Watch South America Go Down the Tubes

While many conservatives are fearful of the resurgence of left-wing dictators in Latin America, there is another response. Sadness.

At the start of the twenty-first century we know what happens when a left-wing dictator takes power and centralizes control of all resources into the political sector. It is poverty.

In 1917 left-wing thugs took power in Russia. Eighty years later, after dreadful famines and wars, it collapsed into frank poverty and failure.

In 1949 a left-wing thug took power in China. Thirty years later, after about 60 million deaths, it started to spin away from the dead hand of state capitalism and immediately the energy of the Han people set China on the road to prosperity.

And let us not forget the pathetic left-wing thug Fidel Castro who has wrecked the island of Cuba in his 45 years of misrule.

Now Evo Morales, the elected president of Bolivia has nationalized the Bolivian natural gas industry. And the left-wing Presidents of Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina have got together to say that all is well.

But with South America turning to left-wing thugs like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, we know what to expect. Poverty, thuggery, and misery. Powered by the fuel of nationalized energy industries they will strut and fret for a season. And then energy prices will go down and the people will suffer.

And the nationalized energy industry, run by incompetent political hacks, will go down the tubes.

Do we have anything to fear from the South American energy thugs? Probably not. Energy is energy. There’s a world market, and oil is fungible.

But if there is one thing that the twentieth century has taught us. Democratic capitalism works, every time it is tried. And it brings immediate and consistent prosperity to the people. Dictators don’t.