U.S. liberals shouldn't be surprised by the failure of socialism in Venezuela
Kevin D. Williamson,
In his classic monograph on central planning, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek noted a paradox: "Socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists disapprove," he wrote. He argued that "the old socialist parties were inhibited by their democratic ideals" and that they "did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task."
But that was not always to be the case: For every "liberal in a hurry" there is a V.I. Lenin, a Fidel Castro, a Mao Zedong, a Ho Chi Minh, a Che Guevara, an Erich Honecker ready to roll up his sleeves and start slitting throats.
Our so-called democratic socialists and their progressive allies always pronounce themselves shocked by this, though of course they have long indulged it. From The New York Times' heroic efforts to not notice the repression and terror in the Soviet Union to Sen. Ted Kennedy's working on behalf of the KGB, from Noam Chomsky's denial of the Cambodian genocide to modern Democrats' love affair with Fidel Castro, there is no gulag brutal enough and no pile of corpses high enough to stir in the modern progressive the sort of outrage he might feel upon, say, learning that General Electric took advantage of an accelerated capital depreciation schedule for tax purposes.
dallasnews.com
I read the Road to Serfdom in my youth and I "got it." Everyone should read it. |
