by Barry Brownstein Would you use a doctor or dentist who didn’t believe in germ theory and used the same instruments all day without sterilizing them? What would you say if, when their patients developed infections, the doctor or dentist insisted he meant well and argued that capitalism, not germs, causes infections? Allowing such a practitioner to keep their license would be madness. Yet we elect and support politicians who believe something other than socialism causes the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. In his Wall Street Journal report Venezuela is Starving, Juan Forero reports on the worsening tragedy: Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds. His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive. “I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”…
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