From: torontosun.com September 27, 2018 EDITORIAL
In this photo released by the Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, centre, speaks as he is accompanied by Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, left, and Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino, right, during a meeting with Colombian citizens that reside in Venezuela, in Caracas, Venezuela.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tripped over his ideology once again, this time while discussing the sad state of Venezuela.
The South American country’s economy is crumbling, inflation is running rampant, crime has skyrocketed, starvation is widespread and an exodus of people are fleeing the country – some even seeking asylum in Canada.
While speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, the PM placed the blame squarely at the foot of “the failure of leadership in Venezuela.”
Trudeau along with the leaders of several South American countries jointly signed a statement formally calling for the International Criminal Court to investigate President Nicolas Maduro’s regime for extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions.
These crimes certainly warrant serious attention. But to cast Venezuela’s “humanitarian crisis” as a “failure of leadership” suggests Trudeau simply doesn’t grasp the demonstrable failure of socialism as a political ideology.
Venezuela’s major oil reserves allowed them for a time to mask the danger of living beyond one’s means. As oil prices have dipped and the country, which embraced high taxation, unsustainable spending, free-for-all social programs and corruption, has descended into chaos and turmoil.
Trudeau offered no insight or concerns over the ideology that has caused this tragedy.
President Donald Trump though hit it right on the head. “Virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried, it has produced suffering, corruption and decay,” Trump said on Tuesday. “All nations of the world should resist socialism and the misery that it brings to everyone.”
This should be self evident. But it evades Trudeau just as it does former Liberal leader Bob Rae, who posted to social media back in August: “Crisis in Venezuela has created 2 million refugees, unparalleled economic chaos, and great hardship for the people of a country that seemed to have everything going for it. Need to learn how this happened.”
Need to learn how?! That line would require a laugh track were it not so sad.
Here’s how it happened: Socialism serves socialists, not people. Plain and simple.
It’s time our politicians had the honesty and nerve to state the obvious.