Posted on 12/03/2004 5:49:29 AM PST by OESY
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received. --David Hume, Of the Liberty of the Press, 1742
...Mr. Carter, having staked his "observer" reputation on this ridiculously lopsided game, sealed the fate of the Venezuelans when he rushed to anoint Chávez as the winner and advised Mr. Powell to do the same. This betrayal of a neighboring democracy may one day leave ugly scars on the Bush administration's legacy, on Mr. Powell's record and on the reputations of his inept underlings at the State Department....
[O]ver the course of five years, he withdrew liberties bit by bit to produce the "legal" environment that duped Mr. Carter. Having defeated recall, he is packing the supreme court by adding 12 new justices to the existing 20, ending any hope of judicial independence. He also wants to bring all police power under the control of his interior ministry.
Those cops will be needed as Chávez casts his net ever-wider to ensnare his opponents. Using the murder of a prosecutor as a pretext, arrests and police shootings of Chávez adversaries are mounting, as are police raids....
State terror using arbitrary police power is not the only weapon Chávez is wielding. There also are new laws. A pending "reform" of the penal code will make a variety of public protest criminal....
Some impressive world figures... [condemn] prosecution of nongovernmental organizations "for receiving democratic assistance is a violation of both the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Warsaw Declaration of the Community of Democracies, a document your government signed along with over 100 others four years ago."....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
"......environment that duped Mr. Carter......"
An excruciatingly benevolent characterization, IMO.
Gee, like he hasn't ever been duped before.
"Duped," my ass.
All the dictator has to do is promise massive money for the poor and no military action and Carter will step in front of tanks to keep him in power.
The pacifist left, embodied in Carter, believes deeply in the benvolence of dictators. Let 'em make mockeries of Democracy, as long as they keep the troops at bay.
The Carter types are the reason dictatorships rise.
"O come ye house of Jacob, let us walk.."
O Jimmah
ping
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