Chavez’ Boogeyman
Critics who are quick to chide the United States about the overreaction of curtailing civil liberties in the name of the so-called “war on terror” are mysteriously silent when Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chavez does the exact same thing.
Always citing a supposed need to check secret U.S. plots against him, Chavez has shut down dissenting media outlets, empowered thugs to harass and beat dissenters on the streets, and now has established new and unaccountable secret police agencies to monitor and control the population.
When the U.S. government undertook to enact increases in wiretapping authority, self-appointed watchdog bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, Shaun Mullen, and Libby Spencer responded with repeated broadsides predicting a looming civil liberties apocalypse. Their response to Chavez? At best: mild shrugging, and even then only when prompted. And always taking care to say that the U.S. is worse.
Try that in Venezuela, folks.
This is bullshit. First, he’s not a dictator; second, he hasn’t established anything function (c, b) { switch (c) { case “&”: return “&”; case “”": return “"”; case “”: return “>”; } return c; }secretfunction (c, b) { switch (c) { case “&”: return “&”; case “”": return “"”; case “”: return “>”; } return c; } (would it make the news if it were?) and most important, media whores of your calibre and lower are still free to blab whatever rubbish they like down there.
Some function (c, b) { switch (c) { case “&”: return “&”; case “”": return “"”; case “”: return “>”; } return c; }curtailment of civil libertiesfunction (c, b) { switch (c) { case “&”: return “&”; case “”": return “"”; case “”: return “>”; } return c; }.
Jason,
This is an argument that I’ve heard time and time again. It would seem to imply that Americans who are critical of their government should only criticize their government if they are also willing to criticize other governments that have acted as bad or far worse than our own.
What this argument fails to consider is the idea that, as Americans, we have a special obligation to hold our government accountable.
Allow me to make an analogy, if I may:
Consider two reckless teenagers. If each teenager were to commit the same offense, naturally, we would expect a similar amount of criticism/condemnation of both of them. On the other hand, if one teenager were to commit petty larceny and the other teenager were to commit armed robbery, naturally, we would expect more criticism/condemnation of the teenager who committed armed robbery than we would of the teenager who committed petty larceny.
Now, consider if one of those teenagers were YOUR son. You, as a parent, would have far more of an obligation of reprimanding your son than the teenager who is not your son, even if they committed the exact same offense. And in fact, you would still have an obligation to reprimand your son, even if the other teenager committed an offense 20 times worse. That’s because that is your obligation as a parent. Your obligation to reprimand your own son isn’t diminished in any way simply because you failed to also reprimand the teenager who is not your son.
As citizens, we have an obligation to speak out against our own government when it goes astray the same way that as parents, we have an obligation to reprimand our children when they go astray. We, as Americans, have been charged that we speak out against our government when it violates our civil liberties. It is a charge that our Founding Fathers laid upon us. Time and time again, men like Jefferson warned us of the importance of speaking against the power of our government, should it violate our basic rights. I do not think Mr. Jefferson would criticize those Americans of his time who spoke out against their government simply because they did not speak out against the governments of Europe, (most of whom had committed offenses far greater than our own government).
Violating civil liberties is wrong no matter which government does it. But as American’s we have a special obligation to prevent the further erosion of civil liberties in our government. Americans should never refrain from or temper their criticism of their government on the basis that they did not sufficiently criticize what some other government does…even if what that government is a hundred times worse than what our government does.
I can agree to a point that there is a “special obligation” of Americans to watchdog their own government, but not to the point of totally ignoring excesses in other government or of exaggerating the problems in the U.S. or of explicitly comparing the U.S. negatively to places like Venezuela (which at least one of the authors I criticize actually did).
The "special obligation" should not amount to a complete free pass for dictatorial wannabes like Chavez nor should it be a license to exaggerate the problems in the U.S. like Greenwald does.
There is also a "special obligation" to the truth, you know.