Hmmmm....
There's something in the sound of this that is "worrisome" to me.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has compared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to the Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, saying both were elected legally and then "consolidated power." Secretary Rumsfeld made the comment as part of an answer to a reporter's question about the election of left-wing leaders in Latin America.
--from VOA News

Of course it wasn't all about Chavez:

"We've seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries and elections, like Evo Morales in Bolivia, take place that clearly are worrisome," said Mr. Rumsfeld.

Don't get me wrong, Marxism/Communism has proven itself incapable of sustaining anything like hope or growth or the betterment of its people. European Communism fell of it's own inadequacies and the track record of "true-to-its-roots" communism that still exists is just as fruitless.

Not that capitalism doesn't have its problems, too. But what is it, we need to ask ourselves, that has people voting for "left-wing" populism AGAINST what they see as the influence and plundering by the United States or our allies? Why do they vote in Palestine for the "terrorist" party? Why do they vote in Venezuela and Bolivia for the "left-wing" parties? Some of it has to do with political rhetoric, of course. And massive frustration with a political life that has drained the people of any semblance of dignity and hope and future.

But some of it has to do with at least popular perceptions in these countries about us, the United States. Like the global resource "footprint" test I did online a few weeks ago that said that just little old me takes up far, far too much of the natural resources of the world. If everyone lived like me, it told me, there would need to be 7.4 planet Earths to handle us.

In any case, there is something that Rumsfeld's comment does raise that any review of history will tell us is true. Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, on Fresh Air this evening, said, in essence that while elections are vital to democracy, they don't always produce democracy. Hitler is far from the only one to show that. There are enough examples on all sides of the political fence to prove that. Which is why we need to support elections that help the nations learn how to move into a true, people supporting, growth producing democracy.

Perhaps Rumsfeld has a right to be "worried" about what is happening. And perhaps that means that we as a nation need to find newer and more creative ways to support infant democracies wherever they are being born.