Posted on 09/13/2010 12:06:05 PM PDT by CedarDave
Washington - When Brian Nelson, a nationally renowned expert on Venezuela, traveled to the South American country on a Fulbright scholarship in 2002, he arrived believing that controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was just misunderstood.
"I was very pro-Chavez — I was opposed to the war in Iraq, kind of opposed to what we were doing in Afghanistan — and here was a guy who was saying what I thought," Nelson said in a Journal interview. "I went to Venezuela thinking, 'This is probably a good guy'. I found out pretty quickly that he isn't."
Nelson, who teaches at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth, is the author of "The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela."
Nelson, in the Journal interview, said Chavez is effective at projecting a populist image that resonates with some liberals, but a more troubling picture emerges once that surface is scratched.
"Chavez knows the left, he knows the buttons to push," Nelson said. "He knows how to wrap himself in the image of (Marxist revolutionary) Che Guevara and kind of the best ideas we have about socialism.
"But when you get underneath that, he's just a new veneer on same old kind of corrupt system," Nelson added. "Corruption has actually gotten worse under Chavez."
Nelson described Chavez as a ruthless, "extreme left" politician who routinely flouts Venezuela's democratic institutions and uses his control of the country's vast oil resources to reward his political allies and punish state and local officeholders he deems enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Collectivism corrupts, absolute collectivism corrupts absolutely.
NM list PING!
(The NM list is available on my FR homepage for anyone to use. Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list. For ABQ Journal articles requiring a subscription, scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the article for free after watching a short video commercial.)
Chavez is a leftist. A stupid one too.
As the cliché goes, a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.
Not wanting to subscribe is there an explanation as to why this comes out now instead of 2002 when he went there?
Stupid but cunning. And Nelson was supposedly an expert on Venezuela but had no clue as to Chavez’ real nature. I’m afraid that Nelson had on a perfect set of liberal blinders before he went there.
A Venezuelian patriot with a bullet could change things quite a bit.
All these leftists who believe all of the lies from Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea are the “experts” they tell us.
They know less than they know.
You can read the entire article for free (see my #3). Nelson is giving a lecture at UNM on Friday which is why he was interviewed. It would be great for a conservative to attend and ask some pointed but polite questions on freedom, democracy and market based systems.
I guess Mr. Nelson isn't entirely opposed to capitalism but we should wait till next week to break it him that there is no Easter Bunny. We don't want to burst all his little fantasies in one week do we?
It’s a start, but Nelson still seems to be a bit stupid- hasn’t had his “welcome to the war” moment yet.
The left thinks that socialism is good and individual people have corrupted it. That is what they thought of the Zero, too......
I have worked with some Venezuelans in the energy industry ten years ago. Quite a few were looking for escape routes. One was applying for work at some of the Houston Ship Channel plants. These were not just engineers and managers, there were some maintenance techs looking to get out as well. It was 1999, and they already knew Chavez meant ruin.
Sounds like Chavez was trained at Camp Obama.
“I went to Venezuela thinking, ‘This is probably a good guy’. I found out pretty quickly that he isn’t.”
Yeah, welcome to the party there, Sparky. Chavez is a cunning thug, nothing more.
Colonel, USAFR
I agree with your conclusion. He’s saying Chaves is bad, but socialism is still good, and it just hasn’t been done properly yet. Over all, Nelson is still an idiot.
Wow, sounds just like somebody I've seen on TV recently.
Someone familiar with the region said the only thing stopping Chavez for going after Columbia is that no one is willing to die for him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.