Venezuela’s Lessons for Americans
What is happening in Venezuela provides valuable lessons for Americans. In the recent presidential election, the country’s dictator Nicolas Maduro immediately claimed victory but, suspiciously, has refused to reveal tally results from the voting stations. His opponent Edmundo González, on the other hand, quickly produced written tallies that were taken from many of the voting stations across the country that showed that he had actually won the election by an extremely wide margin.
Since then, there have been massive protests in the streets in favor of Gonzalez and the woman who is the real leader of the opposition, María Corina Machado. Maduro blocked her from running against him and Gonzalez was chosen to run in her stead. Maduro has responded by arresting and incarcerating some 2,000 protestors.
What then are the Venezuelan people to do under these circumstances? Thomas Jefferson provided the answer in the Declaration of Independence.The Venezuelan people have the right to resort to violence to oust Maduro from power.
There is one big problem, however. Several years ago, the Venezuelan government adopted a policy of gun control, which disarmed the Venezuelan people. The only ones left with guns were the Venezuelan national-security establishment, the Venezuelan police, Venezuelan criminals, and those Venezuelan citizens who secretly and illegally decided to keep their guns, which, most likely, was not very many people.
What is occurring in Venezuela is precisely what our American ancestors assumed would happen here in the United States. That’s why they enacted the Bill of Rights — because they figured that U.S. officials would do the same thing to the American people that Venezuelan officials are doing to the Venezuelan people.
Consider the First Amendment. It says everything about the mindset of our American ancestors. It expressly prohibits federal officials from doing to Americans what Venezuelan officials are doing to Venezuelans for protesting against their government. After all, why have the First Amendment if one is certain that federal officials will never arrest and jail people for exercising freedom of speech and other fundamental, God-given rights?
Conside
Article from The Future of Freedom Foundation
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