There are people who still believe authoritarianism in the economic realm needn't infect freedom in the personal realm. By economic authoritarianism, I refer to socialism, a philosophy in which state managers usurp personal decisions on economic questions. Whenever the state assumes power in economics, it always seems to assume power in other areas--speech, religion, private firearm ownership, education, etc. Conversely, when individuals, and not the government, control their economic destinies, freedom is generally widespread. Pocketbooks and speech, for instance are less free in Europe than in America, and less free in China than in Europe. There is a relationship between economic freedom and personal freedom, even though socialists insist that there isn't. Rather than separating the two into artificial categories, it's better to say that economic freedoms are personal freedoms. In Venezuela, economic freedoms have been curtailed along with personal freedoms. In the latest example of the nation's slide, Hugo Chavez, warning that foreigners who come to Venezuela and criticize him will be expelled, asked: "How long are we going to allow a person, from any country in the world, to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Venezuelans no longer possess such a right, so it's unsurprising that Chavez would deny foreigners the right to air negative assessments of him and his regime. By not allowing someone to call him a tyrant, isn't Hugo Chavez making the case that he is a tyrant?

Is that a rhetorical question?

Every time you buy Citgo gasoline products you're
putting money in this thugs pocket.

Don't buy Citgo. For that matter, for different reasons, don't buy Mobil or Exxon either.