Despite all of the flowery language from Hugo Chavez about the wonderful attributes of socialism, reality keeps creeping in and destroying his twisted illusions. Venezuelan protests continued for the fifth day against Chavez pressuring cable and satellite providers to get rid of opposition to his state run channel. Almost like Obama going after Fox News, or the blogs.

Venezuelan protests turned violent when government forces cracked down on protesters by firing tear gas into a crowd that had gathered outside the state run electric company (which was also a focus of the protests). Chavez always extols the virtues of socialism while demonizing capitalism for all of the world’s ills; never mind the consistent proof to the contrary.

Chavez along with Ahmadinejad in Iran have a warped view of reality. As the protests in Iran showed and now the Venezuelan protests are showing, the socialist tyrant has only one recourse against a people determined to be free, and be heard; that recourse is to violently silence dissent.

Students protesting in Venezuela are not only protesting Chavez’s hard line stance against a dissenting voice in the media, but they are protesting other issues as well such as double digit inflation and shortages of electricity (you just got to love socialism). Even with those facts and realities, Chavez would tell you, along with Oliver Stone and Sean Penn, that socialism is the way of the future, that capitalism causes such problems. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like socialism is the problematic philosophy causing chaos and an uprising of the people.

Hugo Chavez accused students of trying to stir up violence to destabilize his (in his opinion) stable government. Just as in Iran, those who protest and speak out are targeted for extinction. In Iran they protest rigged elections as well as tyranny of the worst kind. The Venezuelan protests are much the same, the people want a voice, they want freedom, the simple freedom to change the channel. Chavez wants to take their choice not to listen to his propaganda away from them.

That’s why it’s so alarming to hear an Obama lackey like David Axelrod single out one news organization who happens to be a little critical of Obama policies and declare that they are not considered a news organization by the Administration and advise other more Obama friendly media outlets to treat them the same.

Chavez said, “We cannot permit this. The state and the government must impose authority.” The Venezuelan protests should serve as a rallying cry for freedom loving Americans to continue their pressure on Washington politicians who refuse to listen to the will of the people. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid must understand that if they ignore the people, they do so at their own political peril.