----George Pinto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I am sure there were Marxists who supported Liberation Theology but it is false to equate Liberation Theology with Marxism, a fallacy which gained currency with Reagan's myth that Central America was going communist.
Mario opines: Maybe Marxist is not the right analogy, but the liberation theology folks were considered unacceptably radical by the same people like JP-II who castigated materialism and capitalism. Romero may have been a true humanist, and he was right about the condition of the peasants, but he was surrounded by others who used him for their own radical purposes. And Reagan was not wrong because a) those were the days when the old Soviet Union was rampant and had a stated goal of world domination, b) they had a toe hold in Cuba, c) they came close to getting a foothold in Nicaragua, before they imploded under the weight and fundamental inefficiency of their own economic fallacies. All the Soviets would have achieved was to replace right-wing totalitarians with left-wing totalitarians, as we saw in Cuba, whose prisons make Abu Ghraib and Gitmo look like Boy Scout camps according some of my Cuban friends who have had family members imprisoned there. Just a couple of years ago they executed about 25 journalists and political opponents for Christ's sake. And, while asserting that Liberation theology was not Marxist, you are falling into the same trap by equating the right-wing nuts with capitalism. The South American dictators were right-wing totalitarians who had little to do with capitalism and free markets. The only thing they had in common with Reagan was that they were anti-communists. In geopolitics the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and history shows us that these can flip over time. Re. the US, I would like you to name me some monopolies. Maybe a few oligopolies in a theoretical sense. But with globalization what does either of those terms mean when they have to compete with alternatives from overseas? Most of the opposition to globalization and interference with free markets comes from political pressure from the labor unions - talk about oligopolies - and from the left wing of the Democrat party, and the need to be "flexible" in order to win elections, without which no progress can be made by an ideology. On the foreign policy front, I hope you noticed how easily the Democrat leadership, including Hillary to my surprise, all fell into Karl Rove's neatly set trap last week when they all assumed he was talking about THEM when he referred to liberals being weak on national defense, thus proving his point which will be used over and over again in future campaigns. It is going to be awhile before the country as a whole trusts any of these Dems with the nation's security.
