Venezuela, with the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia, today looks more like Syria, noted a journalist. With the country in free fall, it is hard to imagine how it can last much longer. In daily updates, we listen to multiplying horror stories of no food, empty medicine shelves, stunning numbers of kidnappings, and the hemorrhaging of ten percent of its population in a matter of months.

This incredibly beautiful and rich-in-resource Latin American country is the paradigm of ideological delusion, bureaucratic dissonance, governmental piracy, police intimidation, and outright robbing of the public purse.