Support for Pinochet

Comments on the Jane Galt blog praise Pinochet:

Pinochet is the only leader of our time who returned a democratic nation brought to its knees by terrorists back from the brink of chaos. Chile is today a prosperous and democratic state. Pinochet reinvigorated the institutions of the nation and laid the foundations of the most prosperous nation of South America.

If you want dictators to voluntarily give up power, you have to give them the same soverign immunity for their acts in office after they leave office that they have as long as they stay in office. Otherwise, the only rational action for a dictator is to cling to power as long as possible.

The comment that "Pinochet was a murderous dictator" is only partially correct. Pinochet was a "dictator" but he was not "murderous". The murder and terrorism that the communists unleashed in Chile would be more correctly termed as murderous. They took human lives without the mandate afforded to them by the state. They set off the chain of vents that culminated in the need for Pinochet to take power. Pinochet employed the force necessary to re-establish law and order to the nation.

In my mind Pinochet is the greatest leader in the second half of the 20th century.

He saved Chile from total Marxist ruin, and brought it to a remarkable free market revolution, much deeper and earlier that the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions. Thanks to that, Chile is now the most succesful and prosperous nation in South America, by far. And he laso restored a vibrant democracy.

The lefties and the press are denigrating him as a monster because he had the temerity to stand up to violent marxist terrorists and annihilate them -- there is no bigger crime in the eyes of the left than thwarting their revolutionary and murderous ambitions.

I'm not a Chilean, but I lived there for 2 years during Pinochet's regime, and his free-market revolution was something fantastic to behold. It was no totalitarian state (lamentably I have experienced that horror too).

So, three cheers for Pinochet, and long may he live.

The Left is cheering that this 90-year-old is being prosecuted for tax evasion. I'm glad that someone is defending him. He saved Chile.