By Tim Rohr
Javier Milei is a former Argentinian football (soccer) star as well as a sometimes rockstar. He is also a current candidate for the presidency of Argentina. And he's not a fringe candidate.
"Milei... rocked Argentina’s political establishment when he received the most votes in August primaries that serve as a massive poll of voter preferences ahead of the October election."
He also recently rocked the world with an interview by Tucker Carlson. The full interview is worth a listen, but for our purposes, the following is what Milei had to say about abortion and Pope Francis.
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TUCKER CARLSON: You oppose abortion. Why?
MILEI: I’ll say libertarian, "liberal," because in English the word "liberal" means something different. So, let me say, as a libertarian, we believe in the unrestricted respect for the lives of others, robed in a principal of non-aggression, and the defense of life, liberty, and property. And if we cleave to these ideas of liberty, one of the most fundamental aspect is to defend the right to life.
Philosophically speaking I am in favor of the right to life. Beyond that, there is a scientific justification to be had. It’s the fact that life begins at conception. It’s at that very instant that a new being begins to evolve, with its own unique DNA.
While it’s true that women have a right to their own bodies, the child in a woman’s womb is not her body. That child is not her body. That makes abortion a murder, enabled and aggravated by a power imbalance against a child that has no way to defend itself.
And beyond that, there is a matter of mathematics. Life is a continuum with two quantum leaps: birth and death. Any interruption of the interim is murder.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, I would think, you’re a Catholic, you said. You’re just defending, really, the Catholic life principle. The pope, the current pope is from Argentina, I would think he would support you, instead he has criticized you and you’ve called him a communist. Why the disconnect?
MILEI: Well, first because the Pope plays politics. He has a strong political influence. And he has shown a great affinity for dictators such as Castro and Maduro. He is on the side of these bloody dictatorships.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m sorry…Raul Castro is a murderer?
MILEI: Right, and Fidel Castro was also a murderer.
TUCKER CARLSON: But the pope, you believe the pope has an affinity for Raul Castro?
MILEI: Yes, that’s right. He has an affinity for murderous communists. In fact, he won’t denounce them. He’s quite lenient to them. He’s also lenient toward the Venezuelan dictatorship. He’s lenient towards the entire Left even when they are true criminals. That’s a problem.
But he also takes social justice as the central element of his vision. That’s difficult, because what is social justice, truly? It’s stealing the fruits of one person’s labor and giving it to someone else.
So it means two things.
First: it’s stealing. The problem with that is that one of the 10 commandments is thou shalt not steal. To support social justice is to support stealing. So one problem is that it violates the Ten Commandments.
The other problem is that it creates unequal treatment under the law. And I don’t think that’s fair for some people to be rewarded while others are punished, all through the power of the State that wields a monopoly on violence.
The impressive part, is that he is quiet and deliberate as well as balanced and very analytical, without getting upset. In a word he is mature. Thanks for sharing about a man who is not fearful, and that does not compromise his Catholic ethics. A rare thing in our fantasy world
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