Oil Wars

A few weeks ago I posted some sub-titled speeches by the students before the Venezuelan National Assembly. People seemed to enjoy those speeches so I thought I’d do some more sub-titling.

I wanted to do Chavez’s excellent inaugural speech from earlier this year. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a YouTube video of it. But I did find the text and so what follows is the inaugural speech of President Hugo Chavez in January 2007 [I have also bolded what I think are key passages from Chavez’s excellent speech]:

When six years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision--to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.

Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need--the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.

We sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.

Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships increase, so power to govern them also must increase--power to stop evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our Nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The Constitution of 1999 did not make our democracy impotent.

In fact, in these last eight years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The legend that they were invincible--above and beyond the processes of a democracy--has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.

Our progress out of the Fourth Republic is obvious. But that is not all that you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations.

In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.

This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can be no era of good feeling save among men of good will.

For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of Venezuela.

Among men of good will, science and democracy together offer an ever-richer life and ever-larger satisfaction to the individual. With this change in our moral climate and our rediscovered ability to improve our economic order, we have set our feet upon the road of enduring progress.

Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? For "each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth."

Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, "Tarry a while." Opportunism says, "This is a good spot." Timidity asks, "How difficult is the road ahead?"

True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended.

But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and suffering. The times were on the side of progress.

To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose.

Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision from January 1999? Have we found our happy valley?

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its twenty seven million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a Venezuela which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see millions of its citizens--a substantial part of its whole population--who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope--because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every Venezuelan citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on.

And absolutely great speech is it not? I certainly think so. There is only one thing, a confession I must make. Hugo Chavez never gave this speech. In fact it wasn’t even given this year, much less in Venezuela.

In reality it was given by this newly inaugurated President of the good old USA in 1937:



Here is a link to the full speech and you will note it is what I have just reprinted save a couple changes in names and dates.

Regardless, it sure does sound like a Chavez speech, doesn’t it. Just listen to it:

“we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The legend that they were invincible--above and beyond the processes of a democracy--has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.”

Or this:

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

Or this:

“This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.”

Or this:

I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

Or this:

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Of course, these are the types of things President Chavez says day in and day out. And for it he is pilloried at home and abroad by those who most definitely don’t want to see “private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government”.

So to was President Roosevelt. But we should remember that for uttering these words, and more importantly, acting upon them, he was elected President of the United States four consecutive times, no matter that those who "had much" despised him (there sure is something to be said for indefinite re-elections isn’t there).

But why did I take the time to re-print this speech and relate it to President Chavez? For me there is a very important reason but to explain it I have to make a confession.

Half the time that I write this blog I find it very depressing. How can I find it very depressing when so many good things are happening in Venezuela and the country is moving forward? Simple. While Venezuela is moving forward the country I live in is moving backwards. And while Venezuela is a beacon of human progress the U.S. has managed to make it self the torch barer of reaction.

But seeing that makes it all the more important that we not forget history and not forget that not all that long ago the U.S. too was capable of making itself a beacon of progress. No capitalism wasn’t replaced, racism and poverty weren’t eliminated and the U.S. did not become heaven on earth. But it did make very real progress via democratic means of building, if not a just society, at least a MORE just society.

In fact, whatever the U.S. working class has today in the way of benefits and social programs, it is largely owed to that time and its immediate aftermath.

For the last three or four decades we have seen much of what was then accomplished reversed. But the very fact of what was accomplished in the first place shows us that Americans are not innately right wing or anti-progressive. Under different conditions and different leadership they can also work hard to make their own society more like the one we would all like to live in.

So for those of us living in the more northerly part of the America’s lets not lose heart as we look upon what is happening in Venezuela. No, we will never have our own Hugo Chavez – every society is different and change manifests itself in different ways. But some day, in our own way, we too “will bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government” and build a better society.
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