by Megan McArdle
I've been a bit befuddled by some of what my colleage Michael Moynihan terms "love letters" to the departed Hugo Chavez (such a sonorous voice rolling out of the television for hours on end! Pity he was insufficiently authoritarian, though).
Now, I am sad that Hugo Chavez is dead, because it is always sad when a human being dies, and a universe ends. And I felt no particular urgency, after he died, in writing the obligatory piece pointing out that Hugo Chavez was a strongman with profoundly anti-democratic tendencies, who believed in elections only insofar as they suited him, and also, has left Venezuela's economy in a parlous long-term position. But then people started defending--or minimizing to the point of untruth--the clearly indefensible..........
FULL ARTICLE: Why Hugo Chavez Was Bad for Venezuela - The Daily Beast
