OMAHA WEIRD HAROLD: A new day for dictators

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Venezuela's president shows how 21st-century autocrats are exploiting opportunities.

The tumultuous history of the 20th century was in many ways a history of tyrants - some petty, some monstrously powerful.

Vainglorious Benito Mussolini. Ruthless "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The preposterous Ferdinand Marcos. The odious trio of mega-mass murderers: Hitler, Stalin, Mao.

With the defeat of fascism and the collapse of the Soviet empire, democracy enjoyed an encouraging advance in the late 20th century. Yet, in recent years, a new breed of autocrat has begun to surface - elected leaders who become de facto tyrants by maintaining an ostensibly democratic political system that they then cleverly manipulate.

Rather than snuff out all opposition, these autocrats, from Asia to the Middle East to Latin America, keep up the pretense of open government even as they intimidate critics and pressure competing political institutions to surrender much of their power.

Oil-rich Venezuela provides a dramatic example. The country's president, Hugo Chávez, has slyly developed an effective strategy to extend his power. Javier Corrales, an associate professor of government at Amherst College, wrote in a recent analysis for Foreign Policy magazine that Chávez, through a combination of opportunism and ruthlessness, "is rewriting the manual on how to be a modern-day authoritarian."

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No matter how cleverly Chávez hones his skills, he remains an enemy of political freedom and a purveyor of economic nonsense. Behind the bravado of such 21stcentury dictators lies a hollow and dangerous agenda that free peoples should oppose.

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Yep, this is what passes for intelligence and editorial expertise here in Lower-on-the-sociological-ladder-than-Hooterville, Nebraska.



edit: Link
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=608&u_sid=2089160

that can be said to the deluded, you know. If he chooses to think that Chavez (who has jumped through more electoral hoops than Bush) is not a legitimate president and doesn't have the good-will of the people for the changes he is instituting, then there is nothing that can cure him.

I wonder, frankly, if the leaders of the western world hold anything dear......well, excepting money.

...simply use the "1984" decoder ring:

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

Therefore, to decode the OP article, just substitute "Bush" for "Chavez."

See how easy? As easy as "See Spot Run" or "The Pet Goat."

in the context of peaceful changes within a country to make it more democratic.

It's another thing to say that a country isn't a real democracy in spite of elections to justify a coup funded by a foreign power.

It's debatable if the US should be funding coups against true dictatorships, but the idea of the US funding a coup against a democratically-elected leader on the the theory that the country isn't democratic enough is dubious.

In the context of deciding if it's ok for the US to fund a coup, countries with free elections should be considered democracies.

Ditto-monkey Herald is Tom Delay, Lincoln Urinal is Norm Coleman. Both suck and I won't suscribe.