Doctrines and Facts – Folha de S. Paulo, May 20, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The press office of the São Joaquim Chancery released a statement containing comments by Cardinal Eugênio Salles, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, regarding the Draft Reform of the Organic Law on Social Security.
On several occasions, I have taken a different position from His Eminence. At one point, when the cardinal was still Archbishop of Salvador, I had to vigorously defend the TFP against unfounded accusations he made in the press.
However, impartiality leads me to affirm my near-complete agreement with His Eminence’s assessments of the bill currently under consideration, and I do so with pleasure.
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The São Joaquim Chancery’s note recalls that, under the 1969 Social Security Law, those who enter the Social Security system only after age 60 are left without support. It emphasizes that the bill now under consideration preserves the provisions of the previous law. The Cardinal Archbishop of Rio asks that Social Security be extended to cover sexagenarians. The basis for his request is indisputable: precisely when the whole world is seeking to support the elderly, at the age when they most need social protection, it would be deplorable if Brazil continued to enforce the unjust exclusion of many of them under the current law.
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More important is the second part of the statement from the São Joaquim Chancery: “Similarly, the Cardinal Archbishop expressed concern about the legal recognition of ‘companionship.’ Articles 6, 7, 16, 17, and 60 of the bill introduce provisions into the Organic Law on Social Security that, taken together, risk recognizing another legal form, ‘companionship,’ alongside marriage as a form of family constitution.”
In my opinion, this is a step toward legalizing free love.
With the Executive’s approval, the National Congress will hopefully eliminate this serious flaw in the bill.
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Impoverishment is the usual result of demagoguery.
Many U.S. states have enacted rent control under the pretext of curbing abuses. The measure immediately benefits all tenants, the segment of the population that does not live in their own homes. However, this benefit is quickly followed by harmful effects. With rents fixed, capital flees from investments in residential buildings for income. This leads to a shortage of housing for continuously growing urban populations. Thus, a pronounced housing crisis is looming in certain metropolitan areas and in the so-called “bedroom communities” around New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, among others. This is according to Time magazine on the 16th of last month.
The whole nation ends up losing out: property owners lose a good investment, while non-owners have nowhere to live.
It is worth noting that it was precisely because it identified these harmful defects in Brazilian tenancy law that the TFP fought energetically—and with almost complete success—for the abolition of rent control in Brazil.
Some furious demagogues rose up against our position. But the fact is that—with rent control almost entirely abolished—the housing crisis has ended, giving way to such an abundance of housing that in many neighborhoods it is common to find “for sale” or “for rent” signs here and there.
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Hector Campora invited his “comrade” Oswaldo Dorticos, the head of the Cuban prison state, to attend his inauguration as president of Argentina. Other special guests of the president-elect included communist poet Pablo Neruda, General Juan José Torres, former pro-communist president of Bolivia, former Colombian dictator Rojas Pinilla, and special envoys from East Germany and North Korea.
It should be noted that the list also includes, very appropriately, a Brazilian: Dom Helder Câmara, Archbishop of Recife!
Campora implicitly indicates the direction he intends to take his government.
In his press statements, the future Argentine president has presented himself as a moderate. But while lulling the lazy and submissive “toads” to sleep, he finds ways to fill his country’s pro-communists with hope. By approaching such friends at his inauguration, he makes clear his hitherto veiled intentions in coming to power: “Tell me who you go with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
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“Tell me who you go with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” This well-known maxim could also apply to Archbishop Camara. By inviting him to sit at the same table as this troupe of communists and pro-communists, Campora pays tribute to Dom Helder, the “Red Archbishop.”
And after this, some of his defenders still consider it unfair for anticommunists to refer to Dom Helder as the Red Archbishop.
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Sweden is the mythical country for an entire family of souls who dream of a socialist economic regime combined with liberal political institutions.
As has been stated so often, the Swedish experiment would brilliantly prove the success of this ultra-democratic concept. Yet praise for Sweden’s internal situation has been disappearing from the pens and lips of its former eulogists for some time now. Not everyone knows why.
More recently, the Swedish experiment has demonstrated the precariousness of the alliance between political liberalism and economic authoritarianism. In a milder form, marked by local peculiarities, the Swedish process has followed the same path as Chile’s “revolution with freedom.” Economic dirigisme has discouraged work in the Scandinavian kingdom, leading to a decline in production. This has fueled discontent that benefits the opposition. The government finds itself forced—in order to survive—to employ anti-liberal methods.
Thus, Olof Palme’s socialist cabinet recently obtained approval from the Riksdag—the parliament—for a law authorizing the police to intercept correspondence, tap telephone calls, and conduct “raids” on the homes of foreigners.
The government’s stated reason was the need to prevent a repeat of hijackings, such as the one recently carried out on Swedish territory by Yugoslav terrorists on a commercial aircraft.
In reality, however, these powers will allow Olof Palme to more freely persecute the growing number of people who oppose the exorbitant taxes with which the socialist cabinet is increasingly oppressing the population. This is according to the American magazine The Review of the News, April 25.
