"Diminishing freedom and national impoverishment"

Editor,

Did you have Sweden in mind when you equated socialism with "diminishing freedom and national impoverishment?"

Certainly the neoliberal Washington consensus -- which has ruthlessly plunged millions into poverty in Latin America in order to concentrate billions of dollars in the hands of a predatory few -- and which transformed Bolivia, for example, into the poorest nation in this hemisphere, second only to Haiti -- is not your prescription for greater freedom and national prosperity in Venezuela.

The American capitalist class just couldn't stop themselves from stealing ever more brazenly from poor kids in Latin America. Naturally heroes have arisen to push back. It will happen in the U.S., too.