The Purge: Venezuela

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Kevin D. Williamson

October 4, 2016

 

Remembering, as we must, that Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez and his nationalist-socialist policies were the darling of our own Democratic elected officials and Hollywood’s so-called liberals, the latest news from Caracas should be troubling to the Democrats’ single most important political constituency: government workers.

 

The dominant issue in Venezuelan politics at the moment is a campaign to recall President Nicolas Maduro, a corrupt incompetent who has taken Chávism to its natural conclusion: food riots and repression, the terminal of the road to serfdom. Venezuela, which like the United States allegedly protects civil servants from political persecution, is nonetheless preparing to dismiss a large share of its government workers from their positions in retaliation for their having publicly supported the campaign to recall Maduro.

 

It is a purge, pure and simple.

 

Our own progressives here at home have an appetite for purging, partly because they believe that it will only affect corporate types such as Brendan Eich, the Mozilla founder driven from his firm for having the same views on gay marriage that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama had until the day before yesterday. Progressives also believe, mistakenly, that they will always hold the levers of power, that they will always be the purgers rather than the purged.

 

It never occurs to them to ask that a President Trump might do with the precedents they have set.

 

(Snip)