If you live inside a republic, the main duty of your government should be actually: Stay out of your life as good as possible. Some government duties are inevitable, but that does not mean, that you should be forced to deal with them too often.
Citizen welfare is nice, but pursuit of happiness is more important for your citizens. And happiness requires freedom as well as security.
Precisely that aspect is what makes socialist republicans to have the same credibility of Hugo Chavez.
This massive socialist bailout is a great example of intervention, just like leaving interest rates artificially low, or leaving dollar artificially high before yuan. Government is inteferring there massively that it recalls flashbacks of nationalization and currency exchange control done by Hugo Chavez.
In several forums I find that Americans do not enjoy many civil liberties, and freedom of speech that questions what need to be improved is being censored with hostile labels aimed at social rejection. So instead of having government enforced repression, they have socially enforced repression as a political religion is created, just like in Venezuela.
This religion is contradictory by itself. In one side republicans talk about no intervention and in the other side they did the most spectacular intervention of all times. It is just as contradictory as "bolivarian socialism" since Simon Bolivar was a rich guy, inspired by the ideas of Rousseau who had liberal ideas, and Marx was a teen when Bolivar died.
So bolivarian socialism deserves the same respect of republican government intervention.
And the human rights problem remains an issue, because a prison with no due process becomes a prison for political prisoners, just like the political prisoners that Argentine military junta had when they invaded Falklands.
So if USA has such spectacular interventions, why should one complain about government participation in a small economy like the one in my country? What credibility or moral authority do they have to impose us such disfunctional model that did not work in Argentina? Argentine president complained about it in UN.
That one person may describe another person's expressed ideas, as being "bashing US," does nothing to produce "less freedom of speech" (unless, I suppose, the description spills blood); the person whose ideas are being so criticized, retains his freedom to continue to express them, or not.
Yes it does. You express opinions and then you are labeled with a hostile word, with social rejection or a ban (under the argument of "bashing US"). So the basic message for the individual is "shut up, if you disagree you are our enemy". Banning critical opinions is exactly what Americans criticized when talking about Cuban regime.
Criticism is the only way to collect points of view to improve things. Even US media work like public relations department of US government. You see CNN en español being sponsored by Armor International (is that free press?), you see The Economist suggesting the idea that US does things and world pays off, and you see US media trying to cause financial panic around the world. You do not see them showing how half of Afghanistan is lost and how the expensive so called "war on terror" failed. If that's sucess or victory, I am Elvis.
I have talked to americans who prefer to remain silent when it is about politics, so I get a picture of repression. In US repression is achieved with social rejection (damaged reputation).
So I think there is a semantic difference, for what is culturally "bashing US" is what I would call "helping US to improve its system". An enemy enjoys your mistakes in silence. If I was an enemy who wanted to bash US, I would try to encourage increased military expenditure and longer presence in middle east, for I know that it would ultimately dry US economy and that would put down US as world power.
US has no credibility anymore. I used to believe in US as "police of the world" but now it is misbehaving. It is a role model similar to Venezuelan regime.
