Monthly Archives: July 2007

Critics Of Chavez To Be Deported

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Foreign Affairs, Free Speech, Socialism

So I can understand (at least to a small extent) how Chavez had cover for shutting down RCTV, as they were participants in the coup against him. It’s a stretch to defend him there, but I can at least give people a little benefit of the doubt on that one.

But I don’t see how anyone can defend this. I don’t see how his defenders can call him anything but an anti-free-speech dictator:

President Hugo Chávez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country.

Chávez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela — and deport any outspoken critics.

“How long are we going to allow a person — from any country in the world — to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Chávez asked during his weekly television and radio program.

The Venezuelan leader’s statements came after Manuel Espino, the president of Mexico’s conservative ruling party, criticized Chávez during a recent pro-democracy forum in Caracas.

Government opponents argue Chávez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — is becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent as he steers oil-rich Venezuela toward what he calls “21st-century socialism.”

Chavez’ playbook is open to the world. We’ve seen this before. How can anyone believe that this won’t end badly, and continue to defend him?

What do you think Barbara Walters will have to say about this?

Hat Tip: QandO

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

“SiCKo” Patients Received Better Treatment than the Average Cuban

Election '08, General, Healthcare, Media, Politics, The Welfare State

Back in May in this post, I made the following statement about Michael Moore’s crockumentary on his claim that the average Cuban receives better healthcare than many Americans:

It probably won’t occur to anyone in the MSM that perhaps Castro would want Moore’s propaganda to cover up the failings of his government. Moore is doing Castro a great service by acting as his propaganda minister. Does anyone for a second believe that Castro would allow Moore to show these 9/11 heroes being treated as the average Cuban?

My basis for my comment was that in Moore’s previous efforts such as Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911 he deliberately played fast and loose with the facts. History also shows that Communists lie. When you take a dishonest dictator and a dishonest individual such as Michael Moore you have propaganda (though each does a fine job of propagandizing on his own). Other than that, I had no other basis to assume that Moore’s movie SiCKo would have any misleading information…

That was until I stumbled across this Reuters article which repots that the 9/11 responders who Moore brought with him to Cuba received special VIP treatment:

The 9/11 responders spent 10 days on the 19th floor of Cuba’s flagship hospital with a view of the Caribbean sea, a sharp contrast to many Cuban hospitals that are crumbling, badly lit, and which lack equipment and medicine…

[…]

But the hospital where SiCKO’s patients were treated is an exception in Cuba, where patients of many other hospitals complain they have to take their own sheets and food.

The only question is whether or not Moore knew he was being conned or if he willingly participated to make his point. Does our healthcare system need improvement? Of course it does. But before we replace our system with one like Cuba’s, Canada’s, or England’s, shouldn’t we be just as critical of these systems as we are our own? Shouldn’t we at least try to find out what sort of problems the average citizens in these systems are dealing with before we throw ours away and replace it with a system which is possibly worse?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Monday Open Thread: Getting To Liberty From Here

Individual Rights, Open Thread

Alright… So yesterday I alluded to one of my older, more optimistic posts, where I suggest that the internet will fundamentally change the world and be an enormous force for liberty. But on other days, I get very pessimistic, and worry that America has gone too far down, and that the trappings of “society” will forever crush liberty. On those days, I feel like the only way we’ll ever have liberty is to make our way to the frontier, and in the modern world, that’s going to have to be outer space.

But I wonder what you guys think:

Do we have a chance at restoring liberty? If so, what will be the cause?

Or, if you think we’re pretty well doomed, explain why.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

The Founders, The President, And Iraq

Constitution, Separation Of Powers

In today’s New York Times, Adam Cohen points out that the Founders had a very different idea about Presidential authority in war time from the one the Bush Administration puts forward:

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

Things are far different today, of course. And that isn’t just the fault of the Bush Administration. For the most part, Congress has been a willing participant in this unprecedented expansion of Executive Branch power.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com
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