The Support of Chavez, And the Consequences

Over at the Captain’s Quarters:

Jeb Koogler, a staunch liberal at The Moderate Voice, has defended Hugo Chavez for a long time. He thought that Chavez intended to help the poor and downtrodden and made excuses for his tough tactics as a necessary interlude towards a better society. He disregarded Chavez’ authoritarian impulses as unimportant in the long run. Now Koogler says he can remain silent no more — and wonders why his colleagues on the Left haven’t made the same decision:

The sum of these recent developments, combined with previous measures to stack the courts and the legislature, have solidified Chavez’s rule to the point where there should no longer be any doubt about the direction in which the country is headed. Chavez is pushing for dictatorial-like powers and there seems to be little hope, at least in the near future, of re-establishing any semblance of democratic governance.Unfortunately, many of us on the left have been silent on this issue for far too long. While we have been quick to criticize our own administration and other foreign governments (think Vladimir Putin) for undemocratic policies, there has been a tendency to overlook the authoritarian governing styles of leftist regimes like that of Venezuela. For some reason — probably because these leaders profess the dogma of economic equality and social reform — many of us on the left have defended these liberal autocrats.

Ed responds, in part:

It’s not easy to admit error as Koogler does in this piece…

Quite so.  And I suppose that that is at least part of the reasoning behind the non reaction of the left to all of this that Koogler decries. After all, are they would have to admit that the right had this slime bag nailed all along.  However, I think both Ed and Koogler under-estimate the kind of people that Koogler has fallen in with.  People who, for example, wear T-shirts with portraits of Che, and think Fidel Castro is a good egg, and so on. In short, the Jimmy Carter/Noam Chomsky wing of the left.

Here’s the nut of it: If Koogler is really has open minded as his writings here seem to suggest, then perhaps in some point in the not so distant future he will actually address the question of where leftist policies have taken root, where the like of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, etc, didn’t end up being the result.