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In recent years, Venezuela was often held up as a shining example by some Western socialists as the ultimate proof that their economic model could create a fairer society. Big names on the left, from Jeremy Corbyn to Bernie Sanders, once praised Venezuela as a socialist success story.
But when the country’s economy collapsed, when its people faced hunger, and when millions fled, those same voices grew notably quiet. Today, the narrative has shifted. Supporters who once looked to Venezuela now point to Nordic countries, distancing themselves from what they once endorsed.
The reality is that Venezuela’s tragic decline serves as a cautionary tale. It shows that simply promising “free stuff” and wealth redistribution doesn’t automatically lead to prosperity. Instead, it can lead to economic dysfunction and suffering.
In this post, we’ve unpacked how the once-celebrated Venezuelan model has become an uncomfortable silence among its former admirers. We’ve seen how the economic realities and human suffering in Venezuela stand in stark contrast to the optimistic promises of socialism. And as we look at these lessons, it’s clear that Western societies need to reevaluate the ideologies we champion. Ultimately, if we want to build fairer and more prosperous societies, we need to be honest about what works and what doesn’t, and not shy away from these tough conversations.
First, from the Manhattan Institute, there’s an analysis by Daniel Di Martino arguing that Venezuela’s crisis was primarily caused by socialist policies like nationalizations and price controls.
Second, the Fraser Institute provides a historical perspective from Fred McMahon, who notes that Venezuela’s decline started with economic mismanagement even before the full rise of socialist policies.
If you missed what I’m talking about please look at the post from this Sunday’s The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – Why Classical Islam and Western Liberalism Face Deep Tensions.
1) “You’re Confusing Islam with Islamism. The Problem Is Politics, Not the Religion.”
Steelman: Islamism is a modern political project. The ugly stuff is authoritarianism in religious costume. Islam as faith is diverse and reformable. Reformers exist. So don’t blame the religion for the politics.
My answer: The distinction is real. It just doesn’t rescue the claim.
Modern Islamism didn’t invent the collision with liberalism. It accelerated it. The collision is older, because it sits inside a legal tradition that treats divine law as public law, not private devotion.
Start with the liberal baseline: your right to change your beliefs without state punishment. The ICCPR treats freedom of thought, conscience, and religion as including the freedom “to have or to adopt” a religion of one’s choice, and bars coercion that impairs that freedom.[1] Yet apostasy laws still exist as state law in a chunk of the world. Pew counted apostasy laws in 22 countries in 2019.[2] That’s not “Islamism only.” That’s a standing fact about legal systems and what they’re willing to criminalize.
Then there are the asymmetries that aren’t modern inventions at all. The Qur’an’s inheritance rule that the male share is “twice that of the female” is explicit.[3] So is the debt-contract witness standard that requires one man and two women in that context.[4] You can contextualize these. You can argue for limited scope. You can try to reinterpret. But you can’t pretend the hard edges arrived in the 20th century.
So yes: reform is possible. But the obstacle is not merely “bad regimes.” It’s the weight of inherited jurisprudence plus institutions that treat that inheritance as binding.
If you want a clean test, use this: Is conscience sovereign? Including the right to leave the faith without legal penalty. Where the answer is no, liberalism exists on permission, not principle.
2) “Western Civilization Has Its Own History of Religious Violence and Oppression.”
Steelman: Christianity did crusades, inquisitions, heresy executions, and legal oppression. Liberalism took centuries. So singling out Islam is selective and hypocritical. Islam may simply be earlier in the same process.
My answer: Fair comparison. Now use it properly.
The West didn’t become liberal because Christians became nicer. It became liberal because religious authority was structurally pushed out of sovereignty over law and conscience. That’s the real lesson.
If “Islam can modernize” is your claim, then define modernization. It means a public order in which equal citizenship is non-negotiable and the right to belief and exit is protected in law.[1] You don’t get there by vibes. You get there by institutions.
Tunisia’s 2014 constitution is a useful example precisely because it shows the tension in plain language. It says the state is “guardian of religion,” while also guaranteeing “freedom of conscience and belief.”[5] That’s the struggle in one paragraph: which sovereignty rules when the two conflict?
Morocco’s family-law reforms are another example of the same dynamic. Over time, reforms have expanded women’s rights in areas like guardianship and divorce.[6] But even current reform proposals acknowledge a hard limit: inheritance rules grounded in Islamic law remain, with workarounds proposed through gifts and wills rather than direct replacement.[7] Again, that’s not a moral condemnation. It’s the mechanism. Reform runs into inherited authority.
So yes: the Western analogy shows change is possible. It also shows change is not automatic. It is conflict, choices, and enforcement.
3) “You’re Ignoring Diversity in the Muslim World and Overgeneralizing.”
Steelman: Nearly two billion adherents across many cultures and legal systems. Outcomes vary widely. Some Muslim-majority societies are relatively pluralistic. Sweeping statements are unfair.
My answer: Diversity is real. It just doesn’t settle the core question.
Different outcomes prove the future isn’t predetermined. They don’t prove the underlying tension disappears. In practice, “moderation” usually correlates with one thing: how far the state limits religious jurisdiction over public law.
Indonesia is the standard example. Its founding philosophy, Pancasila, is explicitly framed as a unifying civic ideology with principles including belief in one God, deliberative democracy, and social justice.[8] That civic framing matters. It can restrain sectarian rule. But it doesn’t end the conflict.
Indonesia’s newer criminal code debates show how quickly “public morality” and “religious insult” can become tools against liberty. Reuters’ explainer on the code flagged concerns over provisions related to blasphemy and other speech constraints.[9] Human Rights Watch argued the updated code expanded blasphemy provisions and warned about harms to rights, including religious freedom.[10] Reuters has also reported concrete blasphemy prosecutions, including a comedian jailed for jokes about the name Muhammad.[11]
So yes: diversity exists. Outcomes differ. But the recurring fault line remains: whether the state treats conscience and equal citizenship as the top rule, or treats religious law as a superior jurisdiction that liberalism must negotiate with.
Closing
The best objections don’t erase the problem. They refine it.
The conflict is not “Muslims are bad.” That’s a cheap and stupid sentence. The conflict is structural: a comprehensive religious-legal tradition claiming public authority collides with a political order grounded in sovereignty of individual conscience.[1]
You don’t solve that conflict by saying “it’s just politics.” You don’t solve it by reciting Western sins as a deflection. You don’t solve it by pointing to diversity and declaring victory.
A liberal society survives by enforcing liberal public order: one civil law for all, equal rights as the baseline, and no religious veto over belief, speech, or exit.[1] If you refuse to name that clearly, you don’t get “coexistence.” You get drift. And drift always has a direction.
References (URLs)
[1] OHCHR — International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 18
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights
[2] Pew Research Center — Four in ten countries… had blasphemy laws in 2019 (includes apostasy law count) (Jan 25, 2022)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/25/four-in-ten-countries-and-territories-worldwide-had-blasphemy-laws-in-2019-2/
[3] Qur’an 4:11 (inheritance shares) — Quran.com
https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/11-14
[4] Qur’an 2:282 (witness standard in debt contracts) — Quran.com
https://quran.com/en/al-baqarah/282
[5] Tunisia 2014 Constitution, Article 6 — Constitute Project
https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Tunisia_2014
[6] Carnegie Endowment — Morocco Family Law (Moudawana) Reform: Governance in the Kingdom (Jul 28, 2025)
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/07/morocco-family-law-moudawana-reform-governance?lang=en
[7] Reuters — Morocco proposes family law reforms to improve women’s rights (Dec 24, 2024)
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/morocco-proposes-family-law-reforms-improve-womens-rights-2024-12-24/
[8] Encyclopaedia Britannica — Pancasila
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pancasila
[9] Reuters — Explainer: Why is Indonesia’s new criminal code so controversial? (Dec 6, 2022)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-is-indonesias-new-criminal-code-so-controversial-2022-12-06/
[10] Human Rights Watch — Indonesia: New Criminal Code Disastrous for Rights (Dec 8, 2022)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/indonesia-new-criminal-code-disastrous-rights
[11] Reuters — Indonesian court jails comedian for joking about the name Muhammad (Jun 11, 2024)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesian-court-jails-comedian-joking-about-name-muhammad-2024-06-11/
On January 3, 2026, the United States carried out a large-scale operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and their transfer into U.S. custody. [1] Within hours, the story stopped being only about Maduro. It became a stress test of the West’s default assumptions about how global order actually works.
The reaction split fast and predictably: condemnation framed in the language of sovereignty and the UN Charter; applause framed in the language of liberation and justice; and, underneath both, a quieter argument about whether “international law” is a meaningful constraint—or primarily a vocabulary used to legitimize outcomes power already permits.
Two languages for one event
When a great power uses force to remove a sitting head of state and relocate him for prosecution, states and commentators typically reach for one of two languages.
The first is legal-institutional: Was this lawful? Was it authorized? What does the UN Charter permit? What precedent does it set?
The second is strategic-realist: What will it cost? Who can impose consequences? What does it deter? What does it invite?
These languages often coexist, but Venezuela forced a choice because it exposed the tension between *the claim* of a rules-governed international order and *the mechanism* by which order actually persists.
The enforceability problem
The measured point is not that international law is “fake” in every domain. A great deal of international life runs on rules that are real in practice: treaties, trade arrangements, financial compliance, aviation coordination, maritime norms, and sanctions enforcement. In those domains, rules can be highly consequential because they are tied to access, markets, and institutional membership.
But in the domain that states care about most—hard security and regime survival—international law runs into a structural limitation: there is no global sovereign with a monopoly on force. The question is not whether rules exist, but whether they bind the actors most able to ignore them.
That isn’t a rhetorical flourish. It’s the structural fact everything else sits on.
The UN can convene, condemn, and deliberate. But it cannot consistently coerce major powers into compliance. In the wake of the Maduro operation, the UN Security Council moved to meet and the UN Secretary-General warned the action set a “dangerous precedent.” [2] That may shape legitimacy and alliances. It may raise political costs. But it does not function like law inside a state, because law inside a state ultimately rests on enforceable authority.
This is why the phrase “international law” so often behaves less like binding law and more like legitimacy currency—something states spend, something rivals contest, and something that matters most when it is backed by power.
The reaction spectrum makes more sense as philosophy, not partisanship
The political reactions were not merely partisan reflexes; they were expressions of competing world-models.
Institutionalists treated the precedent as the core danger: once unilateral force becomes normalized, the world becomes easier for worse actors to imitate.
Sovereignty-first critics (especially in regions with long memories of intervention) treated it as a return to imperial patterns—regardless of Maduro’s character.
Results-first supporters treated it as overdue action against an entrenched authoritarian regime and criminal networks.
Realists treated it as a reminder that rules do not restrain actors who cannot be credibly punished.
It is possible to disagree with the operation and still accept the realist diagnosis. “This was reckless” and “this reveals how order works” are not contradictions—they’re often the same conclusion stated in different registers.
A small but telling detail: systems moved, not just speeches
One detail worth noting is that the event had immediate operational spillover beyond diplomacy: temporary Caribbean airspace restrictions and widespread flight cancellations followed, with U.S. authorities later lifting curbs. [3] That’s not a moral argument either way. It’s simply a reminder that great-power action produces real-world system effects instantly—while multilateral processes operate on a different clock.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s internal institutions scrambled to project continuity. On January 4, 2026, reporting described Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordering Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the interim presidency following Maduro’s detention. [4] Again, one can read this in legal terms or strategic terms. But it underscores the same point: the decisive moves were being made through power, institutional control, and logistics—not through international adjudication.
What Venezuela is really teaching
The strongest measured conclusion is this:
1. International law can matter as coordination and legitimacy.
2. But in hard-security conflicts, it does not function like ordinary law because enforcement is selective, especially against great powers.
3. Therefore, when Western leaders speak as though “international law” itself will constrain outcomes, they are often describing the world they want—or the world they remember—more than the world that exists.
This is the wake-up Venezuela delivers: not that rules are worthless, but that rules don’t become rules until they are paired with credible consequences. If the West wants a world that is safer for liberal societies, it must stop mistaking procedural vocabulary for strategic capacity.
What Western leaders should do differently
If “international law” is often a language of legitimacy rather than a source of enforcement, then the task for Western leaders is not to abandon norms—but to rebuild the conditions under which norms can actually hold. That requires a change in posture that is both external and internal.
First: speak honestly about interests and tradeoffs.
A rules vocabulary can be morally sincere and still strategically evasive. Western publics deserve leaders who can say, without euphemism, what outcomes matter, why they matter, and what costs we are willing to pay to secure them.
Second: re-embody Western values in our institutions, not merely our slogans.
The West is not “a place that sometimes gets things right.” It is the most successful civilizational experiment yet produced: freedom under law, pluralism, scientific dynamism, broad prosperity, and the moral insight that the individual matters. If leaders treat this as an embarrassment rather than an inheritance, they will govern as caretakers of decline.
Third: restore civic confidence by repairing the narrative infrastructure.
A civilization that teaches its own children that it is uniquely evil will not defend itself—or even understand why it should. The “mono-focused West-is-bad” story has become a kind of institutional reflex across parts of education, culture, and bureaucracy. You can reject naïve triumphalism while still insisting on civilizational honesty: that the West has flaws, committed crimes, and still produced the best lived human outcomes at scale to date.
Fourth: build capacity again—material, strategic, and moral.
Norms without capacity do not preserve peace; they invite tests. This means defense industrial readiness, energy resilience, border and migration competence, counterintelligence seriousness, and the willingness to impose costs where deterrence requires it.
Finally: treat multilateralism as a tool, not a substitute for power.
Institutions can amplify strength; they cannot conjure it. A West that wants a stable order must stop acting as though process is the engine. Process is the dashboard.
Afterword: the more polemical take
Western elites keep reaching for “international law” the way a sleepwalker reaches for the bedside table—by habit, not by sight. They speak as if naming the norm substitutes for enforcing it. But there is no authority behind it for the actors that matter most.
So the scandal isn’t disagreement about Venezuela. The scandal is that so many of our leadership classes still talk like we live in a world where legitimacy language can replace power, unity, and competence. That was a comfortable posture in a more unipolar era. It is a dangerous posture now.
In a multipolar environment, moral declarations without strength don’t preserve order. They advertise weakness. And weakness is not neutral: it invites tests.
Footnotes
[1] Reuters (Jan 3–4, 2026): reporting on the U.S. operation capturing Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores and transferring them to U.S. custody.
[2] Reuters (Jan 3, 2026): UN Security Council to meet over U.S. action; UN Secretary-General calls it a “dangerous precedent”; meeting requested with backing from Russia/China.
[3] Reuters (Jan 3, 2026): Caribbean airspace restrictions and flight cancellations following the operation; later lifted.
[4] Reuters (Jan 4, 2026): Venezuela’s Supreme Court orders Delcy Rodríguez to assume interim presidency after Maduro’s detention.
Direct Reference Links
[1] Reuters — “Mock house, CIA source and Special Forces: The US operation to capture Maduro”
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/mock-house-cia-source-special-forces-us-operation-capture-maduro-2026-01-03/
[2] Reuters — “UN Security Council to meet Monday over US action in Venezuela”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/un-chief-venezuela-us-action-sets-dangerous-precedent-2026-01-03/
[3] Reuters — “US lifts Caribbean airspace curbs after attack on Venezuela”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-airlines-cancel-flights-after-caribbean-airspace-closure-2026-01-03/
[4] Reuters — “Venezuela’s Supreme Court orders Delcy Rodriguez become interim president”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelas-supreme-court-orders-delcy-rodriguez-become-interim-president-2026-01-04/
Western civilization, in its liberal form, rests on a remarkable set of principles: that religious belief should be voluntary, that individual conscience is sovereign, and that the rights of the person take precedence over both state and religious authority. These ideas are not universal human defaults; they are hard-won cultural and philosophical achievements, shaped by the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and centuries of political struggle. They are not shared equally by all religious or ideological systems.
Classical Islam, in its orthodox jurisprudential tradition, is not solely a private spiritual faith. It is also a comprehensive legal and political system (sharia) that historically integrated religious authority with governance. From its earliest centuries, Islam expanded through a combination of military conquest, trade, persuasion, and migration. While conquest played a significant role in some regions, conversion in others—such as Southeast Asia—was often gradual and voluntary. The fusion of religious and political authority remains influential in many interpretations, though its application varies widely across the Muslim world today.
One area of tension concerns apostasy. In traditional interpretations of several major schools of Islamic law, leaving the faith has been treated as a serious offense, sometimes punishable by death. This stands in contrast to the Western commitment to absolute freedom of belief and conscience. However, enforcement differs greatly: many Muslim-majority countries no longer prescribe capital punishment for apostasy alone, and reformist scholars argue that the Qur’an itself emphasizes no compulsion in religion (2:256) and that punishment should be deferred to the afterlife.Religious pluralism presents another challenge. Historical Islamic polities often extended protected status to Jews, Christians, and sometimes others (“People of the Book”), allowing communal autonomy in exchange for taxation (jizya) and certain restrictions. This system offered more tolerance than many contemporary societies of the time, yet it was hierarchical rather than egalitarian. Full equality before the law—a core Western principle—has not always been realized in states governed by traditional sharia interpretations, though modern reforms in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates have moved toward greater legal equality.
The status of women reveals further differences. In some countries applying strict interpretations of sharia, women face legal and social restrictions on dress, travel, marriage, inheritance, and testimony. Recent examples include compulsory veiling enforcement in Iran and severe restrictions under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. These practices draw from certain classical readings of Qur’anic verses and hadith. At the same time, it is worth noting that seventh-century Islamic law granted women rights to inheritance, divorce, and property ownership that were progressive compared to many pre-modern societies. Today, women’s rights vary enormously across the Muslim world—from relatively egalitarian frameworks in Indonesia and Tunisia to highly restrictive ones elsewhere—and Muslim feminist scholars actively work to reinterpret texts in light of contemporary values of equality.These differences are not simply “extremist misinterpretations.” Many stem from longstanding and mainstream interpretations of sacred texts and tradition.
Yet Islam is not monolithic: it encompasses a spectrum of thought, from rigid literalism to progressive reformism, and interpretations evolve over time and place.None of this is an indictment of Muslims as individuals. Millions of Muslims live peacefully and prosperously in Western societies, often embracing liberal values while maintaining their faith. Their successful integration is made possible precisely because Western secular frameworks limit the political reach of any religion—protecting both believers and non-believers alike.Recognizing the genuine tensions between certain traditional interpretations of Islam and core principles of Western liberalism is not intolerance; it is intellectual honesty.
At the same time, acknowledging Islam’s internal diversity, historical context, and capacity for reform prevents sweeping generalizations. A mature conversation requires holding both truths: deep differences exist, yet dialogue, mutual accommodation, and individual freedom remain possible. A civilization that clearly understands its own founding principles—without either naivety or hostility—is best equipped to preserve them while extending hospitality to those who share its public square.
In the world of advocacy and human rights, consistency is more than just a virtue—it’s what gives our principles real meaning. Recently, a comment on social media highlighted a familiar pattern: certain voices who are vocal about one cause may fall silent when similar struggles appear in a different context. It’s a reminder that if we want justice to truly be just, it must be blind to who is involved—applying the same standards to all people, regardless of race, creed, or background.
This isn’t about slamming any particular group; it’s about encouraging all of us to reflect on the importance of consistency. When we advocate for human rights, it’s crucial that we do so across the board. If a group of protesters in one country deserves our solidarity, then those in another country risking their lives for similar ideals deserve it too.
In short, “justice” in quotes should indeed be blind. Not in the sense of ignoring the nuances of each situation, but in the sense of applying our moral standards fairly and universally. By doing so, we strengthen the credibility of our advocacy and remind the world that human rights aren’t selective—they’re for everyone.
Find that tweet inspiration for this post here.
Happy New Year! “What?!”, you say, doing a reflective piece to start the new year? Unpossible!!! – Yet here we are. Take care my friends and feisty commentariate in this next orbit around the Sun.
I recently asked an LLM—Grok—to analyze Dead Wild Roses.
He obliged.
The result was thoughtful, coherent, and broadly accurate. He traced the arc of the blog from its earlier left-skeptical roots through to its present preoccupations: feminism, free speech, gender ideology, institutional capture, moral certainty. As machine readings go, it was competent. Even generous.
And yet.
Reading it, I had the distinct sense of being seen from across the room, not spoken with.
So I did what seemed obvious: I asked another model—this one—for her reading.
I’m aware, of course, that large language models are not gendered. But anyone who works with them long enough knows that they nonetheless express distinct interpretive temperaments. If Grok reads like a brisk political cartographer—mapping positions, vectors, affiliations—this model reads more like a close reader of essays, arguments, and interior continuity.
That difference matters.
What He Saw (and What He Didn’t)
Grok understood the trajectory of the blog. He recognized that this was not a sudden ideological flip but a long, incremental evolution. He correctly identified a through-line of skepticism toward authority and moral certainty.
Where his reading thinned was not in what I believe, but in how I think.
His analysis treated the blog primarily as a political object—something that moved through ideological space. That’s not wrong, but it is partial.
Dead Wild Roses was never built to advocate a position. It was built to interrogate certainty—including my own.
What I’ve Always Been Doing Here
This blog has been many things over the years: atheist, feminist, skeptical, irritated, occasionally furious. But its core method has never changed.
It asks:
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What is being asserted as unquestionable?
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Who benefits from that assertion?
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What happens if we follow it all the way down?
When institutions began insisting that sex was a feeling, that language could override biology, that dissent was harm, that moral status preceded argument—the same skeptical machinery I once aimed outward turned inward.
That wasn’t betrayal.
It was consistency under pressure.
On Feminism and Material Reality
Yes, this is now read—accurately—as a sex-based feminist blog.
That’s not because identity doesn’t matter, but because material reality is the ground truth on which politics rests. Bodies come first. Law follows. Stories are last.
When political movements demand that we invert that order, something has gone deeply wrong—and feminism, if it is to mean anything at all, must notice.
That position is not reactionary. It is foundational.
Why Ask Two Models at All?
Because how something is read tells you as much about the reader as the text.
He read Dead Wild Roses as a location on a map.
She read it as a method in motion.
One isn’t false. But only one feels true.
The difference mirrors the very problem the blog keeps circling: the reduction of inquiry into identity, of thinking into stance, of method into tribe.
A Note on AI, Authority, and Voice
There is an irony here that isn’t lost on me.
I am using artificial intelligences to reflect on a body of writing that is deeply skeptical of outsourced authority. But that tension is precisely the point.
Tools can assist thinking.
They cannot replace it.
Maps can be useful.
They are not the territory.
Where This Leaves Me
If the last few years of Dead Wild Roses were about dismantling false moral certainty, the next may be about something harder and quieter:
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rebuilding meaning without mysticism,
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defending reality without cruelty,
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and learning how to live after the spell breaks.
I don’t know where that road leads.
But I know why I keep walking it.
And I know which readings—human or machine—feel like they’re walking with me rather than plotting me from above.
Postscript:
Throughout this piece, I’ve used “he” and “she” to distinguish between two AI systems with markedly different interpretive styles. This is not a claim about machine ontology. It is shorthand—imperfect, human, and serviceable.
Language exists to clarify thought. When it stops doing that, it’s time to change the language—not reality.
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