Belafonte's mistake

"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution."

- Harry Belafonte, speaking in a public broadcast with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

This, from a "good will" ambassador for UNICEF. A resident of a posh California community. And a man who has had made quite a comfortable living in the free-market, politically free United States.

Harry Belafonte is a traitor to his country, and an unalloyed liar when he claims to speak for the American people. In this country's vast and proud history, it has never cottoned to dictators, even if Hollywood has.

The incredible irony is, if Hugo Chavez' or Fidel Castro's brand of socialism ever made it to these shores, Belafonte and his California crowd would be the first victims: Their money would be taken and their artistic and political freedoms put in shackles.

Strongmen, dictators and "presidents" who rule through fear and oppression and who keep the masses mollified through a never-ending "revolution" against - what, the wind? - are no heroes. To hold up their tactics and their tyrannies as examples of goodness, as Belafonte has on more than one occasion, is the stuff of sheer ignorance and stupidity.

To stand with an oppressive socialist on foreign land and to tell a foreign audience that your president is "the greatest terrorist in the world" is to tenuously trudge the line between loathsome disloyalty and treason itself.

But Harry Belafonte is a useful idiot, in that he, more than anyone he detests, draws a clear distinction between our system of freedom and the socialists he so navely admires.

Go on spitting your bile, Harry. Not only does your country allow it, but it causes us to count our many blessings all the more.

Chief among them that people like you will never have the power here that a Chavez or Castro does.