An Interview With Antonio Sosa (Part 2)
Here is Part 2 of my extended interview with Antonio Sosa, writer for Reason magazine and The Daily Caller.
How did living in the United States change your perspective about Venezuela?
Well, I think the United States has been undergoing a crisis of belief about the goodness of its founding principles for some time. Allan Bloom describes this situation, which is really a crisis of the entire West, in his brilliant book, The Closing of the American Mind.
I’ve long thought that the Venezuelan crisis is, actually, best studied as a small example of this larger crisis, the crisis of the West. I’d say the Venezuelan opposition represents –– in its half hazard and unconscious way –– the inheritance and continuity of Western civilization in Venezuela. But though this opposition finds Chavismo disgusting, it does not really know what an opposition to Chavismo is supposed to stand for. For this reason, the opposition has not yet been able to formulate and promote a comprehensive political doctrine explaining the superiority of its principles to those of Chavismo. Half the time, I would say the Venezuelan opposition seems to be unknowingly calling (or hoping) for a moderate form of socialism, in contrast to Chávez’ immoderate form. I doubt a regular Chavista voter –– of the kind the opposition has to eventually turn –– would ever prefer a bland imitation to the real thing.
I think the reason for this is that the Venezuelan opposition does not believe in the goodness and permanence of liberal principles of government, formulated and studied so well by those old and long departed liberals, men like Locke, Tocqueville, and Montesquieu, to name a few that come to mind.
Opposition leaders complain about Chavista injustices –– like the existence of political prisoners –– but they are not yet able to proclaim and rationally defend the goodness of, say, the principle of the separation of powers or the superiority of representative democracy over direct democracy. Opposition leaders know they want a separation of powers but they seem to have forgotten why a separation of powers leads to greater political justice.
Chávez, on the other hand, is able to defend his reasons for taking over the other branches of government, arguing (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly) that such deeds emancipate Venezuelans from the tyranny of Western “neo-liberal” (i.e. liberal) hegemony. Chávez might be wrong (in fact is) but he’s also coherent, while opposition leaders remain unable to rationally defend the liberal doctrine of the separation of powers and are therefore unable to make convincing speeches on behalf of the form of government that results from this doctrine.
In other words, the Venezuelan opposition knows that it opposes Chavismo, but it does not know that it supports (or should support) liberal democracy, the only conception of political justice that regards life, liberty, and the pursuit of property as being natural rights not susceptible to the edicts of minorities or the referendum of majorities. Because the opposition appears to ignore that it is in fact fighting for liberal democracy in Venezuela, it cannot make a coherent, comprehensive case against Chavismo at the level of doctrine. The opposition can, incidentally, point to the many Chavista abuses that have taken place and that continue to take place, but the opposition cannot explain, to the average Chavista voter, why the Chavista project is, in principle, inherently unjust. Until it does this, the opposition has not really entered the ring, but is merely booing from the bleachers. The opposition needs to formulate its conception of the good society and really begin to compete, on the level of ideas, with Chávez’ revolution (or, rather, Chávez’ rhetoric, which is considerable).
Thus, opposition leaders know they oppose Chávez, but they don’t really seem to know why they oppose Chávez. I’m not saying they have to be profound political theorists, but the best among them have to at least rise to the level of a Chávez when it comes to la batalla de ideas.
Living in the United States helped me see this because it gave me the opportunity to get “out of” the Venezuelan situation and look back into it in a more detached and disinterested manner.
What political change would you like to see happen?
The following is the principal lesson I would like Venezuelans to take away from our current situation (when and if we ever get out of it):
No referendum, however popular, can vitiate the natural rights of man, i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of property. If one accepts that the natural rights of man can be abrogated by the fiat of the majority, then one has just denied that men are by nature free and equal (I mean equal in rights and dignity) and therewith denied the only known basis for establishing the principle of popular sovereignty in the first place. In other words, without a liberal conception of natural rights, what people in the West like to call “democracy” can quickly and seductively degenerate into mob rule, what Tocqueville called the “tyranny of the majority,” and in so doing become as oppressive and hateful as any unelected dictatorship. That’s the lesson of the Venezuelan crisis.
My fantasy would be for an opposition government of the future to convene a constituent assembly in order to approve a bill of rights that would severely and explicitly limit the power of government. Such a bill would codify the natural rights of Venezuelans and would include, as our first and most important right, an amendment forbidding our National Assembly from making any law abridging the freedom of the press. In other words, we’d have something like the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Wouldn’t that be something? Of course, this is what I would like to see happen –– I’m not holding my breath.
What policy should the United States take toward Venezuela?
The US should take Chávez seriously and consider him an actual threat rather than an eccentric clown or mere “troublemaker.” What would this entail? Well, to begin with, the US should publicly excoriate Venezuela for establishing financial ties with Iran by means of the Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, which is a scheme to funnel funds to Iran in contravention of international sanctions. The US and the EU have already sanctioned the bank, but such sanctions need to be accompanied by tough words from top American officials. In other words, if Venezuela is helping to finance Iran’s nuclear program, or is in any way helping Iran in this regard, then this is a very serious offence against international security and should be treated as such by the US.
By not taking Chávez seriously, the US State Department and the president reveal themselves to be either credulous fools who can’t recognize an evident threat or condescending realists who think Venezuela can’t ever really matter in the larger, geopolitical scope of things.