“Machiavelli is dead.”
President of Argentina, Javier Milei, addressed the global elite and opened with the sentence that no modern leader is supposed to say.
Delivering this line at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos was not simple rhetoric. It was a declaration of war on the way politics has been practiced for a long time. Power without virtue. Outcomes without accountability. Efficiency without morality. Milei didn’t just challenge policies. He challenged the worldview behind them.
BREAKING 🚨 Argentina President Milei stuns the room saying America is actually SAVING the world from leftism and wokeism
— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) January 21, 2026
"The rebirth of the ideas of LIBERTY. The Americas will be the beacon of LIGHT to illuminate the west”
HE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
pic.twitter.com/dCdxZRGHp9
Read the full transcript of Milei's speech here.
For years, the West has been caged into believing a false choice. We are told that if we want things to work, we have to loosen our grip on truth. If we want stability, we must sacrifice principle. Justice is nice for sermons and slogans, but real governing requires compromise at the core. Milei called that lie exactly what it is.
Put bluntly, when public policies are designed, it is unacceptable from the standpoint of ethics and morality to sacrifice justice on the altar of efficiency. This commitment to values not only stands above economic efficiency, but even stands far above political utilitarianism.
This was not an academic lecture from a detached philosopher. This was a man speaking as the leader of a nation that tried every flavor of socialism sold to the modern world. The compassionate version. The technocratic version. The populist version. And the end result was always the same. Inflation that crushed families, dependency that hollowed out dignity, and a state that promised everything and delivered nothing.
So when Milei pointed to Venezuela, he was not exaggerating. An eighty percent collapse in GDP is not a talking point. A narco-dictatorship exporting instability is not theoretical. Socialism doesn’t just fail on paper. It destroys societies in real time.
SEE ALSO: The 2026 World Economic Forum Proved That Trump Flipped the Script on 'The Great Reset'
What makes Milei’s address different from the usual pro-market speech is that he refused to defend capitalism merely because it produces more stuff. That argument is already settled. Even the left has quietly conceded that markets outperform central planning.
Their new attack is moral. Capitalism works, they say, but it isn’t "fair".
Milei didn't shy away from that nonsense.
He rooted free enterprise in something deeper than productivity. Natural law. Life. Liberty. Property. Not as abstract ideals, but as moral realities tied to human nature itself. A man is born free. He has the right to his life. He has the right to pursue meaning and provision. And yes, he has the right to the fruit of his labor. Taking that right away doesn't create justice. It creates state-approved theft.
This is where the modern state loses its footing. Once the government claims the authority to redistribute effort by force, it does not elevate society. It corrodes it. Creativity dries up. Responsibility disappears. Coordination breaks down. Poverty spreads. Not because people are evil, but because incentives matter.
Milei dismantled one of the most destructive academic fantasies of the last century: The idea that production and distribution can be separated. That you can centrally decide outcomes without centrally crushing initiative. History has already rendered its verdict. That illusion has already cost the world tens of millions of lives and untold suffering.
Yet, even in the wake of such abject failure, that fantasy world somehow claims to be a higher standard of morality. However, law that violates natural law may be legal, but it is not legitimate. When governments abandon the non-aggression principle, when they normalize coercion as compassion, they are no longer protecting society. They are consuming it.
This is why his remarks on regulation landed so hard for me. When success is achieved through voluntary exchange and innovation, intervention is not justice. It is punishment. Regulation does not tame greed. It strangles growth. It kills the very increasing returns that lift entire populations out of poverty.
What unsettles the global elite is not Milei’s economics. It is his refusal to separate ethics from outcomes. He rejects the idea that something can “work” while being unjust. If a policy violates moral law, it is broken, no matter how efficient it looks on a chart. This rejection cuts directly against a political class trained to believe the ends justify the means.
And then I listened to him say something that not only shifted the tone, but restored a bit of optimism that maybe the world hasn't gone as far off the deep end as I had feared.
However, 2026 is the year in which I bring you good news. The world has begun to awaken.
The best proof of this is what is happening in the Americas with the rebirth of the ideas of liberty.
Therefore, the Americas will be the beacon of light that will once again illuminate the entire West, thereby repaying the civilizational debt with expressions of gratitude towards the foundations in Greek philosophy, Roman law and Judeo-Christian values.
We have a better future ahead, but that better future exists only if we return to the roots of the West, which means returning to the ideas of liberty.
May God bless the West. May the forces of heaven be with us, and long live freedom, damn it.
Across the Americas, we the people are tired of managed decline. We're tired of moral confusion dressed up as sophistication. Tired of being told that surrender is compassion and dependence is dignity.
The rebirth of the ideas of liberty is not academic. It is spiritual. It is moral. And it is happening whether the gatekeepers approve or not.
Machiavelli is dead. It's our duty to keep him buried.
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