This article was first published in Spanish on the Argentine website PlazaDeMayo.com.

Tradition has it that Hillel was asked to summarize the entire Torah while his challenger stood on one foot. Hillel replied: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study.”

Rabbi Akiva said something similar: “Love your neighbor as yourself” was, for him, the great principle of the Torah. 

It doesn’t seem overly complicated. The other exists. That is a good place to start when talking about Javier Milei’s first thousand days. 

The President frequently uses the Bible, the Torah, and Jewish tradition to explain his understanding of freedom, economics, and even the moral order. That is his right. What is strange is that, after so much Torah, he seems to have lost track of the neighbor. Not a marginal verse. It is the central point.

Milei finds property, individual responsibility, and freedom in Jewish tradition. Anything that can comfortably sit down and talk with Mises, Hayek, or Rothbard appears immediately. It takes a bit more effort to find in his reading the poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the indebted, the obligations toward those who have less, and the limits imposed on the creditor.

You don’t need to forge a book to misrepresent it. It is enough to tear out the inconvenient pages. And perhaps that is one of the most constant mechanisms in Milei’s thinking: choosing a truthful part and presenting it as the whole.

The same thing happens with the economy. 

Inflation went down. To deny it would be to do the exact same thing he does: pick only the data that suits the argument. But an economy is not an index. It is also wages, pensions, consumption, activity, employment, closing businesses, indebted families, and people using credit cards not to buy a TV, but to make it to the end of the month.

There is an economy that is announced and another that is lived. In one, there is fiscal balance, investment, recovery, and future prosperity. In the other, people are comparing the price of pasta at the supermarket. Both can exist at the same time. The problem arises when one pretends to prove that the other does not exist.

Something even more curious happens with freedom. 

Milei shouts “Viva la libertad, carajo! (Long live freedom, damn it!)” frequently enough that no one forgets the subject. But every time someone exercises the freedom to think differently, the repertoire begins. Journalists, economists, artists, lawmakers, governors, or citizens quickly turn into communists, socialists, mandrills, bribed hacks, fiscal degenerates, or members of some caste still being cataloged.

It is a very generous freedom to think like Milei, and considerably less hospitable when one decides to think independently. And there lies something that the presidential office itself should resolve.

Milei is not the president of those who voted for him. He is the President of the Nation. Also of those who detest him. 

Accepting that position means accepting boundaries. A president cannot act like an enraged social media user because his words are no longer just his own. He represents the State.

They say it is just a matter of tone. As if presidential etiquette were merely a question of silver service. No. In a president, tone is substance. When he travels to Brazil and attacks the country’s president, the issue is not whether he finds Lula likable. He can detest him. He can block him on WhatsApp. He can never invite him to dinner. But Brazil is Argentina’s core trading partner. Diplomacy was invented, among other things, so that the interests of millions of people do not depend on the personal sympathies of two men.

The same goes for empathy. 

A president may believe an adjustment is necessary. He may argue that today’s suffering will prevent greater pain tomorrow. He might even be right. What he shouldn’t lose is the ability to notice that suffering exists. Behind an inadequate pension, a benefit, an eroded salary, or a lost job, there are people.

Hillel once again. Akiva once again. The neighbor once again, mysteriously disappearing when the Torah reaches the Treasury.

And then there is journalism.

The constant offensive against “journalists” is not simply a bad relationship with the press. It is far more useful than that. If all journalists are bribed, corrupt, and liars, then when an uncomfortable investigation comes out, there will be no need to refute it.

It is enough to disqualify the person who published it. It is an efficient system: discredit the messenger before the message arrives. And thus, one of the most important mechanisms a society has to hold power accountable is weakened.

Political categories suffer from this procedure as well.

To Milei, historical differences seem far less important than the utility of an insult. A Marxist, a European social democrat, an American Democrat, a Radical, a Peronist, or a moderate liberal can all end up, depending on the moment, in the exact same bag: communists. It makes no difference if some defend private property, the market economy, and liberal democracy while others propose abolishing capitalism. Conceptual precision becomes an unnecessary luxury.

Social democracy and the U.S. Democratic Party can thus be turned into variants of communism with an ease that would have deeply surprised Marx, Lenin, and likely the American Democrats themselves. Socialism, communism, the left, collectivism, and the caste end up functioning as interchangeable terms to designate whatever causes offense.

So the categories no longer serve to understand. They serve to classify enemies.

A thousand days later, perhaps Milei’s most interesting problem lies not only in his successes or mistakes. It lies in the method.

A real economy missing a few numbers. A real Torah missing a few pages. A real freedom—as long as the opponent doesn’t exercise it. A real political classification—provided one doesn’t know too much about politics.

You don’t always have to lie. Sometimes it is enough to amputate reality and display the chosen piece as if it were the whole body. And then shout: “Viva la libertad, carajo!“

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