Chavez dies

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has died.

I don’t care that he had economic policies I disagreed with. People are entitled to have different economic policies.

I do care that he oversaw a massive loss of press freedom in Venezuela and a huge increase in human rights violations.

Chavez was a shining example of the wisdom of term limits (which he got abolished). But it seems nature dealt him its own term limit.

Power often corrupts, and too often those in the top jobs get obsessed with doing everything they can to hang on to power for life, rather than doing the best job they can do  over say ten years, and then retiring.

Chavez shut down almost every major independent media source in the country. If you can control the media, you can keep control of the country.

Worth reading this 2010 article by Christopher Hitchens who actually met Chavez. It seems his paranoia was very real.