It’s not just exaggerated political rhetoric, the American left really does look fondly upon the blood-soaked socialist ideology:

The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.

Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.

The propaganda of state-run education is at least partly to blame.

So how much blood and misery must an ideology cause before the left abandons it?

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GMAC is the latest entity in which the federal government has taken a majority stake:

The federal government said Wednesday that it will take majority control of troubled auto lender GMAC and provide an additional $3.8 billion in aid to the company, which has been unable to raise from private investors the money it needs to staunch its losses.

Is it just me, or would it not be obviously beneficial to stop and ask just why it is that private investors aren’t willing to give them money? Perhaps there is a lesson we can learn from them that would be of benefit to the taxpayers responsible for producing this $3.8 billion.

The Treasury Department has said for months that GMAC would need more federal money, but the decision to increase the government’s ownership stake came as a surprise, cutting against the grain of the Obama administration’s recent efforts to wind down its bailout of large banks.

Who could they possibly have found that is surprised by yet another foray into the private sector by this interventionist White House? Under what rock must such a person have been living for the last year?

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Does this reasoning sound familiar?

President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday announced a new chain of government-run, cut-rate retail stores that will sell everything from food to cars to clothing from places such as China, Argentina and Bolivia.

“We’re creating Comerso, meaning Socialist Corporation of Markets,” Chavez said at the opening of a “socialist” fast-food location for traditional Venezuelan arepas (cornbread).

“They’ll see what’s good. We’ll show them what a real market is all about, not those speculative, money-grubbing markets, but a market for the people,” said Chavez in his drive to change Venezuela from a market-based economy to a socialist one.

“We’re going to challenge all that junk food that just fattens people up,” he added referring to the arepa stand he opened to the public.

…”We’re going to defeat speculation. Private individuals in sales can still sell, but they’ll have to compete with us and with a people who is now fully aware,” Chavez said.

Chavez has taken the Democrats aborted plans for a “public option” in health insurance and applied it to, well, everything.

You have to feel sorry for the people of Venezuala as their country is destroyed around them by the failed ideas of the 20th century.

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Howard Dean was a major contender for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2004, and later served as Chairman of the DNC.  In other words, he is a mainstream Democrat.  It is thus significant when he says a bit of capitalism mixed with a dab of socialism is the way to go.

This level of ignorance is frightening.  The “third way” between capitalism and socialism is exactly what created the financial crisis.  It is also delivering Europe into an abyss of dependence and moonbattery.  As Hayek warned, half measures of socialism will lead inevitably to the full thing.

We know what works.  It’s called free enterprise, and it’s based on simple principles, such as individual rights and personal responsibility.  We abandoned this approach over 70 years ago and are suffering the consequences today.  It’s time to bring it back.

Hat-tip: A Chequer Board of Nights & Days

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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and some still find “perplexing” the failures of socialism:

This country may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse.

President Hugo Chávez has been facing a public outcry in recent weeks over power failures that, after six nationwide blackouts in the last two years, are cutting electricity for hours each day in rural areas and in industrial cities like Valencia and Ciudad Guayana. Now, water rationing has been introduced here in the capital.

The deterioration of services is perplexing to many here, especially because the country had grown used to cheap, plentiful electricity and water in recent decades. But even as the oil boom was enriching his government and Mr. Chávez asserted greater control over utilities and other industries in this decade, public services seemed only to decay, adding to residents’ frustrations.

In other South American news:

Populist leaders in Latin America are increasingly making legal and political moves to silence their critics in the media, the president of the Inter American Press Association said Friday.

The leaders’ tactics include revoking broadcast licenses, fostering hostility toward journalists and giving a free hand to government supporters who have attacked broadcast stations, newsrooms and printing plants, said the association’s president, Enrique Santos Calderón.

The headline reads, “Latin American Leaders Seek to Rein in Media, Press Group Says,” but thanks to the President’s war on Fox News, the ‘Latin’ qualifier for such stories has been rendered superfluous.

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I’m sure most of you reacted the same way I did upon seeing that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace prize: “This has got to be a joke.” I realize it’s cliché to claim that reaction to unlikely news, but in this case I literally assumed someone had fallen for a clever piece from The Onion.  Alas, that was not the case.

I know for a fact many are still perplexed, as the top search on Google for most of the day was “obama nobel peace prize for what.”  For what, indeed.

The answer is fairly simple, though.  The prize is for being a dedicated socialist.  The Nobel Peace prize, you see, has never been anything but an ideological prize, a treat to re-enforce what European leftists consider positive behavior.

I think the awarding of the prize to Obama after so short a tenure in office is a gift for those of us who have long lamented the worthlessness of the prize.  Questioning its worth is now a mainstream endeavor, as the prestige of the “Nobel” label has been wiped away to reveal nothing but a silly little trophy awarded by a sadly loyal group of adherents to a dying philosophy.

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Fixed for accuracy.

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