The political cancer of socialism

Dennis Jamison:

The Socialism that destroyed the nation of Venezuela is like an ideological or political cancer. The “Bolivarian Diaspora,” which has been recognized by numerous observers as the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas, is a direct result of the “Bolivarian Revolution” initiated by Hugo Chavez and prolonged by Nicolás Maduro. The already strained economies of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru, are now facing even greater economic stress as these nations are all attempting to do what they are able to help the fleeing Venezuelan refugees. The problem did not originate in their nations, yet the problem is generating collateral problems as it explodes beyond the borders of Venezuela.

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According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the exodus from the Communist-run state reached three million human beings by November of 2018. Data from national immigration authorities and other sources indicate that the surrounding countries in Latin America now host an estimated 2.4 million refugees. Other regions have received the remainder of these unfortunate people. A majority of the refugees, with estimates of over one million people, fled to adjacent Colombia. The nation of Peru has absorbed over half a million, tiny Ecuador over 220,000, Argentina 130,000, Chile over 100,000 and massive Brazil 85,000. Additionally, even Caribbean countries and some in Central America have received increasing numbers of refugees fleeing Venezuela.

So, were millions of human beings fleeing Socialism, or Communism in Venezuela? It is doubtful that the average Venezuelan refugee even may know what Socialism is, or how Communism works. And, it is not because they are from a little South American country. It is just as likely that the average American citizen does not understand what Socialism is, or how Communism works. People were fleeing Venezuela because they wanted to survive; they no longer could suffer the outcome of the failed government policies based on Socialism or the horrors manifested from Communist totalitarianism.

According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, there was a normalization of scrounging for food from the garbage on the streets because of the regular shortage of food in Venezuela. But, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported that the refugees were fleeing Venezuela not only from serious shortages of food, and fear of losing their food rations, but also from the shortages of medicine, and the relative collapse of the health care system. In 2018, the New York Times Editorial Board reported that malaria had started a soaring resurgence in this once-great nation. And, as it may happen, whatever diseases the refugees had contracted inside Venezuela, without adequate health care in their country, those diseases become a major danger for the host nations who allow them to come into a relatively safe and stable state of asylum.

Wil S. Hylton, writing for The New York Times Magazine, in March of 2018, wrote of the Venezuelan tragedy: “With extreme shortages of food and medicine, rampant crime in every province, a capital city with the highest murder rate in the world and one of the highest levels of inflation in recorded history, Venezuela is the most urgent humanitarian disaster in the Western Hemisphere, producing the largest exodus of refugees in the history of the Americas.”
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Those who would wish this cancer on the US should at least explain what exactly Venezuela did that caused socialism to fail.  Where did socialism go wrong in Venezuela?  They eventually ran out of other people's money and no amount of government greed to could overcome it.  As is typical with socialist and communist countries, the people at the top of the government got fat and rich as they stole the nations wealth and used it to buy votes.