September 11, 1973

September 11 is a date that resounds with infamy, and not only in the way most of you think.  On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet, with the aid of the CIA, overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, imposing a brutal military dictatorship and giving Milton Friedman and his acolytes their first laboratory for the application of their truly radical free market economics. I don’t mean that capitalism is radical.  I mean that the capitalism of Friedman and his followers was and, even though today it has come to represent the common wisdom today, still is.

Chile, economics, and even September 11 are obviously off-topic for me, but I  couldn’t help but think I had to bring it up after listening on PRI this afternoon to  the story of American Mishy Lesser, who was in Chile on September 11, 1973 and, hunted by the newly installed military dictatorship, was taken in, along with her boyfriend, by a family with no particular political commitments.  They subsequently helped her get out of the country, but for their efforts were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.  Lesser’s boyfriend ended up as one of the legion of Chilean “disappeared.”  Thirty five years later, Lesser returned to Chile to find the family who gave her sanctuary so that, among other things, she could find out why they did risked so much for a stranger who brought them so much tragedy.  Go here to listen to her story.