By Nathan Barton
Venezuela is a beautiful land and full of good people, rich in natural resources, and once one of the success stories of Latin America.
Today, it sounds like the South under Reconstruction, post-WW2 Germany or perhaps Biafra after their unsuccessful rebellion, or perhaps areas infected and afflicted by the Caliphate (the Islamic State). Consider:
Low supplies of food and medicine are leaving millions of people starving and desperate for medical treatment. A study published earlier this year reported that roughly 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in the last year due to food shortages, Fox News reported.
Of course, this wasn’t a result of a horrible war or series of wars, nor a civil war or rebellion, nor of terrorism (as it is usually defined).
That is why the proper comparison should be to the likes of Zimbabwe, 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia (including Ukraine and Belarus), China after the Great Cultural Revolution, or even Khymer Rouge Cambodia.
It wasn’t enemies of Venezuela who have created this horror: it was Venezuelans who have done it to themselves. More specifically, it is the socialist “Bolivarian” government which has done it to the people, economy, and society of this once-lovely land. Socialism (in its death spasms, perhaps), is literally starving the people and businesses and other institutions of a once-wealthy nation.
Obviously, based on the list, you can see that this is not the first time this tragedy has struck a nation or state or people. And we can be sure that it will not be the last. More nations will again fail to learn the lesson that the failure of socialism – progressivism – has taught time after time, century after century. Whether it is national socialism (fascism and its siblings), international socialism (communism and its ilk), or transnational socialism (Tranzi progressives).
They are doomed to fail for they are built on a foundation of sand: belief that government can understand and fix problems, belief that people cannot be trusted to be responsible and make their own decisions and live with the consequences. The idea that people can be forced to do the right thing (as defined, of course, by the elite: their betters). The idea that governments – whatever their nature or origin, are exempt from the morality expected of individuals and families and businesses. Morality? Yes, like not stealing, not killing, not lying, and not enslaving people – even if the slavery is only part-time and well-concealed. Of course we don’t call them by these names, just as “terrorism” isn’t officially defined to include actions by “legitimate” governments. Where “legitimate” is defined by the rulers in and of those governments.
Venezuela has it all: a veritable laundry-list of the evils of government: corruption, tyranny, nanny-state do-gooders, command economy, pandering, claims that the world (or at least the major powers) all hate and intend to invade and conquer them, a lack of knowledge of basic science and even of social “science” (like economics), propaganda and fear-mongering, and an elite that knows it all.
And so they have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
But we need to understand that when we point a finger at the people and society and economy and government of Venezuela, we have three fingers pointing back at the Fifty States. And the politicians and political and government leaders, of both old parties, and their clientele, all working to “do it the right way” as they seek to emulate (only better) the example of Soviet Russia (Lenin), Communist China (Mao), the Dritte Reich (Third Reich – Hitler), the Imperio Romana Nova (Mussolini) and so many more. Even the Pilgrims that first year in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Jacobins in Revolutionary France.
“We have learned from the mistakes of the past,” they boast. “We will do it right.”
But we just don’t learn. And neither do they: not just the Clintons and Obamas and FDRs and LBJs, but the Ikes and Tricky Dicks and Bushes and Trumps. They do not want to learn, because they are willing to doom everyone else for their own lust for power and wealth.
But there IS an alternative: liberty. Freedom of individuals who accept responsibility for their actions and treat other people like they want to be treated.
Apparently there aren’t enough of those sorts of people in Venezuela any more. Are there enough here in the Fifty States?
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.
The Price of Liberty 
Do we really need another example?
By Nathan Barton
Venezuela is a beautiful land and full of good people, rich in natural resources, and once one of the success stories of Latin America.
Today, it sounds like the South under Reconstruction, post-WW2 Germany or perhaps Biafra after their unsuccessful rebellion, or perhaps areas infected and afflicted by the Caliphate (the Islamic State). Consider:
Low supplies of food and medicine are leaving millions of people starving and desperate for medical treatment. A study published earlier this year reported that roughly 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in the last year due to food shortages, Fox News reported.
Of course, this wasn’t a result of a horrible war or series of wars, nor a civil war or rebellion, nor of terrorism (as it is usually defined).
That is why the proper comparison should be to the likes of Zimbabwe, 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia (including Ukraine and Belarus), China after the Great Cultural Revolution, or even Khymer Rouge Cambodia.
It wasn’t enemies of Venezuela who have created this horror: it was Venezuelans who have done it to themselves. More specifically, it is the socialist “Bolivarian” government which has done it to the people, economy, and society of this once-lovely land. Socialism (in its death spasms, perhaps), is literally starving the people and businesses and other institutions of a once-wealthy nation.
Obviously, based on the list, you can see that this is not the first time this tragedy has struck a nation or state or people. And we can be sure that it will not be the last. More nations will again fail to learn the lesson that the failure of socialism – progressivism – has taught time after time, century after century. Whether it is national socialism (fascism and its siblings), international socialism (communism and its ilk), or transnational socialism (Tranzi progressives).
They are doomed to fail for they are built on a foundation of sand: belief that government can understand and fix problems, belief that people cannot be trusted to be responsible and make their own decisions and live with the consequences. The idea that people can be forced to do the right thing (as defined, of course, by the elite: their betters). The idea that governments – whatever their nature or origin, are exempt from the morality expected of individuals and families and businesses. Morality? Yes, like not stealing, not killing, not lying, and not enslaving people – even if the slavery is only part-time and well-concealed. Of course we don’t call them by these names, just as “terrorism” isn’t officially defined to include actions by “legitimate” governments. Where “legitimate” is defined by the rulers in and of those governments.
Venezuela has it all: a veritable laundry-list of the evils of government: corruption, tyranny, nanny-state do-gooders, command economy, pandering, claims that the world (or at least the major powers) all hate and intend to invade and conquer them, a lack of knowledge of basic science and even of social “science” (like economics), propaganda and fear-mongering, and an elite that knows it all.
And so they have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
But we need to understand that when we point a finger at the people and society and economy and government of Venezuela, we have three fingers pointing back at the Fifty States. And the politicians and political and government leaders, of both old parties, and their clientele, all working to “do it the right way” as they seek to emulate (only better) the example of Soviet Russia (Lenin), Communist China (Mao), the Dritte Reich (Third Reich – Hitler), the Imperio Romana Nova (Mussolini) and so many more. Even the Pilgrims that first year in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Jacobins in Revolutionary France.
“We have learned from the mistakes of the past,” they boast. “We will do it right.”
But we just don’t learn. And neither do they: not just the Clintons and Obamas and FDRs and LBJs, but the Ikes and Tricky Dicks and Bushes and Trumps. They do not want to learn, because they are willing to doom everyone else for their own lust for power and wealth.
But there IS an alternative: liberty. Freedom of individuals who accept responsibility for their actions and treat other people like they want to be treated.
Apparently there aren’t enough of those sorts of people in Venezuela any more. Are there enough here in the Fifty States?
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.