Civil society in Venezuela has collapsed. And let’s be clear why it has collapsed: socialism.

Twenty years ago, Hugo Chavez started his socialist revolution: he confiscated valuable farm land, and gave it to his leftist cronies. That’s how socialists operate: expropriate. Take. Seize. Predictable results: socialist farms don't produce much food. Venezuela was on the road to mass starvation.

Chavez's cash cow was Venezuela’s oil production: it has more oil than anyone! He nationalized the oil business: his government just took it. Expropriation. And of course, he installed his socialist cronies, who promptly ran it into the ground. In 1998, Venezuela produced 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Now it’s 1.1 million. Socialists don't run oil companies very well.

Chavez’s successor, Maduro, called in the communist Cubans, to help him keep control. But socialism never prospers, and now there's hyper-inflation, very little food, no electricity and no medicine. Three million Venezuelans have left the country.

We'll keep you up to date with the confrontation between socialist Maduro, the young and popular interim president and the United States. We're following the events by the hour.

But there's a message here for America’s young socialists who now have real power in Congress! And the lesson is: socialism does not work. Show me a prosperous socialist society. And don't say "Europe": their cradle-to-grave welfare is not sustainable. Europe is a vast, go-nowhere museum, and they're at each other's throats.

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Furthermore, socialism is immoral. It is wrong to seize property. It is wrong to put political cronies in charge of your economy. And it is wrong to shoot your own people in the streets when they demonstrate against your precious socialist revolution.

America is a constitutional republic. We are free. It should only continue.