The Worst Evil

From The Daily Beast comes a small snapshot of life under socialism, the system under which Berie Sanders would reorganize life here.

[O]n September 19, [President Nicolas] Maduro's soldiers opened fire on a caravan of Wayuu indigenous people as they were returning from a funeral ceremony on Venezuelan turf -- killing two unarmed members of the tribe just 500 meters from the border.

The aunt of one of the slain men, Genoveba de Piayú, told Colombia's RCN radio that she was riding in the caravan at the time of the incident, but that her vehicle had become stuck in a roadside ditch. Her nephew and a friend were coming to help on a motorcycle when the soldiers opened fire on them.

"We were pleading with [the soldiers] not to shoot, because there were women and children aboard the truck -- but they paid no attention and gunned [our men] down without a word," de Piayú said. [links omitted]

The pretext for such brutality is that the small amount of smuggling in this region -- and not massive government meddling with the economy -- is impoverishing this once-prosperous country. By the way, Venezuela is also sable-rattling, possibly with the objective of taking over oil fields from an eastern neighbor. This whole sad state of affairs reminds me one of Ayn Rand's pithiest and most "prophetic" quotes:

Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.)

The time to become upset about the kleptocracy in Venezuela was the first time it stole from individuals, when it looted the oil fields, among many other things.

-- CAV