Tall & Rich

The Washington Times reports that Yon Goicoechea, the student awarded the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty has come up against government attempts to silence him;

For his outspoken opposition to President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s best-known college student has been called a U.S. collaborator and has had his nose broken in a scuffle.

On a wall opposite the converted garage where Yon Goicoechea lives, graffiti denounces him as a defender of the rich and powerful. Now state television airs a cartoon of him holding a fistful of dollars and stamped “Made in USA.”

Lately the attacks have intensified because of the $500,000 award that he received from the Cato Institute, a U.S. think tank that advocates individual liberties and free markets, for his “pivotal role in organizing and voicing opposition to the erosion of human and civil rights in his country.”

The 23-year-old law student and protest leader received Cato’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, named for the late Nobel laureate economist, in New York earlier this month.

“I think in Venezuela you can’t speak of democracy because all branches of government are controlled by one single branch,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It’s growing dangerously close to a totalitarian regime.”

I wonder what Jimmy Carter thinks about this? You can be sure if this man was a Leftist speaking up against a Right-leaning government, Jimmy Carter would break his neck getting in front of cameras with him. But because Goicoechea is only talking about democracy and freedom, Carter couldn’t care less.