The Left's Big Lie On Allende

Editorial - July 21st, 2011 - Investor's business Daily

History: President Salvador Allende of Chile really did commit suicide in 1973, an inquest concluded on Tuesday. Now will the Left stop saying the U.S. and Chile's army did him in?

Except perhaps for Che Guevara, no one has quite been the heroic totem to the global left than the late Marxist president of Chile, whose death in 1973 made him a martyr to socialism.

Allende seemingly legitimized socialism as a democratically elected leader, the first Marxist who in 1970 didn't shoot his way to power.That gave the left hope for more.

Elected with just 36% of the vote in a split election, he believed he had a mandate to ram through a hard-core Marxist program of expropriation and indoctrination like that of his mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro.

In the process Allende left Chile's economy in ruins and trampled the rule of law so badly he brought his country to the brink of civil war.

The left has never been constrained by the truth before, so what makes anyone with a brain think they will ever acknowledge the truth about Allende? A hundred years from now the socialists on the left will be denouncing America for killing Allende. It will not matter that he left a suicide note. It will not matter that forensic evidence proves suicide. It will not matter that there is not a single piece of evidence that the CIA was involved in any way. America is capitalist. America is evil. America killed Allende. End of story.