This thread proves that Free Republic is teeming with 'conservatives' who don't give a damn about real freedom and democracy.
Pinochet was a brutal thug and I'm glad he's dead.
Your observation is correct, but your rationale is backwards. Real freedom is rooted in the rights of life, liberty, and property. Communism is by definition the antithesis of all three to the point that they are mutually exclusive. Any true conservative would recognize that.
A problem emerges when the second principle you mention, democracy, is used to enable and elect a communist regime, as happened with Allende in 1970. Such a regime is, by its very nature, hostile to life, liberty, and property, and thus your first principle, freedom. Furthermore, when freedom falls any remainder of democracy soon follows, as its absence gives rise to an unchallenged totalitarian state. It is therefore possible in some circumstances that freedom and democracy in the long run may only be sustained by overturning democracy in the short run.
This is the infamous nazi paradox of democracy - what are a people to do when the electorate votes for a Hitler?
The only answer that works is to overthrow the Hitler, or the Stalin, or the Ortega, or the Allende, and to do so by force if necessary. Pinochet did just that, and he was right in doing so. Even in the most anti-democratic phases of his rule, Pinochet restored the rights of private property that Allende discarded. He thus set Chile on a path to restoring its freedom, followed by its democracy as he gradually and voluntarily relinquished power.
As for atrocities - yes they happened, and no they were not good things. That said, the brutality of the Pinochet regime has been SEVERELY overstated by the leftist media, and the as well as the character of his "victims" has been intentionally misrepresented. The Chilean commission that investigated his 17 year rule attributed 2,300 deaths to his regime. Closer examination reveals some very interesting information about these deaths, putting them into a very different perspective than the "brutal dictator" spin that is often attributed to Pinochet. Consider:
1. Of the 2,300 deaths, over half ocurred during the September 1973 coup itself and the following three months of political discord. Revolutions are a bloody thing by nature so much of this was unavoidable. Furthermore, almost all of the "victims" of this period were marxist officials of the Allende regime, including Allende himself who committed suicide with a gold plated AK given to him by Fidel Castro.
2. Of the remaining deaths, about 600 happened in the 3 years following the coup when marxist pockets were still resisting and many of Allende's subordinates were running around in the jungles of neighboring countries.
3. Political affiliation is known for about 1,200 of the 2,300 killed. Over 1,100 of these belonged to one of three Allendist-marxist political parties, including 384 in the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria - a marxist terrorist organization that was closely aligned with the Allende regime. 758 were members of other communist political parties, and a couple dozen were members of armed marxist guerilla groups such as the Frente Patriótica Manuel Rodríguez. These people were not your normal opposition political party on the minority side of the legislature. They shared more in common with the Bolsheviks, the Nazi SS, and Hezbollah than they did with any legitimate political organization.
4. After the Allendist threat dissipated, political executions dropped dramatically. Between 1977 and 1990, when Pinochet left office, there were roughly 400 executions - an average of less than 30 a year. These included members of small marxist guerilla uprisings in 1983 and 1984. By Latin America standards, this number is miniscule. For comparison, the "democratically elected" Sandinistas executed over 15,000 in their 11 year rule in Nicaragua during the same period. Hugo Chavez is believed to be responsible for murders described as in the thousands after only 5 years in office.