Is Hugo Chavez Going Too Far?

Has Hugo Chavez gone too far? Originally, I liked the fellow, looking at him from a distance. He seemed to care about the poor, and was willing to stand up to the United States, but not in a way that suggested violence on his part. I don't mind a few socialist ideas coming in the form of Social Democracy, which was what I assumed he had in mind. You know, if we're going to pay taxes, I'd much rather have them help people than bomb them. Chavez' "George Bush is the devil" speech at the UN was a bit over the top, but, hey, I enjoyed that, too. Quite a bit, in fact.

But now, given the latest story in the BBC, Chavez seems to be decisively moving away from democracy, gaining Venezuela's National Assembly's approval to rule by decree for 18 months in order to accelerate his "Bolivarian" socialist revolution, replacing his Vice President with a hardliner, and saying he won't renew an opposition TV station's license.

A previous article stated that Chavez was only seeking one year of decree powers. I get the feeling eighteen months may not be enough, either.

When one human being thinks he knows enough to put himself above all other authority, it certainly smacks of hubris. You're going to tell everyone how it's going to be, answer to no one, and silence any opposition that gets in the way? Mr. Chavez, you are not God. Neither are Marx, Lenin or Trotsky, so it doesn't help that you may be implementing their ideas. I am not an ideologue; those guys had some good ideas and some excellent critiques of the way capitalism worked, but their ideas also paved the way for a bloody revolution, a great deal of repression and suffering, and for Stalin.

Let's say that Chavez is as wise a leader as can be, and his decrees are consistently the best thing that could happen to Venezuela. Since he appears now to be afraid to let the opposition even have the debate with him, I actually doubt this very much. But let's just say that it's true. Nevertheless, a precedent will have been set. Rulers can rule by decree. If the power has not been solidified by then, nevertheless it has been made available through appealing to the Assembly. What if the next leader to manage to invoke this power is a Stalin, or a George W. Bush?

I'll tell you what, nothing makes me for grateful for the existence of term limits and a system of government checks and balances than the Presidency of George W. Bush. For all our country's faults, our Founding Fathers were often at least as smart as Marx ever was.

Authoritarianism also tends to undermine whatever mandate comes from the people, which would also tend to strengthen the disrupting hand of ideologues in the United States. This formula could easily be the recipe for a coup sooner or later.

Mr. Chavez gained power more or less democratically (the BBC indicates that the opposition boycotted the last election). If socialism is what the country needs, it should be possible to persuade the people thoroughly enough so that socialism can also be implemented democratically, and with the input of the intellects of many brilliant people, not just the limited vision of a single autocrat and the ideologues with whom he surrounds himself.