As Hugo Chavez moves inexorably closer to becoming a dictator in Venezuela and as thousands of protestors fill the streets to demand that he stop his quest for absolute power, the American left is showing its solidarity with ... Chavez.
It's not just Cindy Sheehan, of course. Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte, and Danny Glover have all made the pilgrimmage to Caracas to pay homage to the man who promises to be the next Fidel Castro.
The left has a strange fascination with thugs and killers. They loved Fidel Castro, and they recently oberved the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death. Che was a mass killer, who did Castro's dirty work after he overthrew the Batista regime in 1959, executing hundreds of members of the previous government, but the left reveres his memory anyway, just as they loved Stalin and Mao who murdered millions of their countrymen in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of students and others are marching for freedom in Venezuela and are being suppressed by rubber bullets, tear gas, and fire hoses, and the left in the U.S. is largely silent. Chavez wants to impose socialism in Venezuela and civil and political rights are expendable if they stand in the way of socialism.
RLC