Venezuelans Sick of a Government That Claims to Act For Them

The old saw that “government’s
just a word for the things we do together” provides comfort to
those whose politics demand a total (or totalitarian!) state, one
that claims to care for and control almost every aspect of
everyone’s lives. Leftist parties in some countries have gotten the
paradigm down to an art. Take Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez
considered himself and his party and the people of Venezuela one
and the same. He created an expansive welfare state that built a
dependency in the population not just on the Venezuelan government,
but on Chavez’ United Socialist Party. After his death, his chosen
successor Nicholas Maduro
mobilized every part of the Venezuelan state he could to secure
his election, “officially” winning with just 50.8 percent of the
vote. That was enough of a victory, nevertheless, to
claim a mandate to move forward on an ambitious program of
total control by the state. What happened next shouldn’t be
surprising. The standard of living in Venezuela continued to
decline. The government imposed price controls on everything from

used cars to
toilet paper to
all consumer goods, then blamed capitalists and not their own
destructive government intervention on the economic disaster price
controls exacerbated.

Now, less than a year after Maduro’s “victory,” a critical mass
of Venezuela’s population has had enough, taking to the streets in
some of the largest protests the South American country has seen in
its history. El Comercio in Peru
explains that the Maduro government is using its “Board of
Social Responsibility in Radio and Television” to threaten news
outlets in the country that transmit images that could “foment
anxiety,” like video of the protests and government violence
therein, with sanctions. You can see video via Peru’s El
Comercio purporting to show a student being killed by
pro-government forces
here.

Reuters
reported on three deaths earlier this week, in what it
describes as “a militantly pro-government neighborhood” in Caracas.
The government’s response to the bloodshed was to
order the arrest of an opposition leader who helped organize
several of the recent protests. According to the president of the
National Assembly, a member of an pro-government paramilitary group

was killed, by “fascism,” the Chavez politician said.

Watch amateur video of the student killing also purported to be
shown in the El Comercio video linked above below:

http://ift.tt/1iWE8hN