Socialist president Nicolas Maduro delivered a message to the opposition party in the National Assembly Thursday: Nothing will be allowed to stop the revolution. From Fox News:
The Venezuelan opposition needs to understand that “the revolution is going to continue,” President Nicolás Maduro said Thursday, while urging his political foes to remain part of the dialogue the two sides began earlier this week.
The revolution begun in 1999 by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, “is irreversible,” Maduro said in a speech at the presidential palace.
He said that his opponents “must learn to co-exist with the revolution” and to accept the principle of democratic governance.
The idea of Maduro lecturing anyone on “democratic governance” would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. This is a man who jails members of the opposition on trumped up charges, who sends teams of supporters out on motorcycles to intimidate opponents. He’s a man who controls, either directly or indirectly, most of the media outlets in his country and who uses that power to pump out government propaganda. He’s a man who stacked his nation’s Supreme Court in order to block newly elected members of the National Assembly from making any changes. Most recently, he’s the man who canceled a referendum to remove him from office, a referendum polls suggest would pass easily.
Maduro did all this despite the clear evidence that “the revolution” has reduced his country to a hell hole. Venezuelans wait on line to get food for hours every day and still can’t find enough to eat three meals a day. It’s a country where hospitals are out of medicine and basic supplies, where inflation is in triple-digits and the murder rate is one of the highest in the world. The revolution has been a slow-motion disaster for Venezuela, one that continues to get worse every week Maduro remains in power. Socialism, the recurring delusion that you can do more good with other people’s labor and money than they could ever do for themselves, is a hell of a drug.
And so, despite the bodies piling up around him, Maduro says the revolution must continue.
America is not Venezuela and we’re a long way from becoming Venezuela. But then, 20 years ago Venezuela was a long way from becoming what it has since “the revolution” came to town. Here in the U.S. we just saw a socialist do very well preaching a remarkably similar type of revolution to members of the Democratic primary. Bernie Sanders did so well, in fact, that Hillary Clinton was obligated to adopt several of his socialist policy initiatives. All of that to say, we may not be as many decades away from a U.S. embrace of “the revolution” as we once thought and that’s something to be very worried about.
As in Venezuela, the revolution takes hold by promising more of everything for everyone and ends with empty stomachs and desperate parents hoping to keep their families going. And while it happens some idiot unionist in a red shirt is demanding the march of progress continue over a government-controlled television network.
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