A Great Week For South America: The San Jose Mine Rescues And The Nobel Prize

As OS types away, the rescue operation is rounding the far turn and heading for the wire--but no one should rest easy until EVERYBODY is out.

But, what inspiration. These events show us, in the most positive manner, what we are capable of, and how we get these great things accomplished. OS hopes there will be a sober and detailed analysis of the whole story, as there has been a lot of valuable knowledge gained--in engineering, medicine, psychology, medicine, etc.

Also, within the week, the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa is most notable.

An English-language Swedish blogger weighs in on the reaction from the Swedish left, which was, shall we say, not amused. After all, if you ain't no socialist, you don't deserve you nooooo prizes, ya heah'?

People who never voiced any concerns about the politics of other Nobel Prize winners – like Wisława Szymborska, who wrote poetic celebrations of Lenin and Stalin; Günter Grass, who praised Cuba’s dictatorship; Harold Pinter, who supported Slobodan Milošević; José Saramago, who purged anti-Stalinists from the revolutionary newspaper he edited – thought that the Swedish Academy had finally crossed a line. Mario Vargas Llosa’s politics apparently should have disqualified him from any prize considerations. He is after all a classical liberal in the tradition of John Locke and Adam Smith.

O.M.G.! Just totally inexcusable!

But before you get carried away and conclude that Vargas Llosa deserves the prize: did I forget to tell you that he is not a socialist? Well, he was. He was a convinced Communist who supported the Cuban revolution. He moved on not because he was no longer able to sympathise with the poor and oppressed, but because he still did when others began to identify more with the revolutionaries than with the people in whose name they made the revolution. He saw that Castro persecuted homosexuals and imprisoned dissenters. While other socialists kept quiet and thought that the dream justified the means, Vargas Llosa began to ask himself the difficult questions about why his ideals looked more like prison camps than socialist utopias when realised.

That is when the author began to think that the centralisation of power and wealth to the government led to authoritarianism, and that trade barriers, regulations and the absence of property rights protected the powerful and made it impossible for the poor to start businesses and build a life of their own. He became a classical liberal, forever fighting against the corrupt and the authoritarian, no matter how they disguised themselves – whether as military juntas, mercantilist right-wingers or socialist dictators – and he took up the fight for the rule of law and property rights for the poor and oppressed.

It's a great article, ya'll. And thanks to the good buddy, who escaped from the clutches of academia in the nick of time, for sharing it with OS.