Chavez to socialize Venezuela

Individualist

I find your comments interesting in a purely theoretical sense. In other words you don’t seem to be commenting on Venezuela’s situation as it stands now. Venezuela is not a social dictatorship but rather a social democracy. (i.e. clean elections) Venezuela is reacting to extreme pressures from outside interests. Any political system can deteriorate into a dictatorship. We just have to look south of the border to observe the erosion of democracy into near dictatorship.

I find many people have knee jerk reactions to words like socialism, capitalism, right wing, left wing where certain attitudes belong to one and not the other. (Not unlike Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, etc.) Balance is what is required in my view. The pendulum can only swing so far before it changes direction or breaks.

Venezuelans’ voted for the only person/party that actually seems to factor them into the equation. I doubt if they care what it’s called as long as they see results. (Better health care, education, economic opportunity) Maybe Chavez will try his hand at dictatorship, but at present there is no evidence for that. (He is one long winded dude though.)

As far as the two term limit goes; who cares. I suppose it has some merit but I’ve never been an adherent to it and I hope we don’t go that route in Canada. It's certainly not going to stop a would-be dictator.

Mike
Winnipeg

The man is no idiot and obviously thought things through. Luckily he is for the betterment of the average. No one is to become privilidged while someone is ignored and made to suffer. The communal councils allows small enough groups to insure no one is forgotten. The representation of 200 to 400 families will allow this. Hopefully none of these communal councils will demand more once the goal is acchieved. Human greed can end a beautiful relationship.

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Expect little from life and get more from it.

Ah, now it all comes clear. Chavez is actually deconstructing centralized power and handing it over to the people directly. This isn't your grandfather's communism at all - where Mao or Stalin were absolute rulers.

As I suspected, the substance of the article was a complete lie, created through partial truths.

I hear what you say Individualist but what really blows me away is that you can say it and not hear that you could be talking about Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussien or George W. Bush.

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Everybody got to deviate from the norm