So was Al Gore; we're just holding Venezuela to the US standard. What's that Dubya says about the soft bigotry of low expectations?
Please spare us the neo-Neville Chamberlain drivel about it being none of our business. Chamberlain isn't the poster boy for national policies of cowardice for nothing, you know. The last time people with this head-in-the-sand ostrichism were given any authority in the GOP, was in about 1936 when, having degenerated into a party of craven little bean counters in green eyeshades and sleeve garters, counting their market losses and weeping crocodile tears over the Wagner Act, we had fewer senators than at any time since Lincoln's election.
To refresh your recollection, it was Woodrow Wilson who used to experience uncontrollable ecstasies over democracy for its own sake and he was no conservative any more than the paleophonies are.
U.S. keeping eye on Chavez moves - Senators told of trend toward authoritarianism in Venezuela *** WASHINGTON -- Directing unusually blunt language at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the top U.S. military officer in Latin America said Thursday he sees a trend toward authoritarianism in the troubled country. Gen. James. T. Hill, head of the U.S. Southern Command, gave his assessment of the situation in Venezuela during an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ***
Hugo Chávez and the Limits of Democracy*** The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather than strengthening ties with the United States, he befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation and globalization of the 1990's.
Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its decline into a failed state. Yet once President Chávez gained control over the government, his rule became exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic. Under Mr. Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy, and that even longstanding democracies can unravel overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself. Accountability and institutional restraints and balances are needed. The international community became adept at monitoring elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's practices.
The often stealthy transgressions of Mr. Chávez have unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only trend of the 1990's still visible in Venezuela: civil society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies larger than those that forced the early resignations of other democratically presidents around the world. This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an inchoate network of people from all social classes and walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a president who has made their country unlivable. Two out of three Venezuelans living under the poverty line oppose President Chávez, according to a Venezuelan survey released in January.***