According to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the most important aspect of Hugo Chavez's political legacy is his inclusion of Venezuela's enormous, poor, displaced, slum-dwelling population into the political realm. Regardless of one's opinions on the policies championed by the Chavez administration this fact cannot be downplayed. Millions of people who previously had no political voice are now an enormous factor in Venezuela's democratic process. During the first three years of the Chavez administration the government created a new constitution that was put out to popular vote. In Venezuela's poorest communities an unprecedented degree of political consciousness erupted. Chapters and clubs started popping up everywhere called "Bolivarian circles." The meet-ups and groups are run by citizens of Venezuela with the purpose of informing and educating people about their rights and their constitution.
Concrete proof that political consciousness and activism had reached a historic high was displayed in 2002 when a U.S. backed coup briefly threw Chavez out of power. As the self-proclaimed interim government took power and announced to Venezuelan's that their institutions where being dissolved, hundreds of thousands of people poured out of the Caracas slums and stormed upon the capital. People demanded that their president be put back in power. Film of the event showed people, from sects of society that were previously excluded from political activity, telling camera men that the president could only be taken out of office with a referendum. What more proof is needed to show that the most important aspect to maintaining a free and fair society is education and awareness?
As the 2008 U.S. presidential race approaches we should keep this in mind. Knowledge of our constitutional rights and our founding principles are at a seemingly all time low. The current mainstream national discourse is the only thing that needs to be examined to know that today's most disastrous trends will continue regardless of which “front-runner" ends up in the White House. The key issues that are affecting America and the world as we know it are not being discussed by any of the candidates. The inflationary spending and massive debt that is destroying the U.S. dollar and economy is not something that the mainstream candidates will address. State sovereignty is all but disappearing and being replaced by centralized federal policy. America's foreign policy has become more openly hostile and unprincipled than ever before and American citizens are not nearly as safe today as they feel because of it.
The American constitution is truly a revolutionary historical document. It is truly the only thing that binds Americans together. We do not share a common cultural or ethnic identity/history, we share the constitution and a belief in the principles it puts forth. Unfortunately the American constitution has been forgotten for all practical purposes. Today it functions in a similar fashion to that of Britain's Queen; People love to pay lip service to it but for political purposes it has become irrelevant. The size and power of the current federal government would be an impossible nightmare to the architects of the constitution. The constitution provides a system of checks and balances to keep any one branch of government from becoming too powerful but today we no longer have de-centralized state and local power, we have an unconstitutional income tax, we have unconstitutional undeclared wars that have thousands and thousands of innocent victims. We have a monetary and economic system that makes life harder on Americans every year. The founders of the constitution stated that the dollar must be backed by gold and silver so that the money supply could not be inflated and manipulated and today inflation is wiping out America's middle class and making the price of living skyrocket. I could keep going.
This brings me to Ron Paul. This presidential candidate is honest, principled, and still believes that the constitution should guide policy making in America. For these reasons as well as others, the 72 year old representative from Texas has no chance of being America's next president. The constitution was put in place to guarantee that no person or class of people have more influence on exercising power in America than the next one of us. Since the constitution went out the window years ago a power structure has taken control of American policy making that remains invisible to most Americans. This class of people benefit hugely by controlling American foreign and domestic policy. The same group of people also controls media and communications so that this takeover of our government remains unknown to most of us even though it’s been going on for years. Ron Paul challenges this fact not by accusations and rhetoric but by asking people to read our constitution and by pointing out the blatant and obvious contradictions of power that may have not have always been so obvious to us. Ron Paul will not be in the White House next year but his campaign is still of the upmost importance. As demonstrated in Venezuela, the only thing that can save the democratic process is knowledge and education.
A huge movement has come under way with the Ron Paul campaign. He is drawing crowds by the thousands all over the country despite being shunned by the mainstream media and people are waking up everywhere. People who had no intention of voting in America's sham elections have all of the sudden found a voice, Democrats and Republicans are uniting behind Ron Paul. America will continue down its disastrous path but finally there are seeds of hope. He is gaining popularity by the second as people discover him and his message and the consciousness that is so desperately needed to save America from oblivion is spreading. This will be Ron Paul's political legacy and hopefully one day historians will look at what is happening right now as the start of a huge and important movement that developed into a national phenomenon of Americans re-asserting their political legacy of freedom and responsibility.
Every nation is currently seeing sects of its society resisting globalization in favor or reasserting national sovereignty. This can be seen as the beginning of America's movement against the erasing of our borders and the erosion of our freedoms and when things get really bad, which they will, it will be the ideas that we remembered from now that will act as a platform for the resistance.
- Matt Owens
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