Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela

In this article from The Statesman.com we find, once again, that socialism is a failure no matter where it is tried. According to author Eunice Moscoso, educated citizens of Venezuela are fleeing their collapsing country as fast as they can pack their belongings and buy a ticket out.

It is a continuing embarrassment to the left, and one they refuse to acknowledge, that socialist countries are unable to attract the very people on whom such a system would rely. The maxim, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", is an advertisement to most people that the government considers them to be a milk cow. And the message is, "prepare to be milked dry". No sane, productive and responsible person wishes to see himself this way. No one who is worth anything would turn themselves into a slave to every other person in society.

Unlike most migration patterns in the Americas, departing Venezuelans are not motivated primarily by current economic frustration. Instead, they are fleeing government policies that they fear could threaten private property ownership, restrict economic opportunities, lead to job losses and provoke regional conflicts, according to analysts, polls and interviews with people leaving.

Manuel Corao, who runs a newspaper serving the Venezuelan community in Miami, estimates that about three Venezuelans a day arrive in the Miami area intending to stay.

"They fear the Chávez government; they fear communism and the dictatorship. It's terrible," said Corao, who came from Venezuela 11 years ago.

The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington declined requests for an interview.

Chávez came to power in 1999 and was re-elected in 2000 and 2006. His administration has promoted socialist policies with an emphasis on anti-American rhetoric and is close to the Castro regime in Cuba. Last year, Chávez nationalized the petroleum, communications and electricity sectors. He has indicated he intends to continue to centralize power.

The domestic economy is plagued by high inflation and a shortage of goods, including basic foods.

In 2007, inflation was about 22 percent. Over the past year, prices have increased by more than a third on such staples as sugar, rice, black beans, pasta, bread and milk.

In Caracas, Alejandra Gonzalez said she was leaving Venezuela because she feared for her 2-year-old daughter.

"We have a house, jobs, cars here, but we don't have what we need, that is peace and opportunities," she said. "I don't know if my apartment will be taken away from me in the future or not. There is legal insecurity here."

And so Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is suffering from all of the maladies that socialism brings about whenever it is put in place, including a "brain drain" of its best and brightest who refuse to be part of such a system. And since there is no Berlin wall around Venezuela at present, people will continue to flee to other parts of the world where they are still able to function as humans instead of being used like cattle.

Obama's Anger

Ed Kaitz writes at The American Thinker about the recent speech given by Barack Obama concerning the now infamous remarks of preacher Jeremiah Wright. Kaitz tells the story of how he met a black psychologist on a commercial flight some years ago and the conversation that they had and how that conversation helps us to understand the cancerous effects of the preachers of race hate like Rev. Wright and how that message keeps black people locked in a cycle of failure of their own making.

In the story Kaitz tells us about immigrants from Vietnam who came to America with little money, no knowledge of English and few connections, but within a generation had managed to achieve the American dream by dominating the fishing industry in and around New Orleans. This is the same New Orleans of course in which many black natives sat and waited for someone else to save them as Katrina bore down on them. The difference between the attitude of the Vietnamese immigrants and that of the native blacks living there, and elsewhere around the country is attitude. And it makes all the difference.

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope." Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't."

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

This idea of permanent victimhood and the ideology of entitlement has destroyed the black community in this country for the last several generations. And the current popularity of Barack Obama among blacks is not a good sign for the future. For if blacks in America are responding to his message of class envy and the entitlement mentality, then the failure of much of the black population in this country will continue into the foreseeable future. In this country there are opportunities everywhere you look if you have eyes to see. And the experience of Vietnamese immigrant proves that they exist for those who are hungry enough to take advantage of them. But if you are wearing the blinders of racial hate and envy you will be unable to see them and unlikely to pull yourself up to the next level of achievement.

Chain of Fools

Mark Steyn is in top form in this essay that makes fun of just about everything we have seen so far in this Democrat primary season. It is indeed a wonder and an amazement to watch as the old blunderbuss and the cotton-candy messiah duke it out over the nomination while the Elite Media Monoculture fawns in breathless anticipation over the prospect of "Amerika" finally confessing its White Guilt to all the world as it should.

The Democratic primary season seems to have dwindled down into a psycho remake of Driving Miss Daisy. The fading matriarch Mizz Hill’ry (Jessica Tandy) doesn’t want to give up the keys to the Democratic-party vehicle but the dignified black chauffeur Hokey (Morgan Freeman) insists it’ll be a much smoother ride with him in the driver’s seat, full of gear change you can believe in, etc. Yet, just as he thinks the old biddy’s resigned to a nomination as Best Supporting Actress, the backseat driver plunges her hat pin into his spine, wrests the wheel away and lurches across the median.

Is the Democratic presidential process a Karl Rove plot? Right now, neither Mizz Hill’ry nor Hokey can win without the votes of the “super-delegates,” whose disposition is apparently in flux. The gay super-delegates, as I noted a week or two back, are apparently sticking to Hillary like the Hello, Dolly! waiters to Carol Channing. But others are said to be moving Barackwards. Are they jumping to a stalled bandwagon? One Historical Guilt gives upscale white liberals a chance to demonstrate their progressive bona fides in unison and with nary a thought. Two Historical Guilts shrivels from transformative feelgood fluffiness into sour tribalism. Like Hillary’s “I Am Woman” routine, Obama’s cult of narcissism — “We are the change we have been waiting for” — would have been a shoo-in against Biden, Dodd, and Edwards. But the gaseous platitudes wafting up to Cloud Nine are suddenly very earthbound. “Yes, we can!” is an effective pitch if you’re the new messiah, not so much when you’re pulling in a very humdrum fortysomething percent against a divisive and strikingly inept campaigner.

Go back to that Maureen Dowd line: “People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater.”

“People won’t, Democrats will,” the blogger Orrin Judd responded. “People will elect John McCain in November, demonstrating that we don’t share their guilt.”

Celebrating Murder

Tom Gross at The National Review brings us this video of Arabs in Gaza celebrating wildly after several young Israeli students were killed by a terrorist at a religious school in Jerusalem. Mr. Gross asks the obvious question as to why the major Western media is not showing this video footage to their viewers. Could it perhaps be that the built in leftist bias of the MSM cannot acknowledge the sick and twisted evil that is on display in this news story? Certainly it is at odds with the popular view on the left that it is the "Palestinians" who are the victims of oppression and imperialism at the hands of Israel regardless of any facts that might indicate otherwise. Watching this video one cannot help but conclude that these Arabs are pretty darn happy at the thought of murdered school children. And that just isn't a message that the leftist media want to send, so instead we get a deafening silence.

The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates

In this article from The City Journal Steven Malanga looks at the ways in which the influx of illegal immigrants from Hispanic countries is changing the landscape of black political culture in America. More than one writer has noted the racial subtext of the current battle between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama and their respective support from different parts of the Democratic party. Hillary is attracting the lion's share of Hispanic votes while Obama is getting the black vote.

Traditionally these two groups in the Democratic party had been on the same side, at least on the surface. But as more and more Hispanics have supplanted blacks economically and radically changed previously black neighborhoods into Hispanic ones, there is a growing tension that is causing a wider and wider split in the party. Black leaders at the top levels of the party have been slow to recognize it or to adapt to the new reality. But rank and file blacks in the party are becoming more and more vocal about what they see as a loss of influence and economic position. And there is evidence to support this view, especially as Hispanics use race-based preferences to supplant blacks, turning their own legislation against them.

In this election cycle we may see a further rift in the Democratic party as Hillary and Obama split the party down the middle. If Clinton can get the nomination there will undoubtedly be a huge outcry from blacks who have been the most loyal party members for decades and who now see their chosen candidate passed over for another who is supported in large part by a growing Hispanic democratic base. Once again blacks will see themselves shut out by a Democratic party leadership that takes their votes for granted and assumes that they will never leave the party and become Republicans.

If only John McCain understood this new dynamic and was able to offer something besides another pro-amnesty position.

As the Hispanic population has expanded in formerly black areas, Latinos have also vied more intensely with blacks for affirmative-action slots, public-sector jobs, and political power. In one notable late-1990s case that presaged future confrontations, Hispanic leaders in South L.A. launched an official complaint that blacks made up the overwhelming majority of the county hospital’s staff. A federal agency then forced the hospital to hire more Latinos, provoking bitterness among local blacks. More recently, in Compton—where Hispanics have replaced blacks as the largest ethnic group, but where blacks continue to dominate local politics—Latinos have been grumbling that they don’t hold as many jobs in the public schools as they should, given their numbers.

This battle over quotas for public-sector jobs is a glaring example of how immigration is turning the race-based policies of the last 40 years, originally designed to help blacks, against them. For African-American leaders like Claud Anderson, head of the Harvest Institute, the turnabout represents a betrayal of the civil rights movement: only blacks deserve quotas. “When did our government ever exclude immigrants or deny them their constitutional rights, as they did African-Americans?” he asks. But for other blacks, the demands of Latinos and Asians that government set-aside programs include them are further evidence that racial preferences were misguided in the first place. “Blacks who support skin color privileges now will be singing a different tune later once government starts discriminating against them once again, this time in favor of Hispanics,” writes columnist and blogger La Shawn Barber.

After Bhutto

A nation in crisis/An NRO Symposium

The National Review provides us with this symposium on the subject of the future of Pakistan in the wake of the death of Benazir Bhutto. A variety of different experts provide us with their views on what this means both to Pakistan as well as how it may affect us in the West.

Al-Qaeda Claims Responsibility for Bhutto's Death

In this story from Adnkronos news service Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for the murder of former Pakinstani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. This attack comes just days before the elections in Pakistan and it seems clear that this is an attack on the democratic process as well. Pakistan is a country that needs to move in the direction of the modern world and the terrorists understand that they can forstall that by killing those who represent that transition. Benazir Bhutto, even with all of her flaws, was one of these.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.