Two Conservatives Challenge the Davos Divas

Both men are lifelong academics and educators, one an economist and the other a historian. Both are leaders of conservative movements within their respective countries: Javier Milei is the president of Argentina and Kevin Roberts the president of the Heritage Foundation, America's premier conservative research and advocacy group.

Both were at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, last week speaking on behalf of national sovereignty and self-governance and against the rise of global governing elites and their business, media and nongovernmental organization allies, many of whom have a habit of gathering in august venues to solve the world's problems.

Into the breach the two men stepped, and neither was there to win a popularity contest. Milei's focus was on economics, and Roberts added cultural issues to the mix too.

"I'm here to tell you that the Western world is in danger," Milei began. "And it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty."

Milei was just getting started.

Unfortunately, in recent decades the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. Some have been motivated by well-meaning individuals who are willing to help others, and others have been motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste. We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause.

Milei went on to talk about his home country's experience with collectivism.

Thirty-five years after we adopted the model of freedom, back in 1860, we became a leading world power. And when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally.

Milei then spent a few minutes giving the Davos crowd a brief economic history tutorial. In 1800, he noted, 95 percent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty and had lived like that for centuries. That number dropped to 5 percent by 2020 thanks to capitalism and free markets.

Milei then went after capitalism's "social justice" critics.

They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic. Of course, with the money of others. So they therefore advocate for social justice.... The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn't contribute to general well-being.

Milei next took direct aim at organizations like the WEF.

Neo-Marxists have managed to co-opt the common sense of the Western world, and this they have achieved by appropriating the media, culture, universities—and also international organizations. The latter case is the most serious one probably, because these are institutions that have enormous influence on political and economic decisions of the countries that make up the multilateral organizations.

He then explained how the West was turning to a new and more insidious form of socialism.

Today, states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.

Milei closed things out with these words to entrepreneurs and business owners everywhere.

Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. You are social benefactors. You're heroes. You're the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we've ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself.

The next day, Milei's American counterpart didn't waste any time challenging the prevailing views of the Davos crowd. "The very reason that I'm here in Davos is to explain to many people in this room and who are watching—with all due respect, nothing personal—but that you are part of the problem," Kevin Roberts began.

He then explained what a conservative administration should do if it wins back the White House.

The agenda of every single member of [the] administration needs to do is compile a list of everything that's ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum and object to all of them wholesale. Anyone not prepared to do that and take away this power of the unelected bureaucrat and give it back to the American people is unprepared to be a part of the new administration.

Roberts doubled down on this theme when asked what actions a newly elected conservative president should take on his first day in office.

There needs to be pushing through Schedule F civil service reform so that the president can fire a good number of the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state.... The administrative state is the greatest threat to democracy in the United States, and we need to end it

He wasn't finished.

The second thing is he needs to really confront all of the policies surrounding so-called climate change. We love wind and solar [energy] at Heritage, we just want them to stand on their own in the free market. Because that affects human prosperity; more than a billion people in the world have been lifted out of poverty in the last 35 years because of fossil fuels.

Roberts also talked about cultural issues the global elites ignore in favor of their own.

Political elites tell the people on three or four or five issues that the reality is X when in fact the reality is Y. Take immigration: Elites tell us open borders and even illegal immigration are OK. The average person in the United States tells us that they both rob them of the American way of life. They're right.... Elites also tell us that public safety isn't a problem in big American cities. Just travel to New York or Washington or Dallas, Texas. The average person will tell you the lack of public safety damages not just the American way of life but their life.

Roberts closed things out by quoting his Davos party-crashing ally from Argentina.

"Ultimately, I think President Trump, if in fact he wins a second term, is going to be inspired by the wise words of Javier Milei, who said that he was in power not to guide sheep but awaken lions. That's what the average American—and the average free person on the planet—wants from its leaders.

The two men, Milei and Roberts, couldn't have come from more different places. But they spoke at Davos on behalf of tens of millions of citizens around the world who believe their voices—their lives—matter. That national sovereignty and self-governance matter too. And are worth defending.