“President Hugo Chavez ordered construction halted on a major shopping mall in Caracas on Sunday, saying the government will expropriate the unfinished building.

The Venezuelan leader said it would be out of line with his government’s socialist vision to allow the new Sambil mall to take up precious urban real estate — and that unbridled consumerism isn’t his idea of progress either.” Ian James, Associated Press Writer

Shopping malls, with shoppers scurrying like ants to buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, are the perfect symbol of consumerism run amok. The president’s timely action is more powerful than any Christmas sermon delivered by Rick Warren or Pat Robertson. At this time of the year our heads shouldn’t be filled with visions of Victoria’s Secret, Macys and Best Buy, but with images of the poor and needy who need our help.

“The president also has urged Venezuelans to shed their materialism and their taste for designer clothes, sport utility vehicles, Scotch whisky and plastic surgery” — AP

A statesman speaks the truth in love to his constituents, Chavez rightfully rebuked the Venezuelans for embracing American-style rampant consumerism. It’s instructive to contrast the Venezuelan president’s rebuke of his people with Bush’s advice to Americans in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead of calling upon Americans to make sacrifices in a time of war, he advised us to shop till we drop.

American critics of Chavez quickly labeled his action “socialist“, some of these same folks uttered not a word of protest when Bush was nationalizing banks, insurance companies and now automobile manufacturers. Bush and Chavez are both enamored with socialism, but there’s one big difference: Dubya takes over companies to bail out the wealthy; Chavez expropriates private buildings to help the poor. Chavez didn’t take over the mall to hand it over to an insurance company, he’s going to convert it into a facility that will serve the people of Venezuela.

If a politician with the integrity of Chavez had been president of the United States for the last eight years, our economy would not be in shambles and we would not be entangled in two unnecessary and pointless wars.

Viva Hugo Chavez!

Bush, don’t let the door hit you on your way out!

——————————————————–

——————————————————–

References:

1. Can Obama Save Capitalism? [Fareed Zakaria]– The great sociologist Max Weber described the power of charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Some of Barack Obama’s supporters have at times sounded as if they saw “the one” in these terms. There’s no doubt that Obama is intensely charismatic and that it provides him with unusual political capital. But very soon — say on Jan. 20, 2009 — his powers will start to mutate, and they will derive less from his persona and more from his office. He will shift, in Weber’s terminology, from wielding charismatic authority to legal authority. — [READ MORE]

2. Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism [Arianna Huffington] — The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking. The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor’s mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil. — [READ MORE]