ConservativeINC

Here’s an interesting article from Tech Central Station that attempts to explain how a monster like Hugo Chavez could gain such extraordinary powers in a country that at one point held such great promise.

What made Hugo Chavez possible? How does a country let a man whose credentials are those of a coup leader who tried to topple a legitimate government become the unbridled ruler of the nation? What kind of people applaud a president who would replace the republican institutions with a system — socialism — that was so discredited in the 20th century?

Some of the answers to these troubling questions can be found in a paper written by professor Hugo Faria and sponsored by the Institute of Superior Administration Studies and Monteavila University in Caracas — “Hugo Chavez Against the Backdrop of Venezuelan Economic and Political History.” This is not a purely academic exercise.

Latin America’s history shows that populist strongmen keep appearing with astonishing frequency. Understanding why Chavez came to power almost a decade ago and is now poised through a constitutional amendment to become president-for-life is a necessary step in trying to halt the emergence of future populist strongmen.

In the first half of the 20th century, Venezuela had a relatively free economy even though its political system was undemocratic. Far from giving rise to a typical state-run economy dependent on its natural resources, the discovery of oil in 1918 gave impetus to a free-market system that led to impressive results. Manufacturing and services, in addition to oil, expanded at rates greater than the economy as a whole.

The Central Bank was autonomous, the marginal income tax rate was 12 percent, the public sector absorbed no more than one-fifth of the nation’s production and the government ran surpluses every year. By 1960, the average Venezuela worker earned 84 cents for every dollar made by the average American worker.

But then something went wrong. It started under the dictatorial government of the 1950s and gathered pace when democracy came to Venezuela in 1958. Venezuelans went from being mostly self-relying entrepreneurs to depending on a government that began to grow — and grow. Professor Faria thinks that economic success led to a desire for political participation — i.e., democratic government, which in turn generated all sorts of pressures on a new political elite bent on pandering to the people’s instincts for dependency rather than hard work.

“The inception of democracy,” Faria says, “brought more redistributionist policies and a greater influence of rent-seeking groups that had the effect of undermining the economic freedoms.” The results were high fiscal spending, limits on foreign investment, a wave of nationalizations and the politicization of the currency and the judiciary. Between 1960 and 1997, the year before Chavez gained power, Venezuela’s real income per capita shrank by an average annual rate of 0.13 percent.

I would add another explanation to the one given by Faria for the move toward big government after the establishment of democracy in Venezuela — the political culture of the Latin American elites. They were profoundly influenced by the nationalist ideas in vogue at the time — that development was only possible by breaking away from the international centers of power and the creation of domestic markets through government protection. The policies associated with these ideas — import substitution, nationalizations, currency manipulation, price controls — were deeply ingrained in the political mind of Latin America.

By the time Chavez campaigned for an end to the “Punto Fijo” system — the name by which the four decades of democratic rule between 1958 and 1998 are known in Venezuela — the people had no faith in their republican institutions. They had no memory of the small-government days and they associated the Venezuelan economy with free-market exploitation because a few groups close to the state seemed to prosper at the expense of everyone else.

Tragically, Venezuelans inadvertently put their faith in a man who guaranteed that a system that had impoverished the country would be perpetuated. Nothing Chavez has done — handouts, nationalizations, land expropriations, price controls, taxes — is new. Under the governments of Romulo Betancourt, Raul Leoni, Rafael Caldera (twice), Carlos Andres Perez (twice), Luis Herrera and Jaime Lusinchi, those policies were also implemented in different degrees and mixes. The price of oil was not as high as it is today, so the shortcomings were less easily concealed than they are in present-day Venezuela.

The immense responsibility of previous democratic governments in Chavez’s rise is one that Latin Americans should never forget. It was not liberal democracy as such but leaders acting under its mantle that made Chavez the man who is seeking “indefinite” re-election today. What a sad story.

Source: tcsdaily.com

I do not agree with the reason behind why the country fell into such disarray. Dictatorships, even those that do enact policies I do agree with, undermine basic human freedoms that I believe are divinely bequethed to all humanity. Plus, what’s to stop the next dictator from reversing the earlier dictators policies? Nothing.

That’s why it is imperative for a country to have a constitution based on embracing this freedom while limiting the role that the national government can play in everyday life. Embracing and instilling laws that give power to individuals to make their own decisions; republicanism in the government and capitalism in economics, is the best way we have figured to keep countries free and prosperous. And, like in Venzuela, if you don’t have one you won’t have the other for long. BigT

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Obviously I was ecstatic when this show it the air a couple of years ago. The first season (The Unit - The Complete First Season) and the second season (The Unit - The Complete Second Season) were in my top five favorite shows. And, you know what, even though I think the show is going to a bad place it will remain in my top five for as long as its on because it is a well-made show with a great cast portraying the bravest men who are alive doing what they do.

What bothers me about this show is that, starting last year, it has moved leftward. One of the episodes featured the ex-president (papa bad ass on the show) from 24 aborting his mission because he didn’t want to assassinate a South American who was using the government to take control over American oil interests. It is portrayed as if this guy was doing this because he really cared about “his” people, but come on.

Jump to the season finale from last year and the Unit, the name for Delta Force, is either on the lamb, imprisoned, or working for the CIA. The government is working to take down the Unit because who knows what. Furthermore, a bit of kook-conspiracy is bandied about. Now, I might differ from you on this because I love conspiracies on television shows. One of my favorite shows was The X-Files specifically because it was one big conspiracy theory.

The specific conspiracy theory is that the same six families have controlled the United States since the beginning. Nothing really new here, I guess, there are probably more conspiracies about families controlling the world then you can count.

And I don’t think that matters. It is still a great show that has me riveted every week. What else can you ask for? I learned a long time ago that, unless the movie or show is egregious, the political leaning does not really matter to me. Now, if the end of the premiere episode leads to a very bad place, maybe like the United States being responsible for what was found, I might have something different to say. But until then, it is still definitely in my top five.

If my words don’t convince you, here’s what Jonah Goldberg, Michael Goldfarb, and a college student who ferried the lefty - Delta Force operator - creator, Eric Haney, around has to say about The Unit:

Jonah Goldberg posts two comments today in response to Tuesday’s season premiere of The Unit on CBS. I’ve been a big fan of the show for its last two seasons. It’s not great television and there is no real substance to it. But it is highly entertaining, and for two years it has been hands down the most pro-military show on prime-time television. The cast was routinely called upon to carry out assassinations of Muslim terrorists, and even staged a covert mission into Iran last season. But the season premier included what was obviously an extremely awkward moment for much of the show’s audience–myself included–when the wife of the unit’s CO remarks:

America is controlled by 6 families and always has been, sometimes they inter-marry and sometimes they hire out to especially gifted people and on rare occasion allow in someone who shows exceptional potential.

The accusation is absurd, (I assume the Clinton and Bush families would be counted among them, who are the other four?), but I didn’t take it at face value. The woman who utters this is the most loathsome character on the show, bordering on mentally unstable, and the delusional charge only reinforces her status as the show’s baddie (she made another character take the fall for her DUI last season). But one of Jonah’s readers thinks there might be more to it:

One of the speakers that we booked last year was Eric Haney, author of Inside Delta Force and the director and creator of The Unit. I spent multiple hours with Command Sergeant Major Haney (drove him from Dulles to W&L and back) and quickly found out that he has an ax to grind with conservatives and the US government. While he gave many years of honorable service to the US Army, he is unapologetically left wing, believes the Iraq War absolutely heinous, and that Islam is not the problem. You would never know his political views from the first two seasons of The Unit which is why I was painfully surprised to learn of them upon bringing him to campus. That being said, I wasn’t surprised to watch this season’s premier of The Unit. It is truly unfortunate that the only veterans Hollywood seems to embrace are those that march to their political drumbeat. The statement by Colonel Ryan’s wife, quoted in your Corner post, accurately reflects the ideology that drives Command Sergeant Major Haney, an ideology that apparently is going to be at the forefront of this season’s storylines. Command Sergeant Major Haney’s service as an American soldier is nothing short of heroic and it saddens me to see such a hero blinded by the intellectual desert that is modern liberalism.

I’m still dubious that the show would run away from its audience like that. Last season closed with the unit on the run from the U.S. government, but again, I’d always assumed this would somehow be revealed as necessary sacrifice for the greater good. But if the show really is heading in another direction, I suspect its audience will as well.

I hope Mr. Goldfarb is right. It’s a great show and needs to stay that way. BigT

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I reported yesterday in my evening Roundup that Virginia was getting a new immigration board member who believes that everyone should live under Sharia and that anyone converting out of Islam (apostasy) should be put to death. Well, no longer. He’s going to resign his post. Just thought you would want to know if someone who agreed with Osama was no longer going to be in charge of making immigration decisions. Good work from the guys at Little Green Footballs for breaking this story.

After last night’s announcement by the top three democrat presidential contenders that we won’t be getting out of Iraq by 2013 I didn’t think Hillary would go any further to the right. I was wrong. She voted for a Kyl-Lieberman bill that would allow the United States military to attack Iran in Iraq and it also labeled the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Iran’s army) as a terrorist organization. Senator Clinton must think that she has the far-left in the bag because this is not being well received by her money supply in the left-wing blogosphere.

And then she said this:

“What we think we know is that with North Korean help, both financial and technical and material, the Syrians apparently were putting together, and perhaps over some period of years, a nuclear facility, and the Israelis took it out. I strongly support that… there was evidence of a North Korea freighter coming in with supplies. There was intelligence and other kinds of verification.”

This sounds an awful lot like what she was saying about Saddam before the war in Iraq started. Maybe she is positioning herself to use Bush as the fall guy again: “He lied to me.” Maybe she really does see a threat emanating from the Middle East. It’s probably the former; whatever power needs power gets.

In The University Madhouse, a column by classicists Victor Davis Hanson, ticks off all the instances recently when colleges have or tried to prevent people from speaking or working at a university. For example, UC Davis rescinded an invitation for Larry Summers, ex-Dean of Harvard, to speak at its campus. Nary a peep about this instance of the destruction of free speech at the academy. But when a homicidal dictator wants to propagandize, come on in brother!

Here’s a story from the Washington Post via Jihad Watch that tells us who supported the terrorists in their failed plot in Germany. It seems that they got the detonators from Syria and their order from somewhere in Palestine. What did Germany ever do to either of these countries? I’m sure if you look hard enough you will find something but the lesson that we need to learn from this incident is that Jihadis don’t need a real grievance to attack us all they need is the knowledge that we are the hated infidels.

Maybe we could rely on a friend in the Middle East to help us bring these terrorists to justice. Maybe we should ask Saudi Arabia to lend us a hand. Ha! Bad idea my friends. They have not given us one ounce of justice since 9-11. Maybe they’re helping us on the intelligence side of the war but they aren’t doing anything else according to this editorial by Investor’s Business Daily:

According to the Treasury Department’s top anti-terror official, the kingdom has not prosecuted a single person named by the U.S. or the United Nations as a terror financier. Asked by ABC News how many Saudis have been charged with funding terror since 9/11, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said, “There have not been any.” Not one? “No,” he asserted.

In a rare public rebuke of our alleged war ally, Levey pointed out that the Saudi government has failed to go after even men like Yasin al-Qadi, a wealthy Saudi businessman whom both the U.S. and U.N. blacklisted as an al-Qaida financier one month after the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Qadi remains free, still a prominent figure in the kingdom. “And he remains designated to the United Nations for his material support to al-Qaida,” Levey fumed. “When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism.”

We don’t need to bring our army into all of these countries but we need to put as much pressure against them as possible. Using resources in media, in the business world, in government, and any other channel we can think of we should be attacking these countries using are vast reservoir of soft power. I thought that this was one of the job descriptions of the CIA; oh, wait, they can’t find their way to work most of the time, what was I thinking?

One of the reasons that American black victimhood chafes me so much is that their lives are better than most other’s in the world. Could they be better, sure, everyone’s can. Do they have to endure discrimination, sure, but lots of people do. But the true underpinning of my chafing, it so hurts sometimes, is that it is largely predicated on historical slavery while there are still many n slavery.

Over 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year. Half are minors and 80 percent female. Millions more are victims of labor and sexual slavery within national borders. Over 12 million people worldwide are caught in forced labor.

In some parts of the world, parents sell their children into servitude for a few dollars. In Africa boys work in fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and markets. Girls work as domestic servants, bakers, in factories and as prostitutes.

Mark Kwadwo is 6 years old and weighs about 30 pounds. He is awoken from his damp dirt floor hut at 5:00 a.m. to help paddle a canoe out into Lake Volta. For hours, as others pull in the fishing net, Mark bails water.

Deprived of schooling and basic necessities, young Mark has been sold into indentured servitude to Kwadwo Takyi for $20 a year. Takyi frequently beats Mark and the other conscripts in his labor camp.

From tcsdaily.com

I believe that focusing on historical slavery and perpetuating black victimhood because of this historical blight on history is at least partially responsible for the poor state of the black culture. Additionally, focusing on historical wrongs that have largely been righted obscures the enduring institution of slavery all over the world. Everyone should be focused on ending this evil.

Another evil in this world that had to be rid of was Saddam Hussein. He’s gone but his ghost lives on in liberal impeachment hopes. The latest pipe dream comes to us from a leaked transcript of a conversation between Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Aznar where some liberals have claimed it proves Bush didn’t care about WMDs and just wanted to get his cowboy on. The relevant translation comes from Barce Pundit but if you want the whole transcript click on the link from the previous sentence. (emphasis his)

Saddam won’t change and will keep playing games. The moment of getting rid of him has arrived. That’s it. As for me, from now on I’ll try to use the softest rhetoric I can, while we look for the resolution to be approved. If some country vetoes [the resolution] we’ll go in. Saddam is not disarming. We must catch him right now. We have shown an incredible amount of patience until now. We have two weeks. In two weeks our military will be ready. I think we’ll achieve a second resolution. In the Security Council we have three African countries [Cameroon, Angola, Guinea], the Chileans, the Mexicans. I’ll talk with all of them, also with Putin, naturally. We’ll be in Baghdad at the end of March. There’s a 15% chance that by then Saddam is dead or has flown. But these possibilities won’t exist until we have shown our resolution. The Egyptians are talking with Saddam Hussein. It seems he has hinted he’d be willing to leave if he’s allowed to take 1 billion dollars and all the information on WMDs. Ghadaffi told Berlusconi that Saddam wants to leave. Mubarak tells us that in these circumstances there are big chances that he’ll get killed.

We would like to act with the mandate of the UN. If we act militarily, we’ll do with great precision and focalizing our targets to the biggest degree possible. We’ll decimate the loyal troops and the regular army will quickly know what it’s all about. … We are developing a very strong aid package. We can win without destruction. We are working already in the post-Saddam Iraq, and I think there’s a basis for a better future. Iraq has a good bureaucracy and a relatively strong civil society. It could be organized as a federation. Meanwhile we’re doing all we can to fulfill the political needs of our friends and allies.

The Worldwide Standard puts this news in its best context:

Yet if the dominant narrative is correct–that Iraq posed no WMD threat–then why did Saddam stake his life on concealing information about the program? After all, he had to think that if he did not leave Iraq, there was every chance that he would be killed during or after the invasion. Why would it have been so important to hide evidence that merely confirmed the lack of any threat?

The only logical reason for making this a condition of his agreement to exile was that he believed the program was more advanced than it really was, or that he intended to augment it. In either case, it further bolsters the case that Saddam remained a threat to the region (at least), and that it was wise to depose him.

Saddam’s behavior before the invasion was what one should expect out of a tyrant who has always gotten his way. He had used WMDs before, had some when we invaded Iraq, and was on the path to more. Hussein just didn’t think we would actually go through with deposing his regime.

The problem with SCHIP is that it is attempting, by providing government health care to kids who are not poor, to promote the socialist philosophy that everything should be provided by the government. Liberals don’t really care about kids they just want to instill a sense of dependency in these kids and their parents. There is no reason why children who do not belong to poor families should get health care. And if you feel so strongly about helping provide for every child’s health care bills I think you should do the right thing and start up a private fund to pay for their health care bills. The government acts unconstitutionally when it acts as a charity.

Rush Limbaugh is a hero of mine. And it use to pain me when someone on the left would try to shoot him down for their purposeful misunderstanding of what he said. Recently, Rush has been calling Senator Obama Senator Ubama. The reason for the change? The main stream media has taken to calling Osama Usama probably due to the similarity between the names.

The brave people of Myanmar, let’s call it Burma for now on, are still fighting on. Kerry Howley, a blogger for Reason, had this to say about what is going on:

But while the world may be watching, I doubt most Burmese are. The country’s communications infrastructure is incredibly limited. Seven people out of 1,000 own televisions, and they’re not getting BBC. They’re watching MRTV-3: all government propaganda, all the time. It’s difficult to get a license for a satellite or an internet connection. Cell phones cost thousands of dollars; even most expats don’t carry them.

In yet another reason why the feckless UN should be disbanded Russia and China have signaled they will strike down any UN Resolution against the ruling junta in Burma. It’s a tragedy that good men and women have to die there but it is a sin that some countries won’t even acknowledge their sacrifice.

Just look at this picture from one of the monasteries in Burma:

And, on a lighter note, BigT’s Linkapalooza:
al Qaeda’s Alamo.
19,000 dead insurgents equals 1,368,000 virgins. Won’t find that in SoCal.
Bill Clinton praises… Wal Mart. I reported on this about a month ago.
The Patriot Act is necessary, what the commies did was not.
China is not really all that restrictive according to Yahoo!
China really is all that restrictive according to Yahoo!
Liberals do care about human rights… for chimps.
Poor kids in Africa don’t need computers, they need free markets. But here is the skinny on this pathetic processor.
Another instance of Mexicans doing jobs Americans won’t do.
The best reason why trade relations should be normalized with Cuber.

BigT

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