When the communist presidential candidate claims, in a debate, that liberalism is “disgusting ideas from the 19th century”, the scandal is not his lie. After all, communism lives on lies, on rewriting history. The scandal is that the tirade goes unscathed. But this has an explanation: in this society, almost all journalists were “educated” in the same ideological school as him.
Portugal’s problem does not start with television debates, nor with the candidates for Belém. It starts in the classrooms. Our schools and (some) universities are ideological trenches, echo chambers where critical thinking goes to die. There is a deliberate sanitary blockade of real economic knowledge.
A student can go through the entire Portuguese compulsory education system and even reach a doctorate by reciting the Communist Manifesto (which, since we’re talking about mold, dates back to 1848!), he hears Keynes’s interventionist theories, but he’s never told who Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek or Thomas Sowell were.
This is not forgetfulness; It’s academic censorship.
If, at any time, they taught the Austrian School, students would know that Mises mathematically proved, as early as 1920, the practical impossibility of socialism. If you studied the Chicago School, you would know that it was the economic freedom defended by Milton Friedman – and not state charity – that reduced global poverty to historic lows (something that continues to happen today, contrary to what people say). If they read Sowell, they would know how to distinguish “beautiful intentions” from “catastrophic results.”
But no. Our faculties of “social and human sciences” prefer to train functionally illiterate people who think that money is born in the decrees of the Diário da República. The result? A journalistic and political elite incapable of questioning statist dogma, because they were never presented with the alternative. To them, liberalism is a caricatured “bogeyman,” not the foundation of prosperous Western civilization.
The price of this cultivated ignorance is in front of our eyes, in the data that Pordata rubs in our faces, but that they ignore or simply don’t know how to read.
After 40 years of socialist or so-called “social-democratic” “conquests” – and contempt for the market – we are a country with an outstretched hand. According to the most recent data, we have around 2 million Portuguese people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Worse! More than 10% of those who work are poor. Our “glorious” social model creates beggar workers. Without social benefits – the serum that the State injects so that the patient does not die – the poverty rate would skyrocket to more than 40%.
Portuguese socialism did not eliminate the poor, it nationalized them. It has made them dependent to secure the vote, while public school ensures they never learn how wealth is actually created.
Calling liberal ideas – the only ones that have been proven to generate wealth – “mold” is the height of hypocrisy coming from those who defend a system that literally collapsed in 1989. Until we clean the Marxist (Troskyist, Maoist… in reality all the same) mold from our schools, we will continue to be what we are today: the poorest country in Western Europe, proudly ignorant and on the way to total irrelevance.
The Antidote
3 Books that the Ministry of Education “forgot” to recommend
If you want to inoculate yourself against the demagoguery that dominates national debates, here are three books that explain the world better than any state-approved curriculum. But be careful: reading causes side effects, such as acute intolerance towards politicians who promise free lunches.
1. “Basic Economy” (Basic Economics) — Thomas Sowell
-
Why read: It is the “bible” of common sense. Sowell does not use complex graphics or “economese”; uses logic and history. It’s the perfect book to dismantle the Portuguese mentality that “you just need to make a law to solve a problem”. It teaches you to analyze incentives and unintended consequences. If all deputies read this, half of the laws in Portugal would be repealed the next day.
2. “The Road to Serfdom” (The Road to Serfdom) — F.A. Hayek
-
Why read: Written during World War II, it is the prophetic warning that fascism and communism are not opposites, but twin brothers of collectivism. Hayek explains how “well-intentioned” state planning and the obsession with “social justice” inevitably destroy individual freedom and lead to tyranny. It is the theoretical explanation for the democratic impoverishment we are experiencing.
3. “The Six Lessons” (Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow) — Ludwig von Mises
-
Why read: It is possibly the best gateway to the Austrian School. It is a transcription of lectures given in Argentina (a country also spoiled by populism), where Mises explains in a crystal clear way concepts such as capitalism, socialism, interventionism, inflation and foreign investment. It’s short, read in an afternoon, and destroys 50 years of rhetoric from the Portuguese left in one fell swoop. You just want to understand.