In a YouTube video posted by The LIBRE Initiative on Monday, Executive Director Daniel Garza reminisces about his early life as a first-generation American in a family of Mexican immigrant farmers and entrepreneurs:
“My parents were immigrants from Mexico with nothing but a fourth-grade education. We were so poor. My siblings and I would often miss school to work the fields. Our home was the size of a tool shed. It had no running water. What we would do is warm buckets of water on the stove, so that when my parents returned from working the fields, they would bathe with small cups. My father never took welfare, because he didn’t want to depend on anyone or lose his dignity.”
Garza’s story is truly one of achieving the fabled American Dream, and he is adamant that the path to success is through economic liberty. So is his father:
“You can make it with just three things: God, good credit, and freedom. Liberty to work. And that’s what the United States is.”
Garza Senior seems to believe that America is a place that grants everyone the freedom to work. He must be confusing the real America with President Roosevelt’s dream of America, where the ability to work is indeed a right and not a privilege.
Garza Junior goes on:
“My family and I have succeeded by following the path to freedom. But that path is on the verge of vanishing. What we’re starting to see here in American now is the growth in the size and the scope of government that is now starting to look like the governments we left behind. I’m just torn apart when I see folks who are caught in this dependency that government offers. And not only that, they’ve condemned their children to a life of mediocrity and subsistence.”
Garza believes — in fact, he knows — that “advancing economic freedom is the best way to improve human well-being, especially for those at the bottom.”
While Garza’s message sounds idyllic, it’s nothing but bromides. Of course economic liberty is a cherished principle of Western civilization. But so is social equality. And severe advancements in the economic liberty may lead to degradation of the social equality. The past few decades of increasing deregulation is proof of that; the wealth and income disparity gaps continue widening by the day.
All things being equal, the government would have no place regulating the markets. But things are not equal in America. So unfettered capitalism, to borrow a maxim, is like a lamb and a wolf arguing over what they’ll have for dinner.
The poor and the rich are not given the same starting line, like a reverse staggered start in track, where the wealthy begin in front and are given the inside line. The rich and the poor are given different sized ladders, or they’re given the same-sized ladder but the rich are born onto a pedestal. (You get the picture.)
There must be consumer protections against Wall Street and big business, there must be environmental protections against harmful industry practices, and there must be programs to spur the economic growth of those born much less fortunate than others.
Race, class and opportunity are conjoined at the hip in America, so to favor less regulation and more economic freedom is to deny a helping hand to groups of people victimized by centuries of socioeconomic policies that favored a small elite, the same small elite happily gorging itself today.
About Being Latino Contributors
Equal opportunity shouldn’t be confused with equal outcome. Garza is advocating for economic freedom – freedom to succeed and of course the freedom to fail. Everyone currently has the opportunity to succeed, but not all will. Life is not “fair” and by over-regulating and over-taxing society’s producers (businessmen, etc) we are only hurting the economy overall.
FDR said that Capitalism is unequally divided riches while socialism is equally divided poverty. What we have now is not unfettered capitalism – we have crony capitalism. We don’t currently have truly free markets – if we did, our nation would be more prosperous. Instead we are moving toward a path of expanded government and more equally divided poverty.
People did not flee places like Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, etc to come to a country that looks more and more like it. They came to America BECAUSE of economic freedom – not to expand government and restrict freedoms.
Interesante post. Gracias por compartir.
Another somewhat veiled attempt by BL arguing for bigger government and more central planning in the lives of United States citizens.
Progressives are for bigger government and conservatives are for smaller government. You’re not saying anything no one knows or denies.
Yeah, bigger all seeing all involved government that encroaches on personal liberty and forces the individual to conform to a collective mindset. No thanks. The government that governs the best, governs the least. Now that’s what I would call a “progressive” idea.
Yeah, social equality is a foundation of Western Civilization – it’s really classical liberalism which is very different from the “liberalism” (leftism) of Obama or the socialist tendencies of some of the BL crew. I would think that you guys would be celebrating the hard work and success of this Mexican family, but no. They must be villainzed somehow because they don’t fall under the enetitlement dependency persecution complex you are all so fond of. There needs to be a balance between social equality and economic freedom, but what you guys usually call for is massive cradle to grave entitlements, quotas, wealth distribution, higher taxes, giving already scarce resources to illegal encroachers and expecting Legal Americans to pay for it…But the scariest is more government involvement in our everyday lives. See what’s happening in Greece now. Give this article (you smarty pants know it all Lateeeno kids) to any former citizen of the Soviet Union or former Iron Curtain nation like Poland and they will slap you across your smirky faces and laugh right at you because you have no idea what you speak about. My Vietnamese friends who escaped (we children of parents that escaped real tyranny stick together) think BL is a laugh riot!
Animal Farm is a book little Latino children should be given to read and maybe some big Latino kids too, that is if the public school systems hasn’t made them completely illiterate by the time they “graduate”. 1984 too.
Oh and the book “Road to Serfdom” and Witness. If a young Latino reads these books he or she will never end up writing articles like this.
MARIO SHUT THE FUCK UP
Equal opportunity shouldn’t be confused with equal outcome. Garza is advocating for economic freedom – freedom to succeed and of course the freedom to fail. Everyone currently has the opportunity to succeed, but not all will. Life is not “fair” and by over-regulating and over-taxing society’s producers (businessmen, etc) we are only hurting the economy overall.
FDR said that Capitalism is unequally divided riches while socialism is equally divided poverty. What we have now is not unfettered capitalism – we have crony capitalism. We don’t currently have truly free markets – if we did, our nation would be more prosperous. Instead we are moving toward a path of expanded government and more equally divided poverty.
People did not flee places like Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, etc to come to a country that looks more and more like it. They came to America BECAUSE of economic freedom – not to expand government and restrict freedoms.
The Garzas made it, and God bless them. They know what America is all about. The freedom, the liberty given to individuals to take control of their lives and to push ahead in the pursuit of happiness. That is what America is all about. You expect the government to make everything and everybody equal, and when you achieve that, let me know. Equality before the law is what the Founders promised; but everybody being equal in status is something that can never be accomplished because people are fickle. There are doers and there are non-doers. I think your picture of society is rather warped and truly naive and oriented to an ideology that doesn’t accept social reality, but a utopian ideal that will never come to fruition.
Did you just copy and paste the comment you left on my wall yesterday? Talk about intellectual laziness. I wish I could get away with writing articles like that.
Mario: There will always be folks who prefer to have the government take control of their lives rather than they themselves take control of their lives. The Garzas are champions of individual responsibility, of liberty. They did it themselves and are now reaching out through the LIBRE Initiative to get those Hispanics out of their abyss. Would love to meet them one day and say, Gracias.
Yes, I did, you know that. Not intellectual laziness. Just saving time. And, it’s not an article what I wrote above, it’s call a post.
Taking control of your life and favoring big government are not mutually exclusive concepts. We. Are. Our government.
I am a true Federalist.
If you say so.