Touring Utopia

What do liberals really believe in? Togetherness? Fighting oppression? Despite the denials and obfuscations it really is as simple as this: More government; lots more! This is the ideology that animates and inspires the left.

A prime example are the pilgrimages being made by American leftists to see the glorious socialist revolution of Hugo Chavez firsthand.

The visit was just one stop on the group's $1,300 two-week "reality tour" of Chavez's Venezuela, organized by the San Francisco-based NGO Global Exchange. It was a clear sign that Venezuela, much like Cuba in the 1960s or Nicaragua in the 1980s, is fast becoming a destination for foreign leftists. As a diplomatic battle between Venezuela and the U.S. intensifies — with Washington banning any arms sales to Chavez and his government in turn threatening to sell fighter jets to Iran — Americans unhappy with the Bush Administration are eager to witness with their own eyes Chavez's oil-funded socialist revolution.

...Leoncio Barrios, a professor of social psychology at the Central University of Venezuela, says the country is an exotic attraction for left-leaning foreigners because it says it is adopting socialism as a model for the 21st century. Even vendors are capitalizing on the influx of political tourists. They sell Chavez paraphernalia on the streets of Caracas, ranging from hats to talking Chavez dolls. One poster even shows the leader riding a horse next to Jesus Christ. [Gasp! Capitalist activity?]

Although the ministry of tourism does not measure political tourism, it says the number of foreign tourists visiting Venezuela grew by 17 percent between 2001 and 2005, despite political strife and national strikes during that period. "There is something happening here," said Renee Kasinsky, 62, a professor of sociology in Boston. "I went to Cuba when it was 1962, two years after the revolution. And it feels like temporarily the clock has turned back to the '60s and '70s." time.com

Keeping the dream alive

Hugo Chavez is not so much an innovator as he is following a well worn pattern. He has stepped into a niche created for him by half a century of Soviet and leftist propaganda. So many American leftists view him as an avatar of hope for the socialist dream because he seems to be fulfilling the promises that the Soviets let drown.

During the cold war the Soviets engaged in full fledged propaganda war against the United States. A propaganda war that still reverberates today. For instance, those who think of the U.S. as guilty until proven innocent are victims of cold war Soviet propaganda. There are many who have become trapped in this meme.

The problem we have today is precisely this legacy of viewing America as the enemy. For instance, what made Jane Fonda actually sit on an anti-aircraft gun and praise the communist vietnamese while U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam? Was it concern for humanity? Or did she really believe in the communist cause?

Was the United States in Vietnam because of imperial capitalist aggression? Are we in Iraq for Oil?

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam--these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. Hanoi Jane

The left has a legacy which many refuse to even admit. The Soviets fully conned and co-opted so many on the left that it boggles the mind and complicates the world we live in today.

On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism." ~Washington Times July 7, 2000, (Article listing appears in archive here.)

The 12th Imam

After defeating the evil empire, we now have a new enemy bent on making humanity bow to their global hegemony. Except that there is a huge constituency who are still running on the programming of their Soviet forbears: operating on reflexive anti-americanism.

Ask some on the left and they will respond that the war on terror is a fabrication of the Bush administration. Ask President Ahmadinejad and he will tell you that they have very good reason to make nukes; and the end is near.

"Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi,” Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country." President Ahmadinejad

And thus the alliance between Chavez and Iran makes perfect sense. So too does the reflexive anti-americanism on display everyday from the left.

[H]egemonic Word count: 866

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