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Archive for 09:26 PM
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07:30 PMOrtega Follows Zelaya Surprise! Now the Nicaraguan president wants to change term limits.
03:05 PM
Jaime Daremblum
A few weeks ago, at a public celebration to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega moved one step closer to creating an autocracy. Speaking to a large crowd, Ortega called for changing the Nicaraguan constitution to allow his own reelection. Under current law, Nicaraguan presidents are prohibited from serving consecutive terms and are limited to two five-year terms overall. In order to be “just and fair,” said Ortega, whose term ends in 2012, the country should amend its constitution to let presidents seek reelection.
His timing was impeccable. The ongoing political crisis in Honduras began when its former president, Manuel Zelaya, tried to rewrite the Honduran constitution in hopes of changing term-limit requirements and prolonging his presidency. Now Ortega wants to do something very similar. Like Zelaya before him, he is following the Hugo Chávez playbook. The radical Venezuelan leader rewrote entirely his country’s constitution shortly after taking office in 1999, and earlier this year he succeeded in demolishing presidential term limits. Two other Chávez imitators, President Evo Morales of Bolivia and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, have also changed their countries’ constitutions. The pattern is unmistakable: Chávez established the model, and his fellow populist leftists are copying it.
Ortega, Morales, and Correa are all members of Chávez’s Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, as was Zelaya prior to his removal. It’s clear that they receive their instructions from Caracas. While all claim to be democrats, they have a curious understanding of how genuine democracy works. Upon searching the headquarters of Zelaya’s unconstitutional “referendum” project, Honduran authorities seized computer files with voting results–even though no actual voting had taken place. (This story has been widely reported in Honduras, though not in the United States.) According to Honduran reports, one of the confiscated files already contained 480 “valid” ballots out of 530 ballots “cast.” Not surprisingly, 450 of these ballots said “yes” to Zelaya’s proposal for a constitutional convention and only 30 said “no,” meaning that 93.7 percent were in favor and only 6.3 percent were opposed. In addition, there were ballot boxes stuffed with the prearranged results, all courtesy of Hugo Chávez, who actually had them flown in from Venezuela. This evidence suggests that Zelaya and his allies were planning to perpetrate massive electoral fraud.
Zelaya’s attempt to fix the Honduran vote before it even occurred provides further evidence that he is no true democrat. His conception of democracy is more like the “democracy” practiced in Iran, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cronies recently stole a presidential election through the use of mobile ballot boxes rigged with their desired results. Unfortunately for Ahmadinejad, even his dictatorial regime was not able to conceal the embarrassing fact that there were more votes cast than the number of registered voters.
Ortega is a big supporter of the Iranian leader–he has honored him with two of Nicaragua’s most prestigious awards: the Liberty Medal and the Rubén Darío Medal–and, like Ahmadinejad, he has committed blatant electoral fraud. The November 2008 mayoral “election” in Managua represented a shameless theft by Ortega’s Sandinista party. Indeed, the election-rigging was so shameless that it prompted European nations to suspend aid to Nicaragua. If Nicaragua holds a vote on changing its constitution, there is no doubt that Ortega will use whatever tricks and shenanigans are necessary to secure his preferred result.
Zelaya is currently a “guest” of his good friend in Nicaragua. The ousted Honduran president and his supporters have set up camps near the Honduras-Nicaragua border. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration appears to be “softening” its support for Zelaya. In a letter sent to Republican senator Richard Lugar and reviewed by the Journal, senior State Department official Richard Verma writes that “President Zelaya’s insistence on undertaking provocative actions contributed to the polarization of Honduran society and led to a confrontation that unleashed the events that led to his removal.” As the Journal notes, this represents “the harshest criticism yet of Mr. Zelaya’s own actions that preceded his removal from office.” On the other hand, a Foggy Bottom spokesman unfamiliar with Verma’s letter told the Journal that “there has been no decision to soften the policy on Honduras,” and the letter itself reaffirms that the U.S. government “energetically” denounces Zelaya’s expulsion from the presidency.
When it comes to Central America, U.S. officials should remember that Zelaya and Ortega are faux democrats willing to commit fraud in the service of their political ambitions. They prefer elections with predetermined results, akin to the “democratic ratification processes” in Castro’s Cuba. Neither should be trusted.
Jaime Daremblum, who served as Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United States from 1998 to 2004, is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute.
Primacy of Culture in Caritas in Veritate
09:39 PM
Encyclical Offers Opportunity to Think With the Church
Jennifer Roback Morse
SAN MARCOS, California, JULY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate” is his contribution to the course of Catholic social teaching.
Many commentators seem to read this document as if it were a think-tank white paper, and ask whether the Pope endorses their particular policy preferences. I must say that I surprised myself by not reflexively reading it in this way. After all, I spent many years teaching free-market economics.
I distinctly remember reading “Centesimus Annus” for the first time, and mentally checking to see if I agreed with it.
But this is not the correct way to read papal documents. The papacy’s prophetic role is to interpret the past, and provide guidance for the future, while avoiding the excesses of its own time.
In “Caritas in Veritate,” Benedict XVI argues for the centrality of moral considerations in both economics and politics. Without charity and truth, we cannot create a truly decent society, no matter how sophisticated our technology or how thorough-going our democracy.
Benedict XVI stresses the centrality of the social, cultural sphere for several reasons.
First, neither the economic nor the political spheres can function entirely on their own. Both the economic and the political sectors need to be peopled with individuals who have well-formed consciences. Therefore, economics and politics rely upon the Church, the family, and other social structures that shape the conscience.
Second, the cultural sphere needs its own defense. Both the economic and the political sectors have plenty of ideological defenders. The libertarian right seems to believe that the market can manage all of society. The socialist left seems to think that the government can solve every problem and wipe away every tear.
Extremists on both sides fail to respect culture’s distinctive role.
The modern ideologies that reify either the state or the market have difficulty understanding that the encroachments of their preferred sphere into the social and cultural sphere have the potential to dehumanize us.
Benedict XVI insists that we can’t allow the state to redefine marriage, simply to satisfy demands for equality more proper to politics. The drive for same sex marriage, as well as much of the feminist movement before it, took this form. And we can’t allow the market to take over the process of bringing forth the next generation.
Mothers and fathers give themselves to one another in an act of self-donation that can result in the bringing forth of new life. The child conceived in this way has been given an incalculable gift. By contrast, the child whose parents brought him into being in a laboratory, are made, not begotten. They are treated as though they are inferior to their makers.
But as I said, I surprised myself by agreeing with Benedict, even when the policy preferences implied in “Caritas in Veritate” did not line up with my own. That’s because I found myself in agreement with the deeper perspective that underlies the particular policy recommendations.
When I read Benedict XVI’s argument in paragraph 2 that we should not detach charity from juridical, political and economic fields, I realized that I had said something like that in my book “Love and Economics.”
When I read in “Caritas in Veritate” 44 that we must have “full respect for human values in the exercise of sexuality,” I realized that I said something like that in another book, “Smart Sex.”
Obviously, it would be presumptuous to claim that Benedict XVI got the idea from me. In fact, I got the idea from the papacy. I have been absorbing Catholic social teaching during the 20 years that I have been involved with the Acton Institute.
“Thinking with the Church,” means absorbing papal teaching and allowing ourselves to be changed by it. Every time I reread “Rerum Novarum,” or “Centesimus Annus,” I learn something new about the social order.
And of course, in my particular line of work at the Ruth Institute, rereading Pope John Paul II’s “Love and Responsibility” and “The Theology of the Body” always creates a fresh appreciation for the Church’s humane vision of marriage, sexuality and child-rearing.
No, the truth is that I get all my best ideas from the papacy. I have no doubt that “Caritas in Veritate” will likewise prove to be a rich source of wisdom for “All People of Good Will,” to whom it is addressed.