To be a Liberal in Venezuela

Being a Liberal these days is rather difficult in Venezuela. I am referring to the US sense. Ah! The fate of words in an age of massive media manipulation...

Normally it should not be too difficult to be a Liberal in Venezuela. After all we have a government that nominally looks for the poor, tries to improve democracy, wants a break with a past supposedly dominated by selfish interests, looks for fairer world order. On paper it looks real good but in practice the flaws are now too obvious to ignore, except of course for those who refuse to see or hear and thus refuse to speak up. Several anti-Liberal attitudes in Venezuela cannot be ignored anymore by the objective observer: accumulation of power into the hands of a single interest; regular Human Rights violation; first attacks against freedom of expression; crushing of traditional trade unions while an "official" one is promoted; development of cheap militant nationalist issues and many more perturbing attitudes.

Yet, among certain sectors within the US the propaganda bubbling from Venezuela seems to have some effect. Michael Rowan writes an interesting short assay where he takes a cleansing look at US Liberal decay. I just want to quote one part:

The failure of the Chavez revolution for the poor or against corruption is not important to American liberals. They expect failure. They do not have a plan to govern, a reason to govern, or the capacity to govern, and they would hardly hold the same against Chavez. They have abandoned liberalism in favor of childish protests against authority, and that is what attracts them to Chavez. If they lived here, liberals would be surprised who the real authority is, but in their ignorant bliss, they miss that point as well.

I wish I could find the words to convey to my fellow Liberals in the North that they are riding the wrong horse in South America, that much better examples than Chavez should be actively supported by them (Lula for one?). But I am afraid that Rowan has a point, even if a tad unfair as he bags all Liberals together.

Meanwhile many Conservatives keep reading this blog even though they know full well where I stand. At least civility and intellectual honesty seem to get their own rewards on occasion. Perhaps more US true Liberals could join and together we might stress which are the true values of Civilization worth defending in Venezuela as we are poised to fall back decades in our democratic development.