There were no protest in Venezuela, or abroad, as that country’s National Assembly handed 18 months of near unlimited power to Communist strongman Hugo Chavez. Perhaps it seems strange to us, where a few thousand protesters can be found to demonstrate against any policy, on in given day, that in Venezuela there was no out pouring of anger by the opposition at Chavez’s transformation from leftist leader to Communist dictator. Perhaps we Americans believe that we’d take to the streets if our Constitutional rights were threatened, but if a true Communist dictatorship arose on our shores, we’d be foolish to be draw its attention to us.
Especially if they’ve already built re-education camps. Fox News reported on private property owners fears that about their future with the new government of one in power, and there was this disturbing passage in the article:
During a live broadcast from a cattle ranch on the outskirts of San Carlos, a small city along the sun-baked plains of central Venezuela, Chavez inaugurated a series of “socialist formation centers,” where he said Venezuelans will study socialist ideals while undergoing job training.
“As Christ said, socialism extols love between us,” said Chavez, urging Venezuelans of all social classes and political leanings to embrace “the socialism that we are going to create with all our efforts, our minds, our hands and our hearts.”
As workers on a 740-acre farm milked cows and showed Chavez how they produce cheese, the president asked them about their daily lives, warned against the evils of capitalism and called on them to forge socialism through the creation of a “new man.”
Emphasis mine. No doubt opposition leaders will be among the first to “benefit” from the “job training” at Chavez’s concentration camps. The use, or in this case misuse, of religious figures to prop up his ideology should concern religious leaders who don’t fall into line in respect to what Chavez, who’ll have his own state religion, believes is the “truth.” The forging of a “new man” hints at Chavez’s admiration of another socialist that even the far left in this country dare not speak of fondly, in public anyway.
The left in this country, so supportive of Chavez for years, has been strangely silent in the wake of this momentous moment in history, when the socialism they’ve yearned for finally comes to fruition in Latin America. If not protests at the dictatorship, one would expect celebrations form those who have had a love affair with the Bloivarian revolution. But no one on the left is even mentioning Chavez’s power grab.
Daily Kos has nary a mention of yesterdays events. HuffPo is too busy attacking Rudy Guiliani to notice the dangerous situation developing in Latin America. Few are talking about the dangerous provocations Chavez was involved in prior to becoming absolute ruler. War in Latin America seems inevitable, especially when a popular leader makes “socialism or death” his platform. The question for Americans is this: Will it spill over here?
Publis Pundit blogs on this better then I could have. Western Hemisphere Policy Watch has good reads on the situation here and here.