Sic semper evello mortem tyrannus

Pinochet died today at 91. My only regret is that he died of natural causes, instead of being strung up and gutted as he fully deserved. May he rot in hell next to the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Khomeini and Arafat. (I didn't mention a lot of others, but you catch my drift.) May he be speedily joined by Castro and Saddam Hussein, God willing, and the whole lot couldn't be joined fast enough by Madman Mahmoud and Hugo Chavez.

Chavez, by the way, proved that his rhetoric truly knows no limits. He's enough to drive his own people to drink, and now he's blasphemed by invoking Christ's name as justification for his tyranny:

"The Kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of love, of peace; the kingdom of justice, of solidarity, brotherhood, the kingdom of socialism," he told the raucous crowd celebrating below. "This is the kingdom of the future of Venezuela."

Early Christians attempted a form of communism, holding everything in common and dividing everything according to need. The community failed after two people kept part of what they received from selling their land. Note that God did not strike them down for keeping part of the money, but for lying: they conspired to defraud the community, with which they had made a voluntary agreement to share property equally. Also, I don't believe for one second that God intended Christians to live that way, rather that God allowed the community to make the attempt and fail, proving humanity cannot continue under common ownership.

We know from Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians that idolaters are among those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God. I submit to you that idolaters include "those worshippers of government," as Bastiat termed them in The Law. Remember that there are those who will call Jesus "Lord," claim to perform "wonderful works" in His name, yet will be unknown to God in the true kingdom to come.

Do I judge Chavez? Yes, and my judgment is righteous in that I acknowledge my own shortcomings before God, and that most importantly, I seek no power over others. Unlike Chavez, I have no desire to coerce others to my beliefs, to forcibly structure their lives around my visions, or to worship the same forces of purely human construction that put my own Savior to death. My best friend at work recently asked what my "plan" for society is if I could eliminate the welfare state. How can a Keynesian like him, whose very philosophy revolves around government planning, ever comprehend that I don't and refuse to have a "plan" for others, that my only "goal" is their freedom to live according to their own consciences, until they harm others?