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International News Title: The Real Legacy Of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet Recent incidents of leftist violence in the United States have caused some thoughtful commentators to consider the possibility of a return to 1970s- style leftist terrorism in the West. For most young people today, names like the Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army, the Baader-Meinhof Organization, and Carlos the Jackal mean little. But in their day these groups caused a considerable amount of damage and subversion in the places they conducted their business. The “student protest” movements of the 1960s were the direct progenitors of such leftist terror groups; and as antiwar activism died down, overt violence—bank robberies, bombings, assassinations, and similar acts—took its place. Even though such groups may be quite small in number, they can contribute to a climate of fear and chaos far out of proportion to their memberships. With many sectors of the media and some public figures in the United States actually stoking the fires of sedition and treason, it is probably only a matter of time before things happen that make the recent Berkeley riots seem quaint by comparison. It is possible that some of the so-called “protest” groups of today could metastasize into professional terrorist organizations. With funds supplied by interested parties abroad (i.e., state actors or other terror groups), such groups would rise to the level of national security threat that would justify their repression or dismantling. Law and order are a government’s most pressing functions; without them nothing of any importance can be accomplished. It was against this backdrop that I finally took a close look at the record of Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet took power in a 1973 coup and ruled the country until 1990. In the conventional “wisdom” peddled by the US media, he was a ruthless authoritarian who violently repressed leftist protesters and ruled Chile with an iron hand. It is true that his government violated human rights, shut down political parties, and dismantled trade unions. But this is not the entire story. A close look at the actual record shows that there was a very real threat of a communist takeover in Chile at the time, and that Pinochet’s economic policies laid the groundwork for Chile’s economic prosperity today. In a 1991 interview, finance minister Alejandro Foxley said, “We may not like the government that came before us. But they did many things right. We have inherited an economy that is an asset.” Pinochet’s government overthrew the leftist regime of Salvador Allende. Eduardo Montalva, who served as Chile’s president before Allende, called Allende’s regime a “carnival of madness.” Leftist violence had become commonplace by 1973; the economy was in tatters; and politics had reached a point of near paralysis. When we read Allende’s speeches and policies today, he comes across as a 1970s version of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. And as everyone knows, Chavez’s policies destroyed his country’s economy and edged it to the brink of social chaos. It is beyond question that Allende—before he was overthrown—was trying to transition Chile into a communist political and social system. The country was on the brink of civil conflict in 1973 and was only saved from disaster by the intervention of a military government. It is against this backdrop that the Pinochet takeover must be seen. Just before Pinochet’s coup, Chile’s Chamber of Deputies in August 1973 voted 81- 47 that Allende had systematically destroyed the rule of law and the institutional structures of the country. Furthermore—and this is never mentioned by the media today—Pinochet’s coup was supported by the majority of the Chilean people and by Allende’s predecessor Montalva. What specifically did Pinochet’s government do? According to a study conducted by the Hoover Institution: Domestic banks were deregulated in the late 1970s but reregulated with vigor in the early 1980s. Poverty had increased enormously during and in the wake of the UP’s disastrous economic policies, and it decreased only as a result of the state-led stabilization policies, structural reforms, and targeted social programs of the Pinochet period. Major state expenditures for direct action social programs targeted to the poorest of the poor were initiated in the middle 1980s, not after 1990. Poverty levels, as high as 50 percent in 1984, were reduced to 34 percent by 1989. They continued to fall after 1990 to 15 percent in 2005…[The Pinochet government] created the underlying economic policies and structures in the 1970s and 1980s that [its successor] maintained and that produced jobs for the poor and an economic surplus to enable targeted state antipoverty programs. The Hoover Institute study, quoted above, goes on to say that Pinochet’s authoritarian government actually served as a beacon of innovation around the world that is still followed today. He was able successfully transition his country from a “statist” model to a “market” model long before China or Britain were able to do so. The study concludes: At that time the Chilean economic model was considered anathema almost everywhere—partly because of its association with Chile’s military regime but also because it was viewed (wrongly, as it turned out) as an unthinkable, reactionary model per se, especially for developing countries. (Of the many military regimes in Latin America in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the only one to break with state capitalism was Chile’s.) But global perceptions of the Chilean economic model changed, slowly at first, more rapidly and massively after the mid-1980s. By now, the economic policies of most countries of Latin America; North America; Western, Central, and Eastern Europe; China; India; Russia and its former republics; much of Africa; and many other places around the world have followed the Chilean lead rather than fled from it. Pinochet himself got little thanks for his accomplishments. While the left celebrates men like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, Pinochet is kept locked in the closet of public opinion as a knuckle-dragging dictator. The truth is quite different. Leftist groups successfully petitioned for Pinochet’s extradition to Spain in 1988 for trial on alleged human rights abuses; yet they never called for the extradition and trial of Castro. Any objective look today at the economies of Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba leave no room for doubt about whose policies were better for their people. While Pinochet’s government certainly arrested and executed political opponents, a strong case can be made that the positive features of his regime outweighed the bad. Recognition of this fact is long overdue. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
(Edited)
That case would be predicated on accepting the idea that economic interests outweigh the sanctity of human life. If we're going to go there, a much, much stronger case can be made for government funded abortion on demand at every level, and for government incentives for the abortion of the handicapped and poor. Once you take human life out of the category of absolutes and throw onto the scale of comparative relative values, it's always more efficient to kill the orphan and unwanted, and to euthanize the cripple and the widow and the sick and feeble than to pay for their upkeep. God ran a country once, and when he did it, the only tax he imposed on the whole society was a 10% tithe that was to be used specifically to pay for the upkeep of the poor, the sick, the orphan and the widow, and for the upkeep of the administrators of that poverty relief (the Levites). So, one can take one's inspiration from God, and leave life sacred, and accept the duty, therefore, to administer a poverty relief program in permanence, with a taxation system that will take at least 10% of the active economy to finance the poverty relief. Or you can decide that life is not sacred and throw it onto the cost-benefit relative value scale, kill off those people whose lives have greater relative value extinguished than alive, and walk out on God.
Could that be applied to politicians, and parasitic bureaucrats, and throw in SJW's ? Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."Theodore Roosevelt-1907. I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
What's an SJW?
SJW = Social Justice Warrior. Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."Theodore Roosevelt-1907. I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Venezuelans are getting social justice these days. By the bucket full.
Preventing communism saved lives. The left is all butt hurt that Allende's communist government was brought down, and economic side benefits such as having food to eat is icing on the cake. Non auro, sed ferro, recuperando est patria
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