Wow.  Comparing Chavez to Kim Jung Un and Stalin!  He was a bad leader, but no need to go Godwin.  Damages credibility to equate them.

Good point, but why stop now? Why not discuss all the conservative supporters of dictators like Franco, Marcos, Batista, Saddam Hussein (in his war against Iran), etc, etc, etc...

Jeff you left out some info about Chavez. The reason he was able to rise to power in the first place was because of US investment in Venezuela's oil extraction and discovery.  The workers' children so poor they get kicked out of school because they couldn't afford shoes. And the rich petroleum-financed gated communities rising in the midst of squallor. The complicity of US-backed CIA thugs placed to squelch any development of unionization.  A person would have to be an idiot to think those conditions would not result in the eventual rise of a leftist government.  

Jeff nailed it once again.  Giermund, you take the stance that seems to support Chavez' rule, and the tactics he used.  The cause of why left wing thugs rise to power is usually populism, as was the case with him.  But Jeff's point is all about the behavior of the left wing populist once he attains power.  These thugs have been heroes to many in America, and thus the term "useful idiots" is so very fitting.

Dang, Jacoby...this article is dead spot on. I tend to tip my cap to you often. Very rarely do I disagree. But this one was a homerun. I know you only get so many words to say...But the rise of the American Socialist Party in the 1920's and 1930's that ran counter to the "failed" Democracy and Capitalist society is another example. FDR took many of their ideas to Washington. Same for Johnson who continued and added to those policies. Happy 50th birthday, Welfare!

During my radical youth, I denied stories about the Cambodian genocide.  I argued that these stories must be capitalist lies because the Khmer Rouge espoused national liberation and social equality.  Later I learned that the stories of Marxist mass murder were true.  I had been a "useful idiot."

Well there isn't much to argue with Jeff in his description of Stalin.  What I find disconcerting is the capacity fo rcommentators to compare "Marxist" economic theory to Communism as implimented in the Soviet Union, even though I think Marxism fails regardless of implimentation, it certainly wasn't implimented by Stalin.  Still folks somehow get around to comparing Marxism to Socialism, then socialism to Social Democracy and then run right down and compare them all to American's attempt to alleviate the issue of poverty and the excesses of Capitalism.  Apparently a lot of people although admirers of Adam Smith and capitalism only read one his his books and forgot to follow through on his writings regarding ethics and morality.

It is as if folks are so ideological that riationality is overcome by ideology.  It would take to long here to be accurate in terms of why so many progressives of the 20's and 30's embraced Stalin, but you could try to read a few books.  While you are at it read a few on why Franco was so popular with the right.  Even Hitler and Mussolini had his "useful idiots" on the right. 

I find this need by so many to pick their "tribal" winners a bit saddening but I guess that's what it means to be human for a lot of folks.  But then youth always has its favorite "pop" theories many following Communisms twin brother Libertarianism.  You know tow marvelous theories when your a freshman in college.

One can be a champion of the poor, as Chavez certainly was, and be a dictator that trampled human rights and political expression. He has left Venezuela with a vacuum. I am glad that this dictator has gone, but his huge popularity at home is due to the perception/reality that he championed the plight of the poor via education and health care. Had he just used state oil revenues to accomplish these goals, without expropriating property and running roughshod over his opposition, he would have been a universally praised success. Instead, he appropriated the image of Simon Bolivar the liberator as he aggregated all the powers of the state to his own person. In the US, we have developed a culture that blames the poor for their plight, using anecdotal evidence of "welfare queens" that are either lazy or gaming the system. Republicans rarely acknowledge the millions trying to build a better life for themselves via hard work, not least of whom are immigrants, legal or otherwise. In other parts of the world, poverty is poverty, and there are fewer opportunities to pull yourself out. Chavez DID take advantage of that and gets credit for that. Joe Kennedy got oil for the poor from Chavez. Why couldn't ExxonMobil have provided that oil instead?

One can argue theories back and forth, as Attaturk does above.  But when all is said and done, what Jeff wrote about is left leaning liberals gushing over dead dictators.  The gamut runs from the truly awful like Stalin, to clowns like Chavez.

What the lefties like about Chavez is the way he just circumvented the constitution of Venezuela and ran it like, well, a dictator.  Many of our lefties love that method.  They would like to jam their ideas down others throats using the same means.

Now, Cuomo and Bloomberg are a far cry from Chavez and Stalin, but their antics are similar. The lefties love them in NY.  Regulate soft drinks, it is good for the people, nevermind it is none of governments business.  Cuomo declares gun control an emergency and pushes through dubious legislation at 3 in the morning in an attempt to circumvent normal democratic processes in that state.  Of course the lefties love that too, they get what they want without all the inconvenience of doing it the democratic way.

The lefties gush over dead dictators because they would like to convince everyone else that dictators are not so bad, really.  They do some good things even though they may have murdered tens of millions or violated everyone's human rights.  Give me a break!

In ignoring all the right-wing, death squad supporting tyrants in Central and South America, it seems that Jeff has provided us with the perfect description of a 'useful idiot'.

Interesting column, Jeff. However I must point out some facts that put Chavez and Kim Jung Un in very different catagories. Chavez was elected. He didn't inherit power from his father and grandfather, who were treated like Gods. Poverty under Chavez was cut in half during his time in office, while Kim Jung Un starved his people. What happened to the people who plotted against Chavez in 2002? What do you think would have happened to people if people even joked about plotting to topple Kim Jung Un? As decrepid as Venezuela's economy is, I'm not aware of any forced labor camps or people surviving by eating grass. You might not like Chavez, you may disagree with his economic philosophy or his heavy-handed tactics for implementing his vision, but putting him in the same category as Kim Jung Un shows a certain lack of ...perspective.

You forgot to mention the poster boy: John Kerry

Oops, WNG, you forgot to mention Ronald Reagan (Saddam Hussein)...

You, Jeff, Richmond12, and several other commenters seem to think that 'useful idiocy' is a liberal/left phenomenon. Alas, no - it operates from both sides of the aisle, and all across human relations in general.

Love is blind. When we humans are attached to a theory, view or doctrine, we are deeply - in fact, neurologically - predisposed to overlook evidence to the contrary. There was plenty of evidence, ignored by some on the left, that Stalin was a mass murderer, just as some on the right had earlier discounted disturbing evidence about Adolf Hitler. More recently, some liberal/lefties have been no less willing to overlook the dark side of the Chávez regime than conservative/righties were in regard to the Contras. Neither was in the same league as Hitler or Stalin, but the phenomenon is the same, and widespread. 

Thus, the comments page today has been something of a Rorschach test: do you experience this aspect of history as confirming your cherished theories and views, or are you more alert to the nature of your views? Have you even explored where they came from? (If you were a credulous leftist in your youth, like Ozark, how is it that you let yourself become a credulous right winger in adulthood?)

Jeff, you are a useLESS idiot.  Of course certain liberals were wrong about Stalin and remained wrong about Eastern Europe through 1989.  In the 1960s, my refugee parents used to get told regulary how their homeland-turned-police-state was actually a workers' paradise.  But the errors of the right are if anything even worse - Henry Ford and Hitler?  Various senators and the KKK? Support of dictators all over the world?  That list would make for a much longer book.  Sheeeesh.

It does not require a leftist ideology to treat your own people as enemy combatants as Pinochet did in Chile, or to throw dissidents out of helicopters into the ocean as the generals in Argentina did. Nor does it require a leftist ideology to loudly support governments and leader who engage in such behavior. All it requires is to convinced yourself that the cause, of Communism or Anti-communism in these cases, is more important than the methods by which it is advanced.

Note how the Lefties immediately point out the errors of the Righties, but also note that Righties did not run around extolling the virtues of those morons they helped put in power when it became clear what they were, and those morons finally had the decency to die.

Lefties always have a problem with facing the truth, of course, when one is wearing rose-tinted goggles, the truth appears a little strange.

So Mr. Jacoby is opposed to the policies of these dictators, and chastises the “idiots” who support their policies.  So it’s strange then that many of the leaders of Mr. Jacoby’s own party support similar policies to the ones he condemns in other nations: To increase suffering on the poor by cutting food stamps and voucherizing Medicare; To shift the tax burden onto our nation’s poorest individuals by lowering taxes on those most fortunate; To limit democracy by gerrymandering Republican districts to ensure a Republican majority in the House, eliminating the Voting Rights Act, and passing voter ID laws making it more difficult for many to vote; and to increase human rights violations by voting against the Violence Against Women Act, either on its own merits or because it provided protections to LGBT citizens.

I guess tyrants are only terrible if you disagree with them.

In addition to my reply before, I would point out that if you read Mary Anastasia O'Grady's column in the WSJ "The Americas", you would find out in more detail what Chavez and other South American leaders have really done over the years.

HINT: Totalitarianism was a word coined in the 1930's to describe Stalin's regime. This word was more descriptive of Stalin. Back then, people were ignorant of his brutal form of "governing" through purges. Jacoby has simplified everything in this article to prove his point to make liberals appear stupid. He gathers the facts and then twists them to form his biases.

How about Jesse Jackson attending the funeral?  Why not go after him?  Remember when Jackson successfully negotiated with Saddam Hussein for the release of foreign workers and children when Hussein shut down the Iraq borders back in 1990? His numerous successful negotiations are the stuff of legend.

Dictators come in all stripes: left, right, middle, and impossible to categorize. They can be called king, president, emperor, great leader, fuehrer, or whatever. Dictatorship has nothing to do with political philosophy. No major political philosophy, including communiism, advocates dictatorship.

Jacoby, though, seems to think dictators are left-wing, which is a kind of idiocy in itself. Maybe Jacoby is an example of a *useless* idiot.

"History"  I don't argue the theories I give all the theories a certain amount of respect in terms of ideas that they develop that I think are correct.  Far from it.  If you read my comment you would note I was critical of those who make false comparisons.  I am critical of anyone who leaps into an ideology and says, "this is the way to go".  Whether that ideology is unbridled capitalism, socialism, communism, facism or any other ism you can think of.  Simply put it is my opinion that ideologues of any color much like religious zealots of any color lead to the failures and suffering that manking periodically struggles through.

I have no use for communists, libertarians, all or nothing socialists or any other puritan.  To me they are children, give me what works from each idea and I am a happy man.   You on the other hand can't see an issue without your "right wing" colored glasses.  To say Chavez did nothing for the poor is to ignore what he did do for the poor.  Bright he wasn't although smart enough to win election.  A saint he wasn't but his people loved him.  Now you may not think so but a long time ago after I came home from the war and was in my first year of college I wrote a paper on "Ho Chi Minh" the saint.  The point of the paper that to the Vietnamese he was, it doesn't matter what he was to me or to anyone else.  I think the same very much applies to Chavesz regardless of what I think of him.

"Kitch" I agree regarding the RCC, but man you've got a thing with those folks.  They just don't take up that much of my thinking time.

"NateHawthorne" 

I almost forgot you as your comment was hidden.  Marx was not suspicious of the individual and I never considered that to be his failure.  In fact Marx's biggest weakness was he thought to highly of people.  He actually thought that through the proletariat one would find the necessary compassion and utility of thought to form a more utopian society.  It was almost as if he believed the workers had a better consciousness than the capitalists, which of course wasn't true.  The basic problem with Marxism has always been an overblown belief in the people.  The basic weakness in capitalism has always been that it would be self-correcting that government would not take the side of business which was pretty dumb.  But then Adam Smith actually didn't believe in the "free market" as it is expressed by today's Libertarians for if one read the balance of his writings you would see he saw a very strong position in government in terms of assisting in retaining the economic balance and in caring for the welfare of those who would lose within the system.  Of course your Ayn Rand types don't buy into this, you call them the fringe, I call them today's Republcan Party.

Jacoby does it again.  first, of course, VERY FEW liberals supported stalin and the vast majority of them had stopped doing so by the 40's.  (No Jeff, opposing the cold war and the nuclear arms race doesn't make you a stalinist)  Second, to compare stalin to the sandinistas goes beyond even your usual right wing blather.  The Sandinistas were ELECTED in an election that every nuetral outside observing agency said was fair. And, they had a second election while in the midst of an armed terrorist war being waged by mercenaries financed and backed by the US who also were forcing a world wide economic boycott of the Nicaraguan people.  And, when they lost that election, they left power.  And, of course, now the possibly of further american terroristic attacks is very small, the nicaraguan have voted them back in to power.  Similarly, Ho.  To compare him to Stalin is to be sublimely ridiculous.  Similarly, many more of his spins such as his attacks on Chavez.

But where was jacoby and his ilk when their heroes of the right were supporting Hitler during the 30's?  Or when the conservative movement was supporting the brutual aparthetid dictatorship?  Or when they supported Franco's reign of terror? Or when they endorsed and supported the Greek Colonel' 'brutal dicatorship?

And what abojut the right wing's support of the brutal enforcement of segregation in the US south?  And leading rightwingers such as william buckley urging southern segregationists to resist court orders to intergrate?  And his, and their, support of segregationists preventing Afro-americans from access to education, voting, medical care, even access to bathrooms?

Speaking of useful idiots, you go jeff

More demonization of American progressives by the very simple-minded Mr Jacoby. Shocking. Arguing with his feeble thesis is a waste of time.

@attaturk, we certainly differ on what level of government involvement mainstream conservatives (and libertarians) think is appropriate.  You're entitled to your opinion, but with all due respect being on this side of the political fence I believe I have a better sense for what conservatives want than you may.

And I think you've hit the nail on the head with the  comment "In fact Marx's biggest weakness was he thought to highly of people."   IMO, one of the defining differences between liberal and conservative policy is this:  liberals tend to craft policy based on the way people **should** behave and conservatives craft policy on the way the **do** behave.  A sweeping generalization, I realize, but I think you may find it more true than it first appears.

NatHawthorne: "IMO, one of the defining differences between liberal and conservative policy is this:  liberals tend to craft policy based on the way people **should** behave and conservatives craft policy on the way the **do** behave."

Nice try, NH, but far too many 'conservative' policies fly in the face of how people DO behave. For example, 'liberal' attitudes toward homosexuality and gay marriage are far more realistic about human (and animal) nature than 'conservative' ones. Likewise, liberals' opposition to the Iraq War was far more realistic than neocon support, which disregarded the facts pertaining both to Saddam's involvement with Al Qaeda (zero) and the dynamic within and around Iraq. The neocon vision was largely based on how Iraqis SHOULD behave once encouraged to take up democracy and mend sectarian fences, and not realistic about their history or current internal dynamics. The neocons were wrong in so many ways, weren't they? And things didn't turn out the way they thought they would, did they? If you don't like how Iran's role in the region has changed since 2003, you can chalk it up to a failure in the 'conservative' vision to actually see what people were DOING there.

Back to your generalization: it would be fairer and much more accurate to say that sometimes each perspective, 'conservative' and 'liberal', inclines toward policy based on what one SHOULD/NOT do, and in other instances how people ACTUALLY BEHAVE. If a difference can be delineated, it seems to have more to do with a stronger need among conservative thinkers to protect the interests of oneself and one's groups above all. You might be interested in an emerging body of research indicating differences in brain processing, particularly in regard to fear and risk, exhibited by Dems & Repubs (for example, check out http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0052970). There's no question that most conservatives FEAR gays, death panels, the confiscation of their firearms, and the prospect that immigrants and the poor will take some of their share of the pie, for example, just as they FEARED blacks and women acquiring the vote, and FEARED Social Security and Medicare. Liberals have their fears, too, perhaps, but their historic opposition to injustice and support for egalitarian policies - or at least egalitarian-sounding ones like Stalinism! - are based on generosity and hope.

Let's be realistic: both hope and fear can be groundless, and their outcomes disastrous. When we look at these kinds of striking neural differences, though, which enable researchers to accurately predict political affiliation based on brain processing, one has to wonder: are we and our behaviors more determined than we think? Is the divergence of our political inclinations comparable to the difference between bonobos (cooperative, pansexual, female-centered) and chimpanzees (aggressive, starkly hierarchical and patriarchal)?

@nimitta, I acknowledged my statement was a generalization.  And while I didn't mention this in my post I was thinking of it more in the area of social policy than anything else.  It's an observation on my part, and citing a couple of examples where you think it doesn't apply is unlikely to undo the effect of those observations or invalidate the generalization.

You've taken a kind of shotgun approach in your reply.   This forum does not allow me the space to reply in any detail on all you points, so I'll make a few statements on each.  If you'd like to challenge any of them, feel free.

I don't see how your comments on conservative policy re gay rights issues are in anyway relevant to the topic.  You may not like right's view on issues like gay marriage but that is not, per se, evidence that those policies are wrong in the same way that the retched chronicle of the Soviet Empire exposes the flaws in Marx's theories.

As for the liberals' "opposition to the Iraq War," if you'd like a reminder pm who the prominent members of the Democratic leadership were who spoke out supporting the case for Iraqi WMD and supported military action, please let me know.   That war was begun with bipartisan support.  The remarkable case of left's Iraq-amnesia came later.

I think your point about the Bush administration belief re how Iraqis would react post-Hussein is completely accurate.  They totally misjudged the post-invasion risks.

As for an assessment that conservatives believe what they do out of "FEAR" or perhaps due to some general propensity toward cowardness, I suspect that is more an expression of liberal arrogance and, in general, a low tolerance for diverse opinion...

...which leads me to my other generalization of liberals, as group they often confuse policy an objective.  Against Obamacare?  Must be because you don't care if others have access to medical care.  Against racial quotas?  Must be deep seated racism.  Want to curb the welfare state?  Must be because you want to see children starve.  Against redefining the institution of marriage?  Must be because you FEAR gays.    Extremists of all stripes engage in this sort of behavior, but I see it a surprising amount of it among more mainstream liberals.   It's all rather childish, IMO.

(am not posting this as a reply as I find the "Reply" feature on these comments pages unreliable)

@nimitta

"HomoPHOBIA" is term that has been largely coined by the gay rights movement.   That it has been picked up by the mainstream media and liberal policy advocates is not evidence that fear is in fact a motivation for those to whom the epithet is directed.   I'm sure there are people for whom this term applies quite well, but IMO, it's thrown around far too liberally (pun most definitely intended).

Even the words you chose do not necessarily have their roots in fear.  I, for example, have an "aversion" -- sometimes even a "visceral aversion" -- to those who exhibit racism.  That does not mean a fear racists. 

To you last question, Jacoby, or any of us for that matter, need not point out the flaws in everyone in order to credibly point out the flaws in someone.  When posting on this website do you regularly balance any critisim of, say, Congressional Republians with a list of  Obama's faults?