Is This Blog On?
2/18/2014
It’s time to pay attention, liberals, because the downfall is happening in real time. No need to crack a book to learn history’s lessons of the end run of socialism. Just turn your eyes to Venezuela.
Think of not being able to buy soap, rice or toilet paper or order a cup of coffee, where even the rich are feeling poor. “In the serene private clubs of Caracas, there is no milk, and the hiss of the cappuccino machine has fallen silent. In the slums, the lights go out every few days, or the water stops running. In the grocery stores, both state-run shops and expensive delicatessens, customers barter information: I saw soap here, that store has rice today. The oil engineers have emigrated to Calgary, the soap opera stars fled to Mexico and Colombia. And in the beauty parlours of this nation obsessed with elaborate grooming, women both rich and poor have cut back to just one blow-dry or manicure each week.”
Toyota Motor Company shut down assembly. GM and Ford aren’t assembling cars either, because they can’t get parts. Inflation is at 50%. The TV stations are all now state controlled. Propaganda posters boast of socialist Venezuela, while there isn’t even toilet paper to wipe their asses. Twitter was shut down the other day when it was being used to coordinate student protests against the government. Yet, useful idiots like Sean Penn and Danny Glover supported Chavez and the social revolution which has lead to this ruin.
But the problem is, it is easier to wreck things, than to repair them...
The article continues, with video, at Is This Blog On?
Related: Instapundit: VIDEO: I Am A Ukrainian.
New Book Alleges Progressivism Chiefly Animated by Class, Cultural Snobbery
…The novels of Sinclair Lewis, the journalism of H. L. Mencken, and the literary criticism of Van Wyck Brooks heaped scorn on the vast and supposedly mindless Americans who worked hard at their jobs and joined civic groups — Mencken’s “booboisie.”
These 1920s liberals idealized the “noble aspiration” and “fine aristocratic pride” in an imaginary Europe, and considered Americans, in the words of a Lewis character, “a savorless people, gulping tasteless food,” and “listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”
This contempt for ordinary Americans mostly persisted in changing political environments. During the Great Depression, many liberals became Communists, proclaiming themselves tribunes of a virtuous oppressed proletariat that would have an enlightened rule.
For a moment, idealization of the working man, but not the middle-class striver, came into vogue. But in the postwar years, what Siegel calls “the political and cultural snobbery” of liberals returned…
Update: Tough Times for Celebrity Fans of Venezuelan Socialism (video)
…Chavez successor, Nicolas Maduro, won a narrow election in 2013. But this came after former President Hugo Chavez announced he would alter the Constitution so he could be President for life and then announced he would rule by decreewithout any input from legislators.
It was about this time in 2011 that Noam Chomsky realized there might be a problem. After defending Chavez against charges he was a “tinpot dictator” Chomsky finally criticized Chavez saying “Concentration of executive power, unless it’s very temporary and for specific circumstances, such as fighting world war two, is an assault on democracy. You can debate whether [Venezuela’s] circumstances require it: internal circumstances and the external threat of attack, that’s a legitimate debate. But my own judgment in that debate is that it does not.” In other words, Chavez was becoming a tinpot dictator…
VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER ARRESTED By Marxist Regime (video)
Video at The Right Scoop:
- BOLTON on Ukraine: Obama is weak, feckless; American influence is slipping away and we will pay the price for this
- Krauthammer on protests in Kiev: Where is Obama? The stakes could not be higher…
Update 2: Why Venezuela’s Chaos Matters to Us
…Venezuela is just another reminder of the many failures of the Obama Doctrine. Rather than confront the threats posed by a Venezuelan government providing safe haven to Hezbollah, our Secretary of State is describing the situation in the South American country as nothing more than a weakening of democratic institutions.
In the absence of a strong American foreign policy, expect our national security interests to be tested by totalitarian regimes working with our adversaries at every possible turn.
Venezuela is not alone, of course. In just a couple of weeks, the Obama Doctrine will be tested when El Salvador holds a presidential election. The outcome matters to us, because as Heritage President Jim DeMint describes in a recent column, “El Salvador may be about to turn into a gang haven that will act as a transit point for drugs plunging America’s inner cities further into crime and despair. And the whole mess can be laid at the White House’s door.”
Yet another reminder of the perils of an American foreign policy that votes “present.”
