian
socialist, but they're socialists
still.
So I had conferences where
people would step outside
and be like,
going on the glass like this,
and the people that were
organizing were like, "Gloria,
there are people outside
like this, and we're like
do you want to come in and
they're no, no, no it's okay
I just want to listen to her."
Never in my life I had seen
such a desperation for
the message of freedom.
And when you go to other
countries in Latin America,
that are not in that situation,
you know people don't care.
- You know there's a couple
themes there that I think
hopefully resonate with
people that are flirting
with socialism, and one is
the fear of not just speaking
but thinking something other
than what the state expects you
to think, and there's famous
examples in history where
when Stalin was in the room,
the first person to stop
clapping was gonna go to jail.
And certainly Americans, but
I think young people generally
can't even conceive of such a world where
where speech itself and
just thinking for yourself
is not only illegal, but
punishable potentially by death.
And that's very 1984ish and I
don't think people buy that,
but real stories where
it actually happens.
The other thing, and this
is very much, you mentioned
this, food is a weapon in Venezuela.
The government uses it
to keep people in line
and party loyalists get
what little food there is,
and everyone else starves.
And Maduro says, "Well maybe
you should eat your pet."
And that stuff, I mean this has
nothing to do with economics
these are basic human values
that socialist systems just
don't, they don't care, you
don't matter in a socialist
system, you never will.
- You only matter if you
are a tool to the system,
otherwise if you die it's okay.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- So we've name dropped
University Franciso Marroquín
several times, and we're
talking about Latin American
culture that is very much
down with socialism.
Explain what it is, and
this is where you learned
free market ideas, right?
- Yeah, yeah, so an engineer
from Guatemala, Manuel Ayau,
in the 70s he was thinking,
why is Guatemala poor?
We geographically are super well located,
we have an amazing weather,
we produce a lot of wealth,
and there were other places
like Taiwan and Hong Kong,
similar to Guatemala that
were starting to strive.
So in his search, as an
engineer, of logical answers
he stumbles upon Leonard Read's I, Pencil.
And he starts getting in
contact with Foundation
for Economic Education, then
he starts reading Austrian
economics, then he finds Ayn
Rand, in this whole process
and he decides all right, how
can I make these ideas really
flourish in Guatemala?
He considered making a political
party, but then he said,
"Who's gonna vote for this,
no one knows these ideas."
Then he said let's make a
newspaper, but who's gonna read it
only the people that already
know about these things,
it's gonna be like preaching to the choir.
So he decided to make a
university, and he rescued
the name of one of the
Bishops, Francisco Marroquín
who established the first
university of Guatemala,
San Carlos, which was the
state monopoly until the 1960s
and this university became Marxist.
It was the university where
all the Guerrilla would form
and stuff.
So he decided to rescue that
name, and he took the color
red, like to say I'm gonna
even take that from them.
And what I really admire
about Manuel Ayau, is that all
the different branches
that fight for liberty
are well represented in this university.
So you have the Milton
Friedman auditorium,
the Ludwig von Mises library,
the Atlas Shrugged monument,
the Bastiat corridor,
because what he wanted was,
okay yes there's differences
between all these movements,
but they all have in common
the respect for the individual.
And so the mission of this
university is to educate people,
in the ethical, economic,
and social principles,
of a free society, where
individuals are responsible
of their own lives.
So it doesn't matter what you
study, you can study medicine,
architecture, or international
affairs as I did.
You have like these mandatory
courses of economic process,
Hayek philosophy, Mises
philosophy, public choice theory,
law, and economics.
When I chose this university
I had no idea, because
in Guatemala, Francisco
Marroquín is not appreciated
as the unique jewel it is.
It's just one other university.
I chose it because it was
the only one that offered
the career that I wanted to
study, and then when I was there
I was actually quite a skeptical,
when they started shoving
free market in my face, I was
like very ironic at first.
And I was like, "Oh yeah,
you know what, I'm gonna put
a drugstore."
And my professor of economics
was like, "Why a drugstore?"
And I'm like, "Yeah that's
what I'm gonna do in life,
I'm gonna put a drugstore and
every time someone comes in
with like a sickness or a
worry, I'm gonna give them
a little paper."
And he was like, "Why a little paper?"
And I was like, "Yeah when they
open it, it's gonna be like
don't you worry the free
market cures everything."
He's like, "Gloria my God."
And I was like, "But for
you guys, it's like that."
He's like, "Oh magically,
the free market is gonna cure
the inequalities."
So I was very skeptical, it
was like okay, the free market
but why?
Which I think also was the path
of Rand, and she criticized
libertarians, which I consider
myself one, because of that,
right, she was like, "They
don't go deep enough into
the philosophy."
So I needed that explanation.
But then when you go to
the other side, and you see
what totalitarian regimes
do, you also understand that,
that's not the way.
So along the years and reading
Rand, and also I studied
in Europe, and watched that
socialist pantomime kind
of working but not, then I was
like, "Yeah the free market
is what really gives everyone
the chance of at least try."
- It's really an amazing
place, and I've been there
maybe a dozen times and
there's nothing else like it
in the world.
You have the Mises library,
and the Hayek auditorium,
and my favorite is the
massive brass statue of Atlas
holding up the globe.
And I'm like, "Wow."
You wouldn't find that in
an American university.
- No actually a lot of
American sponsors of Francisco
Marroquín, did it because
some of them foresaw,
that in the United States
the colleges were being taken
by the Left, so a project
like that would be better left
alone in some country like
Guatemala than finance it here.
- The first time I went, Muso
was still alive and it was
a fun story because, I guess
none of us had the right
papers to get through customs,
so he smuggled us through,
(laughs)
and I can admit this now,
because he's no longer with
us, so he won't get arrested.
He always got shit done,
that was his thing.
- Yeah and that's the
amazing thing because
when you move in this
world of freedom fighters
and intellectuals,
sometimes people fight a lot
for little details that
they don't agree on,
and Muso was like, "No, you know what,
this is gonna be a safe haven
where you can all coexist
and you can all learn from each other."
So I really admire that.
- And you're a big advocate
of I guess we would call it,
a big tent approach to selling our ideas,
and I think that's not only right,
but essential because
there just aren't very
many people that have read Human Action.
And if we limit ourselves to
the people that can quote,
like there might even be
people on this set that haven't
read Human Action, and I'm
looking at Matt at this moment.
(laughs)
But that's like, to translate
that into a set of values
that I think are very
human, very common sense,
like this doesn't need
to be that complicated.
One of the things that AOC
says that we obsess about
at Free the People is,
that it's more important to
be morally right than factually correct.
And you sorta laugh at that
and say, "Well you can't
actually be morally right unless
you are factually correct."
But she's really saying
is, "I'm gonna lead with
my emotions, and I'm going to
speak to people about values
that resonate with them."
And we don't do that,
we love spreadsheets,
and intellectual arguments,
and downward sloping
demand curves, and all the things that us
dorky economists do.
We could learn something
from that, and I feel like
your speeches are very
much driven by that passion
and emotion.
- Yes I believe that, like
in any battle, the battle
of ideas needs the division of labor.
So if you look at, I don't
know, Game of Thrones, right,
there are people that go with the whores,
there are others that with
their spears, others that
stay in the tower, we need
that in the battle of ideas,
we need the economists,
we need the people that
are speakers, the ones
that are psychologists,
we need everything, and
everything is valuable.
But --
- Because there are no dragons.
- Exactly, (laughs) the
communist dragons, no.
But the thing is, one of
the things I say in my book
of How To Talk To A Progressive
at the end, is this famous
quote of, if you are a
young person and you are not
socialist, you don't have
a heart, and you keep being
a socialist when you're an
adult, you don't have a brain.
Well what I actually say
in counter part to what
Ocasio-Cortez is always repeating
is, listen if you really
have a heart, if your heart
really bleeds, and you really
care about the poor,
and it really aches you,
and you're emotions are
like at burst because of it.
You put your brains on
it, you start studying,
you really commit to how
to solve poverty, you go
and you read history, you read economics.
So there's no way that your
emotions are gonna be pure
unless you put your brain on the task.
And if you're just like, no
I'm being lead by my emotions,
but I don't care about the facts.
Then your emotions are not
real, you're a hypocrite.
If you attack them on that
sense, it's very effective.
- I love it, love it.
We're gonna end it there,
but tell us how we can check
out more of your stuff.
How do we find you?
- Yes, well most of my stuff
is in Spanish, but currently
I'm doing more stuff in
English. We've done things with
the ARI, also with John Stossel,
and with FEE,
and now this, but I'm on social
media, Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, like Gloria Alvarez.
And there you can check my work,
where do I do presentations,
and all of that.
- Awesome, see you tonight.
- Thank you so much.
- Thanks for watching Kibbe on Liberty,
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