Highlights from Mario Vargas Llosa's Freedom Dinner Keynote Address

Highlights from Mario Vargas Llosa's Freedom Dinner Keynote Address at the Atlas Network's Freedom Dinner in 2011.

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Music

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• Mario Vargan Llosa
• Atlas Network
• Freedom Dinner

[hrothrekr23]

(cont'd from below) But democratic capitalism works much better when liberty and humanity work together, and not at odds, as Llosa points out. The challenge for proponents of democratic capitalism then, is to correct the pervasive ethical error of the Objectivists, the worship of greed, to create a new Neo-classical Liberalism for the 21st Century, balancing the concerns of liberty and humanity, claiming the center and forging a new consensus.

[hrothrekr23]

(cont'd from below) In the 20th C, some philosophers on the right, like Rand, have turned greed into a virtue and demonized altruism. They have forgotten the classical Aristotelian concept of virtue: moderation, a healthy balance of these opposing qualities. That is the concept of virtue that informed Classical Liberalism, but has been usurped. Is it any wonder then that some capitalists, raised on immoderate 20th C libertarian thought, have taken greed to criminal excess? (cont'd above)

[hrothrekr23]

(...cont from below) Llosa is right that proponents of capitalism need to reconsider how we got to this place, how capitalism is stumbling so soon after the collapse of communism.

At 21stCentrist. com, I discuss this fundamental problem. Long story short, we have ripped the Declaration of Independence, and indeed all of 18th C - 19th C Classical Liberalism, in half, into a right and a left, into ideologies that concern them selves with liberty or humanity respectively. (cont above...)

[hrothrekr23]

Thanks for posting this and the speech transcript. I'm sorry to have missed the dinner, but glad to catch it here. Llosa's important message is a brave one to deliver to proponents of capitalism: that capitalism, which historically fostered human rights and social progress, has gone astray, forgotten the importance of ethics and public spirit, and that leading capitalists have given them selves over to excessive, sometimes criminal greed which threatens to shame and destroy capitalism itself.

[humanhiveanomaly]

@7:25 Political democracy and economic liberty are fundamentally mutually exclusive. Where these social philosophies become incompatible is embedded within the concept of the body politic. A social structure, a state, endowed with legitimacy to enact coercion on its members, intervening in social activities that would otherwise be voluntary is incompatible with liberty. Making the distinction of "economic liberty" I feel highlights the speakers confusion of liberty.