On Illegitimate Presidents

Why did Hugo Chavez receive such a warm reception at the recent UN reform meeting? For what he said obviously: Capitalism is the cause of all the evils in the world, the US is a terrorist state, we need a ‘new international economic order’ patterned after that of Venezuela… etc., etc. It’s the same propaganda peddled in our universities by liberal professors and increasingly by the democratic party itself.

Liberals like Jesse Jackson (let's not forget Jimmy Carter either) actually go to Venezuela to affirm and praise this vision of socialist paradise.

Jackson is on a three-day visit to Venezuela, during which he will meet with local religious leaders, Afro-Venezuelan groups, the president of the oil giant PDVSA, President Hugo Chavez, and visit some poor-neighborhoods to see Venezuela's social programs at work.

"Your focus on foreign debt, debt relief, and free and fair trade to overcome years of structural disorder, unnecessary military spending, land reform… these are some of the great themes of our time. They can change our world condition," said Jackson.

...Jackson said that his trip had been planned several months ago and that its purpose was to address the concern of stability and commitment to democracy in the Western Hemisphere. Jackson emphasized that the commitment to democracy should include not just the right to vote, but also the right to access to health care, education, and decent wages. [Emphasis mine]

"It is not enough to have the right to vote. It is also important to have the right to education, to healthcare and all social services... Democracy cannot survive if some have too much and the majority too little; that's why people need access to land. Countries' resources should be used to empower the people," Jackson added. venezualanalysis.com

The real argument, the real division in the world and in America is not about Iraq. Iraq is just a visible manifestation of the real argument. The argument is between those who favor a top-down collectivist approach versus those who favor a bottom-up classically liberal approach. It is an argument that has been going on in a defined way for this last century or so. And make no mistake, it has been a struggle of slavery versus freedom, of liberation versus enslavement.

Time after time the outright collectivist approach is shown to be bankrupt in the fulfillment of its promises yet there are still multitudes of fervent believers. Mr. Jackson's friend Hugo Chavez explained the collectivist viewpoint at the UN, how "countries resources should be used to empower the people".

Not too long ago the President of the United States went to an Organization of American States' meeting to propose Latin America and the Caribbean to increase market-oriented policies, open market policies-that is neoliberalism- when it is precisely the fundamental cause of the great evils and the great tragedies currently suffered by our people. : The neoliberal capitalism, the Washington Consensus. All this has generated is a high degree of misery, inequality and infinite tragedy for all the peoples on his continent. venezuelanalysis.com

Liberals endorse this model of government when they claim that Katrina is an "Accountability moment." They are using this worldview when they claim that U.S. soldiers died for nothing, or died for lies, when they insist that Republicans and conservatives are cold, heartless, and cruel for wanting to scale back their socialist pet projects (unfortunately the scaling back never happens). How is it that the left, more often than not, finds itself echoing the slander of dictators and strongmen?

Hurricane Katrina has been a painful example of the cost of ignoring such realities. The warming of the oceans is the fundamental factor behind the demolishing increase in the strength of the hurricanes we have witnessed in the last years. Let this occasion be an outlet to send our deepest condolences to the people of the United States. Their people are brothers and sisters of all of us in the Americas and the rest of the world.

It is unpractical and unethical to sacrifice the human race by appealing in an insane manner the validity of a socioeconomic model that has a galloping destructive capacity. It would be suicidal to spread it and impose it as an infallible remedy for the evils which are caused precisely by them.

...Now more than ever- we were saying- we need to retake ideas that were left on the road such as the proposal approved at this Assembly in 1974 regarding a New Economic International Order. Article 2 of that text confirms the right of states to nationalizing the property and natural resources that belonged to foreign investors. It also proposed to create cartels of raw material producers. In the Resolution 3021, May, 1974, the Assembly expressed its will to work with utmost urgency in the creation of a New Economic International Order based on- listen carefully, please- "the equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all states regardless of their economic and social systems, correcting the inequalities and repairing the injustices among developed and developing countries, thus assuring present and future generations, peace, justice and a social and economic development that grows at a sustainable rate."

If we truly want to raise the amount of peace and prosperity in the rest of the world we must admit that only capitalism can do it. The policies of the left only lead further into feudal economic slavery. The left and the democratic party have decided that it must be more like Hugo Chavez and less like JFK. Witness John F. Kerry replacing Katrina with Iraq. Er, I mean replacing Iraq with Katrina, (it even has me confused) and echoing the hollow communist propaganda of Hugo Chavez.

''Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America," Kerry declared. ''For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. . . . Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections." boston.com

This is a picture the left is intent on painting: America as a failure, America as a third world country. The entire "Katrina Disaster" is one which is a disaster of perception more than one of fact. That's why Dan Rather, who would rather fabricate the news rather than report it, bemoans the new era of journalism that actually worries about reporting erroneous facts about conservatives! Why in the good old days you could slander conservatives all day long and no one would question it!

America, it seems, has been oppressed by 'market oriented policies', and buffeted by 'neo-liberalism'. Don't you know that capitalism is inherently racist and unfair? What is Kerry's, Jackson's, and Hugo's solution? Massive government spending programs. In the end, total government control of every conceivable aspect of your life all in the name of helping the children, making everything fair, empowering people (not by empowering them per se but by empowering government of course), and inventing 'rights' to expropriate the services and products of your neighbors.

Kerry's calls for universal healthcare, especially for children, echoed many other speeches he has given this year while trying to keep his place on the national stage after losing to Bush. But those speeches were in the same vein as many of his campaign addresses -- somber in manner, more heavy than pithy in their criticisms. boston.com

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