Tag: Venezuela

Gunboat Anti-Diplomacy

A boat in international waters off the coast of Venezuela was blown up by the U.S. military, on President Donald Trump’s proud authorization.

It was not universally praised.

“The controversy erupted on Saturday when Vance wrote on the social platform X,” Sabina Eaton reports, quoting the vice president: “’Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,’ referencing the September 2 military strike.”

The idea that the “best use” of our armed forces is to destroy — without arrest or declaration of war or even a serious legal case set before world opinion or, for that matter, U.S. opinion — sounds all too modern but not very American.

Does it matter that they were, or merely might have been, “narco-terrorists,” as the president called the eleven people wiped out on the fast-moving boat? Or that Mr. Trump asserted their service to Venezuela’s strongman Maduro — against whom the U.S. has not declared war?

“Sen. Rand Paul all but accu s ed the vice president of celebrating war crimes,” Eli Stokols and Dasha Burns wrote yesterday at Politico. “The Kentucky Republican ripped Vance over the weekend in a social media fight that could offer a preview of future skirmishes between President Donald Trump’s heir apparent and another Republican with 2028 ambitions.”

The Kentucky senator asked, rhetorically, if the vice president had “ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?

“Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??

“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

Rand is right. The use of unlawful or unaccountable power can never advance American interests. Because one of our interests is holding power to account, to the rule of law.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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Tags drugs, U.S. Constitution, US Constitution, Venezuela, war

general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Showcialism, Schmocialism

Americans have never gotten into “socialism” like the rest of the world. This places pushers of socialistic ideas in a tricky situation. So they often defend socialism in less than honest ways.

William Neuman, formerly of the New York Times, is a current example of this. St. Martin’s has just published his Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela, and boy, do we get a story.

Hugo Chávez called himself a socialist, repeatedly, but Neuman won’t accept it. Why? Venezuela was basically ruined by Chávez and his henchmen and successors. So the former New York Times reporter provides excuses.

Which is not to say I have read his book, or will. I am entirely trusting a review by Jim Epstein, at Reason, and agreeing per a plethora of other examples with Epstien’s critique of Neuman’s denialism.

While Neuman insists that Chávez was, in effect, a SINO (Socialist In Name Only), using the s‑word just as cover — “showcialismo” — Epstein takes us back to reality. “One classic definition of socialism is government control of the means of production. Chávez nationalized banks, oil companies, telecommunications, millions of acres of farmland, supermarkets, stores, the cement industry” and on and on. Now wonder, then, that “nationalization led to deterioration, abandonment, and collapse.”

Neuman cannot blame socialism, oh no. So he lamely argues it was just “bad management.”

But that is what socialism is, and must be. Even when managed by the very best experts, those experts must fail, in the end, because they lack the expertise that counts — the know-how that is spread out among all participants in society.

Markets leverage that knowledge best.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags central planning, Hugo Chavez, socialism, Venezuela

free trade & free markets general freedom international affairs too much government

From Socialism to Fascism

Democratic socialism might seem all fun and games … right up until one is forced to choose between democracy and socialism. Those countries that choose the latter, like Venezuela, lose both prosperity and democracy, and then things get really bad.

But what happens when such a society’s dictator wises up?

“Bankrupted by Socialism, Venezuela Cedes Control of Companies,” Fabiola Zerba reports for Bloomberg. “Saddled with hundreds of failed state companies in an economy barreling over a cliff, the Venezuelan government is abandoning socialist doctrine by offloading key enterprises to private investors, offering profit in exchange for a share of revenue or products.”

If that last sounds like less than full privatization, and unnecessarily cumbersome, it is. “Dozens of chemical plants, coffee processors, grain silos and hotels confiscated over the past two decades have been transferred — but not sold — to private operators in so-called strategic alliances.…”

“Strategic alliances” sounds ominously … fascistic.

This is not gratuitous, for, as Peter Drucker explained, “Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.” And it is definitely not directly towards “free markets” that Venezuela now moves. Dictators and ruling juntas don’t like free markets. It makes them less integral to the wealth extraction process.

And wealth, in their view, needs to be extracted!

It gives meaning to their lives.

Jon Miltimore, in an article at FEE, also uses the f‑word, and quotes my friend Sheldon Richman’s definition: fascism, noun : “socialism with a capitalist veneer.”

Really moving beyond 20th century mistakes would entail reviving actual free markets. Not “so-called strategic alliances.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture Second Amendment rights too much government

Whither Away?

“All around the world, earnest fans of socialism insist it has never failed, as critics claim, since ‘true socialism has never really been tried,’” the New York Post editorial board wrote on Tuesday. But socialism has been tried. It just doesn’t turn into the utopia socialists promise.

And the State certainly does not do under socialism what Karl Marx said it would: wither away.

In Venezuela, “Bolivarian” dictator Nicolás Maduro sure isn’t withering away. In defiance of terms as well as term limits, he is not stepping down even as his country spirals downward into starvation and squalor.

His method and madness are not mysteries: he keeps power the old-fashioned way, sheer force.

The Post’s editors note his latest stay-in-office procedure: “He’s going to expand his massive private army to 4 million gunmen by the end of 2020.”

He might be able to do it, since his ruthless regime is supported not only by a well-stocked military, but also boasts an alleged 3.3 million gang-members in the “Bolivarian militia,” exempt from the gun confiscation of 2012.

It turns out (to neither your shock nor mine) that key to making socialism work is the threat of confiscation, control, murder. “Maduro is showing that the sure way to make it ‘succeed,’” says the Post, “is for the self-proclaimed socialists to have all the guns.”

By definition, socialism is the “public” ownership and control of the means of production. By necessity, socialism requires the governing class’s ownership and control of the means of destruction.

And we see that now being used to destroy any opposition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Maduro, Venezuela, socialism, collapse, illustration

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folly international affairs moral hazard Popular

For Freedom in Venezuela

Venezuela, quagmire, mud, Maduro, socialism,

Last week’s coup in Venezuela flopped, it’s reported. But “coup” isn’t quite right: a popular rebellion failed to spark defections from key military commanders, who have become the end-all and be-all of Nicolás Maduro’s reign-at-rifle-point and rule by decree.

Anyone with open eyes can see the illegitimacy of the Maduro regime. When governments shoot their own people and run over them with tanks or armored personnel carriers, there ceases to be any use in debating the fine points of political philosophies.

Facing the current impasse, opposition leader Juan Guaidó told a CBS News reporter he is “open” to U.S. military intervention, adding: “I want a free election now, no dictatorship, for kids in Venezuela not to starve to death.”

That doesn’t mean the U.S. should intervene, which I think would be a mistake for both us and, ultimately, the people of Venezuela — possibly turning a widely supported uprising into a protracted civil war.

“Before the bombers take off, let’s just answer a few quick questions,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggests. “When was the last time we successfully meddled in the political life of another country? Has it ever worked? How are those democracies we set up in Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan?”

I don’t doubt a sweeping military victory should the U.S. invade Venezuela, but it is getting out that always proves so difficult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Last week, a number of Venezuelan soldiers did indeed switch their allegiance from the despot to demonstrators — reminding me of the inspiring pacification of the initial Chinese troops sent to restore “order” in Tiananmen Square some 30 years ago. The head of Maduro’s Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) also defected.

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media and media people Popular Second Amendment rights

MSNBC Goes Caracas?

Venezuela, guns, 2nd Amendment, self defense. socialism, rights,

Expressing the surprise in some quarters that Venezuelan despot “Maduro is hanging on,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell went to reporter Kerry Sanders to make sense of the tense situation in Caracas, that nation’s capital.

“Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military,” Sanders replied, explaining: “You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that’s open to everybody. So, if the military have the guns, they have the power, and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

Oh, I certainly understand. In fact, I’ve never heard a more clear, concise and irrefutable argument for the importance of our Second Amendment right to bear arms.

And this was on MSNBC … in broad daylight!

What wasn’t reported on the progressive network, but rather by the Free Beacon, is that Venezuela “banned private gun ownership in 2012 under Maduro’s authoritarian predecessor, Hugo Chavez.”

“Under the new law,” the BBC noted at the time, “only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.”

That gun ban was described by the BBC as “the latest attempt by the government to improve security.” Indeed, by disarming the public, the security of the socialist dictatorship has obviously been greatly enhanced.

Later in the day, the Spanish-language La Noche NTN24 tweeted a video of a government armored vehicle running over protesters — or, as MSNBC might remind us: unarmed protesters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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