It is with great sadness that I look at the events in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is taking more and more power, he now officially has the power of rule by decree (before he had to rubber stamp things through the parliament crammed with his supporters). He has abolished term limits, setting himself up to be dictator for life (I’m sure there’ll be ‘elections’ but the USSR had ‘elections’, even North Korea has ‘elections’).
He’s restricting free speech and the freedom of the press, he’s nationalising the economy.
The scenario of F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom is being played out again, before our very eyes.
The Social Democracy he once espoused has given way (as it must) to authoritarianism. A solution is ‘needed’ to the problems caused by his own policies, and he is that solution. He’s setting up a false enemy, calling George W Bush ‘Satan’ and making America into a scapegoat (I suppose at least its not an internal minority - although perhaps that’s still to come).
His rhetoric is the rhetoric of the fascist - ‘Fatherland, Socialism or Death!’,
Even through this, the left are still clinging to their new hero. They are claiming a golden age of socialism will arise in Venezuela, showing those evil Americans (who are authoritarian, Chavez clearly isn’t) what a mistake they’re making. They’re even claiming that the USSR didn’t fail because of its economy being fatally flawed and that somehow freedom will be expanded by reducing it.
I feel a great sense of pity for those who will be impoverished by the nationalist and socialist policies of Chavez, but I hold those who sit in their comfy, middle-class houses making pronouncements about the wonders of socialism, in the deepest contempt.
