Venezuela Fallacy

The once-thriving country of Venezuela has been suffering severe political and economic problems for close to two decades, under the presidencies of Hugo Chaves and Nicolás Madura. The distress is now so severe that at least 2 million Venezuelans are refugees, and many who remain in the country are suffering badly.

President Maduro fails his country

Because both presidents have been socialists, some opponents of socialism apply several logical fallacies to conclude that it proves socialism is disastrous. Writing for Yahoo! Finance, market journalist Dion Rabouin explains why socialism per se is not the cause of Venezuela's woes.

This is especially important to me as I watch a different kind of political and humanitarian disaster unfold in Nicaragua. There the president continues to speak as a leftist while governing from the far right; this has created a dangerous kind of confusion among those few U.S. politicians who are paying attention.

Lagniappe

With the recent rise of democratic socialist in U.S. politics -- most notably with the primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- the word "socialist" is getting even more attention. It is also being deliberately confused with the national socialism, which of course is abbreviated "Nazi." Thus do people who write more than they read and speak more than they understand spread the idea that Bernie Sanders and Adolph Hitler share a political philosophy.