Anti-American Dictators and the Progressives who Love Them

Today’s Projo has a stupid op-ed celebrating the supposedly democratic virtues of modern Venezuelan fascist Hugo Chavez…

The U.S. Press often repeats U.S. government propaganda, rather than analyze and accurately report events in Venezuela. Democratically elected President Hugo Chavez is subjected to numerous false allegations and innuendoes. For example, a New York Times editorial concluded, amidst a failed coup attempt in April 2002, that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator."

The fact that the authors are accusing the New York Times of being part of the vast right wing conspiracy should raise a red flag right away.

Since the authors of the op-ed are obviously the sort willing to either excuse or ignore any action by a dictator so long as that dictator is anti-American, let me present just a few of the undisputed facts about how Hugo Chavez destroyed democracy in Venezuela and propose a simple test. Ask yourself what your reaction would be (and for even more fun, you can speculate about what the reaction of the typical Hugo Chavez defender would be) if President George Bush applied any of the steps below in the United States. Then ask yourself why Chavez apologists don’t think Venezuelans deserve the same freedoms that Americans do...

• Chavez called a constitutional convention which declared it was illegal for Venezuela's elected congress to meet and eventually replaced the elected congress in mid-term.
• Chavez established a “judicial emergency committee” that had the power to remove judges without consulting any other branch of government.
• Chavez has tried to use a nationwide referendum to remove the leadership of Venezuela’s labor unions (is there any more obvious case of progressives saying “screw our principles; we’ll support anyone who’s anti-American” than this one?)
• Chavez signed laws censoring the free press…

  He who offends in speech or in writing, or in any way disrespects the President of the Republic or causes another to do so, shall be punished by six to thirty months jail,

  …and requiring television and radio stations to carry up to sixty minutes of government programming.

There’s no logic to supporting Hugo Chavez except the logic of supporting dictators because of, not in spite of, the fact they are anti-American.