Whenever Sandalistas gather in Caracas, the net result is a grotesque orgy of consumption, where leftwing political tourist after leftwing political tourist buys up Che t-shirts, Hugo Chavez barbie dolls, hippie bracelets, Castro bumper stickers, tapes of Chavez’s speeches, pot-leaf ski caps, fake Birkenstocks, Hugo-Chavez coffee cups, hammer and sickle posters, Allende backpacks and anything else the exporting merchants of capitalist China can dream up, sure these suckers will buy, mom’s credit card or not. These vast Sandalista bacchanals help these leftists feel good about themselves as they consume away like Roman epicures – amid the sea of quietly piled-high poverty surrounding all of Caracas in their midst.

The plague of locusts kind of forgets the Hugo Chavez admonition that to be poor is good. It sort of doesn’t apply to them as they whip out the plastic and charge away. After all, they’ve got pals back in Berkeley and Ann Arbor and Seattle and Zurich and Amsterdam and London and Copenhagen and Paris to impress. That comes first.

Things are kind of different when Venezuela’s democratic revolutionaries reverse that equation and go to the Sandalistas’ homelands.

Instead of consuming at the local fleshpots, Alek Boyd, Patricia Wegenast and Mohamed Mehri, who are Venezuela’s democrats, did something very different.

They walked 200 miles on freedom walk from Wiesbaden, Germany, to Brussels, Belgium.

The aim of their Long March was to plead with the European Union bureaucrats to become aware of the threat that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez presents to the remains of Venezuela’s democracy. They met with two EU bureaucrats, and presented their case, amid considerable media attention.

It had to be a long hard walk, and to their credit, it’s finished. You’ll never see a Sandalista go on one of these. He’s too busy puffing that joint and buying tschotchkas as he kicks back and informs you about his ‘revolution.’

How very different a message this freedom walk sends to Europe, which, if it has its eyes open, can compare the odious Sandalista consumption bacchanals to the simple austere walk of the democracy marchers who desperately want freedom to return to their long-battered country.

And the Sandalistas out, I’m pretty sure.