Saying No to Venezuela

Sometimes liberals just leave you scratching your head. For a political philosophy that purported values human rights, what is it about the psychic makeup of a liberal that leads them to embrace any socialist dictator.

Recently we were treated to the unseemly spectacle of Baltimore Schools CEO Andres Alonso waxing poetic about public education in Cuba. Now we have Montgomery County Councilman Marc Elrich first inviting, and then rescinding that invitation, the Venezuelan ambassador to come to Montgomery County to talk about funding local social programs.

Now we’d be the first to agree that philosophically Montgomery County has more in common with Venezuela than it does with most of the rest of the United States. So this does seem like a natural linkage. To his credit, County Executive Ike Legget responded unambiguously:

Talk of a visit was so potentially explosive that Leggett issued a strongly worded statement from Israel. “We do not want to be involved in this visit. We are not involved with this visit,” he said. “Montgomery County can take care of its own problems. Thank you. No thank you.”

Trending: Thank You

Other than being surprised at Legget doing the sane and reasonable thing, it was shocking to see that Elrich was… well, shocked at the outcry, especially from large segments of the Latino community, over going to a third world thug, hat in hand, begging for a handout.

After pulling the plug on the visit, Elrich expressed surprise at the outcry. “This is silly,” he said, because U.S. government leaders meet with representatives of countries they disagree with all the time. “There’s no uproar about it. Nobody says, ‘Don’t you dare meet with them.’ ”

I guess Mr. Elrich isn’t quite clear on the roles of nations and counties but that would seen to be dwarfed by the fact that he has his head firmly emplanted in his fourth point of contact.



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