Peter Krupa

Consider the following paragraphs found on Salon.com:

For contemporary Americans, however, “it” could signify our own more gradual and insidious turn toward authoritarian rule. That is why Lewis’s darkly funny but grim fable of an authoritarian coup achieved through a democratic election still resonates today — along with all the eerie parallels between what he imagined then and what we live with now.

For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realization that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment.

Now, I don’t know what Salon.com’s editorial position on Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is because it has more or less steered clear of the whole topic. But I do know plenty of left-wing types who would agree with the above statements when it comes to American politics, yet shout down Venezuelans who express concern about this exact same thing happening in their own country.

The parallel’s are striking: A leader is democratically elected; the leader immediately starts consolidating power in the executive branch with the help of allies in the legislative branch; the leader wins reelection by constantly harping on the people’s fear of an external threat; and finally, the leader gets the power of decree, making the state, for all intents and purposes, a dictatorship.

That last part hasn’t happened in the U.S. because, thank God, our democratic institutions are still intact, and so in the 2006 election the legislature changed hands, forcing the executive to moderate a bit. Venezuelans haven’t been so lucky, and now they have a government run entirely at the whim of a single man.

Why should this situation be OK for Venezuelans, yet an outrage when it happens in the U.S.? This is the deep hypocrisy in the American left in its approach to the developing world, and it looks an awful lot like condescension and - dare I say it? - racism. What’s good for the upper-class east-coast champagne-swilling elite in the U.S. isn’t necessarily  good for those poor ignorant brown people south of the boarder, who need a caudillo to bring them social justice.

It’s with a similar line of thought that the left continues to justify Revolutionary Cuba. Some people never learn.