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Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com from our continuing series on “Case Study Venezuela.”

The theme for today is Cultural Relating.

For thinking people, this means continuous class conflict for the totalitarians.

The fundamental principles of freedom are labeled The Freedom Functions:

• Cultural Relating,
• Economic Enterprise,
• Participative Governance.

We will compare the operations of Freedom and Totalitarianism in Venezuela on these functions.

For Venezuela, the issue of relating is the issue of relating across classes rather than cultures. Basically, the Free Cultural Relating Mission was to empower class mobility:

• To enable the underclass to become members of the working class;
• To enable the working class to become members of the middle class;
• To enable the middle class to become members of an upper class that invests in economic projects benefiting the other classes.

This Freedom Mission was to produce people who were independent, yet disposed to contribute collaboratively to the welfare of all.

While progressing in her short 50-year life, Venezuela failed to fulfill her mission “in time:”

• Too many members of the underclass were left behind in the barrios as poor and helpless members of the Informal Labor Market.
• Perhaps more important, while the middle class was growing, Venezuela had not accelerated systematic ways of transforming more of the working class into middle class.
• Most critical, no progress was made in “bridging the gap” between the middle and upper classes, thus leaving a few to dominate the investment class.

To sum, while Venezuela’s intentions were to produce independent people disposed to collaborative efforts, she succeeded mostly in producing largely dependent people who were adaptive to authority. This made Venezuelans very vulnerable to takeover by Totalitarians.

Whereas the Freedom Functions emphasize relating between classes and among cultures, the Totalitarian Protocol emphasized directly the opposite: fomenting continuous class struggle and even violence. Basically, the Totalitarian Mission of Venezuela was to create a new privileged class comprised of leaders of the Protocol and members of the Proletariat.

• To intimidate the investment class to leave because it, alone, possessed the resources to resist a complete “takeover” by the state.
• To demote or eliminate the middle class in order to reduce its strategic balance of power in influencing the nation’s direction.
• To promote the working and underclasses to take over the positions previously held by the middle class.

In short, whereas the Freedom Mission was to produce independent and collaborative people, the Totalitarian Mission was to produce dependent and adaptive people. They are beginning to succeed, especially with the underclass “Bolivarians” whom they pay, promote and arm.

The Totalitarians are succeeding because Free Venezuelans did not accelerate the goals of their Class Relating mission. Too many uneducated and unskilled people were “left behind,” to be “harvested” by the Totalitarians. These hapless people would gladly exchange the dictator’s promise of security and stability for the surrender of freedom! They had no “soulful stake” in freedom.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People, this means relating to everyone. Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”