Which are these sites you speak of because, as you know, I frequent the leading "leftist" website around (Daily Kos) and I have to tell you that one almost never sees anyone on there saying nice things about people like Chavez or his ideology. There never seems to be anyone professing communist or collectivist attitudes, social programs yes but most ideas are fairly centered. The most radical thing I ever really see is people professing their pet issue such as environmentalism or animal rights. They can get pretty heated about that stuff and approach wacko from time to time but they're largely ignored by the masses.

I really think you confuse the enthusiasm that naturally comes when some guy like Chavez takes shots at someone like GWB or expresses outrage at our bullying foreign policy and the corporations we prop up in third world countries. It's hard to not get a warm fuzzy about world leaders loudly standing up to those abuses no matter who they are or what side of the fence they set their political hat. Because the people on the left are nodding in agreement with his digs of the neo-cons in no way signifies they agree with or approve of total governmental control of our lives.

Tom, most of us are way brighter than that and have studied our history. Perhaps in the 20's and 30's some of us could have been taken in by the promises of Marxism with its grand claims of equality for all and an end to class warfare but it was a horribly failed experiment, not because the basic ideals were wrong but because it didn't understand human nature. It failed to know that humans work hardest and strive for perfection best when they have a path of upward mobility afforded them. It removed individuality and took away incentives to greatness and artistic expression. It also failed to acknowledge that people will always fudge the system and find ways to exert power over others often in cruel and unimaginable ways.

Those same problems are also the Achilles Heel of unfettered capitalism which works perfectly if and only if greed and lust for unbridled power doesn't exist within humans. Obviously it does and in droves.

What most of us have figured out is that the answer lies in a hybrid system where the great points of both sides mesh together and work against the pitfalls of each. That balance is a difficult achievement but, to America's credit, our two party system somehow manages to get it right from time to time.

Part of the huge animosity we've seen over the past decade has been a result of people in power pushing too hard to move that pendulum far from the center where it truly belongs. They admitted freely that total conservative control was their goal and stripped the voice away from their opposition at every juncture. That cannot happen again.

Art