Reply #94: I think it's hilarious that the Catholic Church objects to propagandizing children.

[Peace Patriot]

There is nobody better at brainwashing young minds than the Catholic Church.

THANK GOD the Bolivarians are offering a SECULAR education and a SECULAR government to those who want to free their minds. I was mightily grateful to our own--and to the Founders who established that principle--when I finally needed to bust out of that prison that the Catholic Church had built around my soul.

Venezuelan parents will be free to do that their children, if that's what they want to do, but the government won't be paying for it, and the rest of society will be on the freedom path, uncoerced by the extremely fascist religions of Rome or predatory capitalism.

It's interesting how the leftists are the real Christians, when you look at what they actually advocate and do (feeding, clothing the poor, brotherhood/sisterhood with the poor, equality, sharing, attending to the common good), yet they are always accused of being "godless" by the people who loot, stomp on, dominate, kick, beat, torture, hate, exploit, over-work, loathe, and, one way or another, kill the poor.

When the fascists in Venezuela did their coup attempt in 2002, the first thing they did was to suspend the Constitution, the National Assembly, the courts and all civil rights. And the next thing they would have done, had they succeeded, was to start dropping poor people and their leftist advocates out of airplanes, or chainsawing them while alive and dumping their body parts into mass graves, like they do in Colombia, that most religious of countries.

Their protests against free education, secularism and "participatory democracy" are absurd (and the organization of it all has most certainly been paid for by you and me).

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The rightwing are such goddamn liars. When they ran Venezuela, they couldn't be bothered with education of the poor majority, and utterly neglected it. The Chavez government has poured zillions of the oil profits into the education system, including adult education, and wiped out illiteracy in five years. Now they're going for a SECULAR (fact-based, reason-based focus) and CIVICS education, and the fascists and upper Catholic clergy are up in arms. The last thing in the world they want is a well-educated populace versed in their own rights as citizens and human beings, and empowered to organize in their own interests.

The Education Law does two things: It guarantees an education through university as a human right, enshrined in the Constitution, and it promotes "participatory democracy" as the focus if civics education. It leaves it up to schools, teachers and parents how to interpret the latter, just as the Chavistas have left it up to community councils to determine local needs. This is the MAIN governing principle of the Bolivarian Revolution that our corpo/fascist press cannot fathom, and completely ignores. The Chavistas are about as anti-authoritarian as you can get. They are pro-REAL democracy. Chavez is their SERVANT--as it should be--NOT their tyrant. They put him in office. They kept him in office when the fascists tried to topple him. They vote for him in big numbers. He reflects THEIR views. The Chavistas are the MAJORITY, and they believe in PARTICIPATORY democracy--everybody equal, everybody has a say, decisions emerge and policies are undertaken after widespread discussion.

This was true of the Education Law as well--something that James Suggett points out in his Venezuelanalysis article. The Education Law has been discussed for years--in many town halls organized by the National Assembly, to which everyone was invited. It has gone through several versions, with widespread public participation. All of its provisions were hammered out in public. The final, refined, legislative document was put before the National Assembly and voted for last week, but it is a goddamned lie that this law was "rammed" through in a week without public discussion.

The members of the National Assembly are separately elected by the people--in an election system that is far, far more transparent than our own. The National Assembly is pro-Chavez by choice of the people. When our corpo/fascist press and their anti-Chavez echo chamber claims that Chavez "controls" the National Assembly, they never mention that the National Assembly is independently elected! Chavez doesn't control the National Assembly. The National Assembly--representing the people of Venezuela in their districts--controls Chavez--or rather, they are all in general accord with the will of the people, subject to transparent elections!

And all of these legislators, and their constituents, and Chavez, are well aware of the need for grass roots organization--empowerment of the people, "participatory democracy"--to keep it that way. That's why they emphasize this most basic form of democracy in the Education Law in the Constitution. They don't want the people to yield their sovereignty to anyone. They are encouraging--and always have encouraged--the full sovereignty of each individual and the empowerment of each individual through LOCAL--on the ground, nearby, locally organized, wide-open mechanisms like the community councils. They see power as an organism or network with MANY centers. These individual and community centers of power converge to create, empower and control the national government. This is a MUCH MORE democratic system than our own, in which the national government has completely diverged from the will of the people on everything from egregiously unjust war to taxpayer-funded bonuses to financial criminals. We see the effects of the atrophy of our democratic system every day. The Venezuelans are trying every way they can to AVOID this--to avoid rule by oligarchs and global corporate predators and war profiteers, who manage to get hold of the power mechanisms of democracy--while the people SLEEP (are indeed deliberately put to sleep by disempowering corporate media)--and then squeeze the life out of the democracy in their own narrow, greedbag interests.

The Bolivarian Revolution--like our own democracy, at the beginning, and renewed over the centuries until recently--is an experiment in self-rule. It has its failures and successes like any such experiment, but it keeps trying. That is democracy's core principle--to keep trying, to keep renewing itself, to welcome new ideas, to encourage leadership wherever it arises, and to entrust to widespread participation the hope that the best ideas will "rise to the top" and the best people will emerge to implement them. Democracy is never perfect. That is its strength, not its weakness. It is always subject to reform.

The Chavez "cult of personality" is not particularly healthy in a democracy. But it's better than the "cult of war," or the "cult of Bush," or the "cult of Michael Jackson." And if Chavez were truly a "dictator," the people of Venezuela would long ago have tossed him out and found someone else to be president. They have had every opportunity to do so. Yet they continually--in transparent elections and in opinion polls--give him the highest marks. So he is not a "dictator" to them. He is serving their interests. In fact, he is very like our own FDR, who ran for and won four terms in office. FDR was also called a "dictator"--by the rightwing press. But when he tried to "pack the Supreme Court" (as they put it), what policy was he serving? Take a wild guess.

SOCIAL SECURITY! The rightwing court, appointed by his rightwing predecessors, were threatening to declare Social Security unconstitutional, and if they had not been pressured by FDR's threat to "pack the Supreme Court," your mom and dad, and your grandma and grandpa would have no pension today. And if the rightwing of today has their druthers, the fund will be privatized and looted before you get to it.

The charge of "dictator" has to be weighed against reality. Is it "dictatorial" to provide a free education, or pensions for the elderly, or to seek balance and fairness in use of the public airwaves? Or is it merely strong leadership in the public interest? Is it "dictatorial" to be a politician, to like the sound of your own voice, to parade about with flags and berets, to have devotees and even worshipers, to want to please people, to conceive visionary ideas and seek to implement them (ideas like "participatory democracy"!) (...or, ahem, Social Security)?

Is it "dictatorial" to have consistently high (60% range) approval ratings? No, it is not. All of these things merely amount to the temptation to be a "dictator." When examined, in reality, the word "dictator" is ridiculous--is an absurd lie. It is wildly off the mark as to what is REALLY going on in Venezuela. It is not a perfect democracy. It is not yet a fully "participatory" democracy. But it is most certainly a country in which the will of the people is being listened to, and the interests of the people are being served. Can we say that of our own country?