In years past the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meetings at Davos, Switzerland have been distinguished by participants having a similar mindset — pro-collectivism, pro-big-government and pro-new world order overriding personal liberty.
This year was an exception.
Davos 2024 got hit with both barrels last week — one from a new president of a South American country, and the second from the president of a conservative, Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Argentinian President Javier Milei set off the first blast on Wednesday immediately after WEF founder and Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced him to the gathering and congratulated him on his election.
Milei began by using the forbidden" F" word — freedom.
"The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism," he said. "We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause."
And going hand-in-hand with collectivism — socialism.
Milei observed that "We are now at the best time in the history of humanity," which he attributed to free market capitalism, and therefore questioned the growing infatuation with socialism by world leaders.
"It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it's been tried out.
"It's been a failure economically, socially, culturally, and it also murdered over 100 million human beings."
Milei also touched on taxation, and implied that it amounts to theft.
He said that social justice: "is unjust because the state is financed through tax. And taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that they voluntarily pay taxes?
"Which means that the state is financed through coercion, and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom."
It’s also worth noting that Milei traveled to Switzerland via Lufthansa — on a commercial flight — unlike people like former U.S. climate czar John Kerry. He, and many of the event’s other 2,500 delegates arrived by private chartered jet.
If Milei’s presentation was TNT, Heritage President Kevin Roberts was a thermonuclear device.
He participated on a panel called "What to expect from a possible Republican administration," where the moderator asked him about former President Trump’s promise of "retribution" if he regained office, resulting in the WEF’s purported defenses of liberal democracy being "swept under the rug."
Roberts thought it laughable that "anyone would describe Davos as ‘protecting liberal democracy'' or that anyone would use the word "dictatorship" to describe a Trump presidency.
"The thing that I want to drive home here, the very reason that I’m here at Davos, is to explain to many people in this room and who are watching, with all due respect, nothing personal, but that you’re part of the problem."
Roberts said that a conservative U.S. administration will be "governed by one principle, and that is destroying the grasp that political elites and unelected technocrats have over the average person."
He added, "I will be candid and say that the agenda that every single member of the [next] administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum and object to all of them wholesale."
Roberts also said that elites, such as WEF delegates, will tell the average person "the reality is 'X' – when in fact the reality is 'Y'," and listed a number of issues where this disconnect exists between what WEF elites claim and what is fact on issues including:
—Open borders
—Public safety in large cities
—Climate change
—China
—Gender ideology
"Ultimately, I think that if President Trump in fact wins a second term, is going to be inspired by the wise words of Javier Milei. He said that he was in power "not to guide sheep, but to awaken lions.'"
Roberts concluded, "That’s what the average American and the average free person on planet Earth wants out of leadership."
Items on the WEF’s agenda this year included:
—Replacing paper currency with global digital currency that can be traced
—The need for authorities to separate disinformation from fact
—Select officials by artificial intelligence rather than hold open elections
This was in addition to the usual talks of global warming, eliminating the private ownership of property, and the need to eliminate international borders.
Milie is right: The lions need to be awakened.
Roberts was also right: The global elites are selling us down the river.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.