Socialists are bad neighbours

From intimidating his citizens he's now spreading his wings to intimidate his country's neighbours.  Hugo Chavez is not just a bloward, but as Clint Heine succinctly summarises the just-sparked border conflict between Colombia and Venezuala, he's yet more proof that as an ideology ineluctably based on violence, socialism is bad both for the places that adopt it, and for their neighbours too.

Chavez's newfound foreign belligerence, which includes funding and training terrorism against his Colombian neighbours and now sending thousands of conscripted troops to sabre rattle along Colombia's borders, demonstrates again that the statism of Chavez and his ilk is what lies at the root of all wars.  Ayn Rand explains:

Statism—in fact and in principle—is nothing more than gang rule. A dictatorship is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country's economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals.

Statism needs war; a free country does not.

Hugo Chavez: providing lessons in bad governance since 1999.