Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chavez impoverished their people and took away their freedom

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Leave aside the question of whether President Donald Trump has the unilateral authority to depose foreign heads of state — U.S. presidents have a lot of leeway, but not that much — the removal of socialist thug Nicolás Maduro from power is a boon for long-suffering Venezuelans. Under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela went from being a relatively free and increasingly prosperous country — albeit one with a corruption problem — to becoming an unfree pseudo-democracy ruled by collectivist dictators. When you see Venezuelans emigres around the world taking to the streets to celebrate the snatching of Maduro by U.S. troops, it’s because they have good reason.

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Over a decade ago, a Venezuelan expat friend told me that her father, a physician who once headed the medical faculty at a Venezuelan university, had been reduced to accepting payment for his services in cooking oil and other groceries. The socialist government had so destroyed the value of the currency and disrupted the economy that barter to stay alive was the best he could manage. He’s since fled the country and now lives in the U.S., and he’s not alone. In 2018, a group of health-related NGOs reported  that “between 2012 and 2017, 22,000 Venezuelan doctors migrated.” That represented more than half of the physicians registered by the Pan American Health Organization in 2014.

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Venezuela has shed both wealth and people since socialist Chavez took office in 1999 and was succeeded upon his death in 2013 by Maduro. The World Bank’s measure of Venezuela’s constant GDP puts the country’s economy at $13.03 billion (in 2015 dollars) in 1960. From there it grew in the usual fits and spurts to $37.22 billion in 2001, two years after Chavez was elected to office and began implementing his socialist “Bolivarian revolution.”

Economic troubles followed, though Chavez’s nationalization of industry and meddling in the economy were largely offset for years by the country’s status as an oil producer at a time of rising petroleum prices.