Guatemalan Libertarian Movement From Tyranny To Liberty – JP

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Doral, Florida – The Guatemalan Libertarian Movement (yes, that is a thing!) recently requested an online conference to review the elements of immigration to America. In response, your correspondent suggested that they learn the lessons of the success of liberty and prosperity in America, so that they could work at replicating those lessons in their home country, and not have to emigrate.

We also discussed the elements of communist infiltration in their home country which would destroy their chances of achieving such liberty and prosperity. Much of this column is based not only on book learning, but also on personal lived experience, as they say.

Immigration

The first element of successful immigration to America is that it must be done through a lawful channel. Respect for the rule of law is a basic foundation for achieving liberty and prosperity. Accordingly, unlawful immigration should be avoided, because it destroys the very objectives that immigrants seek – – liberty and the prosperity that it allows us to achieve.

A second element is that immigrants should not become a charge on the public. This has been a long-standing requirement of United States law, but it was ignored by the Obama-Biden 3.0 administration. Immigrants should not come to America for the free stuff and to become dependent on the welfare state.
A final element is to immigrate with your family, or as much of it as is practicable. The family is our God-ordained welfare agency and engine room for investment in human capital.

Communist Infiltration in Latin America

In a totalitarian communist tyranny, there is no private sector. Everything is part of the public sector and the state, which is in effect owned by the party and its leaders. In both theory and practice, the party is sovereign, not the people or even expert technocrats. As Benito Mussolini said in Italian, and Fidel Castro repeated in Spanish: “Everything inside the state; nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” The acronym “KGB” in Russian stands for: “Committee for the Protection of the State,” including protecting the state from its own people. This means nationalization, intervention and state control of churches, families, schools, medical care, businesses and more.

1. Communism is an alternative religion to Judaism and Christianity. It worships a false god: Caesar and state power. Christian Socialism is an oxymoron. Marx was not an economist, but a theologian. This means that in a Communist regime, religious freedom is suppressed, worship services are suspended, and theology is twisted to serve the state. For example, starting around 1968 the KGB introduced “Liberation Theology” to the Roman Catholic clergy in Latin America. This clergy foolishly fell for the idea that Jesus had a preference for those who were materially poor, and also for those who resorted to political means to forcibly redistribute material goods. The result has been to facilitate the spread of communist governments throughout Latin America. Today even the Pope is a communist from Latin America.

2. Communist regimes work to separate children from their families. Their propagandists complain that parents should not have exclusive rights over their children. The state tries to assert its primacy over children ahead of their parents. For example, one of the tactics borrowed from the Chinese Cultural Revolution is to send students to the country-side. The reason given is to show students how farmers work and peasants live, but the real reason is to separate young people from their families and expose them to unhealthy vices.

3. Communist regimes often launch alphabetization campaigns and brag that their people have high levels of literacy. This literacy, however, is only so that they may be indoctrinated more effectively. Literacy without free speech is only another instrument for tyranny. This indoctrination with Communist ideology also results in lower academic standards.

4. Fools often say that Cuba and other Communist countries have good healthcare systems, but today the Cuban government can’t even provide such basic services as electric power, potable water and the like. They can even less provide medical facilities, pharmaceuticals, and other medical care and supplies. The result is lower standards of medical care for ordinary people, but elite care for party members and paying foreigners.

5. Communists take over not only the commanding heights of business, but also everything else, except for a few restaurants serving foreign tourists. During the Cold War, Milton Friedman joked that if the Soviet Union were to take over the Sahara Desert, then in 50 years there would be a shortage of sand. Well, in 1967 Cuba produced an annual sugar harvest of 7,000,000 tons, but in 2024 produced only 300,000 tons. Not good for a sugar island in the Caribbean!

Communists aim at destroying the self-confidence of a society to even defend itself. A Communist revolution represents not only a violent attack on society, but also an attack on the underlying structure of society.

A key text in the Communist playbook is Herbert Marcuse’s essay on “Repressive Tolerance” in 1965. This essay argues for free speech for me, but not for thee. Tolerance for Communist revolutionaries, but not for Christian bourgeois capitalists.

Foundations of Liberty

The debate over liberty goes back at least to ancient Rome. Some say that all men at all times want to be free, but others say that men simply want a tolerable master.

The source of liberty lies in Judeo-Christian civilization’s divided loyalty between Caesar and God. This divided loyalty requires that individuals own a private space to worship God, free from government.
Government is not a force for good, but a necessary evil. As James Madison observed in Federalist No. 10: “if men were angels, no government would be needed.”

The rule of law is the foundation of liberty, but respect for the law requires fear of having to render accounts to a higher authority. The law comes from God, but comes at Mount Sinai through Moses and the people of Israel. If you cannot get along with them, then you cannot get along with the law.

Armed citizens are essential to preserve liberty. When people fear their government, then you have tyranny; but when the government fears their people, then you have an opportunity for liberty.
One of the first steps taken by Communist revolutionaries in Cuba and Venezuela, for example, was to disarm the citizenry. Communism is a system of government that you can vote your way in, but you have to shoot your way out.

In Latin America as elsewhere, the long-term impact of Communist regimes is serfdom and poverty. A media critic at Miami-Dade College has expressed his desire that Cuba were a common and ordinary country, not subject to tyranny and misery. He forgets, however, that what is common and ordinary throughout history is tyranny and misery. America is exceptional because it is an oasis of liberty and prosperity.

Those who seek to “fundamentally transform America” are looking to take away our exceptionalism and impose a regime of tyranny and misery.

Guatemala

The members of the Guatemala Libertarian Movement are affiliated with Universidad Francisco Marroquin, a local institution that promotes libertarian principles. They complained that, during the presidential election of 2023, there was interferences in the form of funding for the leftist candidate from the United States Agency for International Development. This constitutes another example of how regime change in America, the leader of the free world, in a libertarian direction, supports the cause of liberty around the world.

Now it is up to them to make Guatemala great finally.