I usually refrain from black and white assessments of issues or people, but there are cases where there is truly no gray. Fidel Castro is one of those cases.
Cuban refugees during the Mariel boat lift
Of course, a lot of the political expressions about Castro's death can be chalked up to typical diplomacy and respect for foreign heads of state. But would North Korea's Kim Jung-on be getting the same degree of respect if he was the one who just died? Or even Vladimir Putin?
It's unfortunate how the end of the Cold War and fall of communism has rehabilitated figures like Castro over the years and turned them into respectable statesmen. To hear some of the things spoken about him yesterday, you can't help but wonder why thousands of Cubans fled the utopian island paradise he created for the despair of the United States? Was that whole Mariel boat lift thing a 1980s example of fake news?
Maybe it had something to do with losing every basic freedom humans are entitled to, from the freedom to speak your mind, to worship as you choose, to the freedom to own your own property and build your own life? Maybe it had something to do with political opponents being tortured and killed? Maybe it had something to do with a lack of food and basic necessities? Or losing everything you worked your life to build?
That was the fate of my wife's family, who lost their land, home and hope for the future when Castro rose to power. I've heard my mother-in-law break into tears many times over the years recounting all she and her family lost. She left behind a husband to find freedom for herself and her young son. My wife's father was a successful university professor who also lost everything, including nearly his life, in escaping to freedom. He and my mother-in-law found a new life here, and started a new family, but that never took away the pain of all they lost.
It's ironic that my wife and my children owe their lives, and I owe my marriage, to the fact Castro forced so many Cubans to flee to the United States in search of freedom and liberty. It's a testament to the greatness of America that so many Cuban refugees were able to build new lives for themselves here, and to the fact immigrants, particularly those fleeing persecution, are historically such an important part of our national fabric. Which is all the more reason to acknowledge who Castro really was and the suffering he caused for so many.
It's ironic that my wife and my children owe their lives, and I owe my marriage, to the fact Castro forced so many Cubans to flee to the United States in search of freedom and liberty. It's a testament to the greatness of America that so many Cuban refugees were able to build new lives for themselves here, and to the fact immigrants, particularly those fleeing persecution, are historically such an important part of our national fabric. Which is all the more reason to acknowledge who Castro really was and the suffering he caused for so many.
Many people have been expressing fears about what Donald Trump's election will mean for our way of life. Well, imagine if Trump immediately seized all your possessions, threw you in jail, or worse, for criticizing him, and shut down every church, mosque and synagogue in the nation? What if he denied you the right to vote and the right to leave this country for a new home. Imagine if he then plunged our nation to the brink of nuclear war? That's basically what Fidel Castro did to the people of Cuba. So for those who want to compare Trump to Hitler, how about starting 90 miles off the Florida coast instead?
The dictator Castro overthrew in seizing power was also an evil murderer. But that doesn't justify what Castro did to the people of Cuba. He had an opportunity to rid the nation of corruption and oppression and institute a true democracy that respected the rights of all Cuban people. Instead, he replaced one form of oppression with another that was even more evil and sinister in that it stripped the entire population of basic human rights.
A revisionist history has taken hold about people like Castro and communism. Communism has been sanitized into just another acceptable, though flawed, political system. It's fair to point out that right-wing, fascist dictatorships that the United States supported during the Cold War were also evil and equally disdainful of basic human rights and freedoms. Our actions in supporting those regimes were shameful.
But that doesn't change the basic truth that communism was, and is, a fundamentally evil system of placing the state in control of the individual, and disregarding the value of human life. For nearly a half century, he was one of the world's prime practitioners of that evil. Now that he's gone, there's no reason to sugarcoat who he was and what he did to his people; to do so is an insult to all who lost their lives.
And until Trump murders someone for expressing a differing political view, let's keep the Hitler comparisons where they belong.
But that doesn't change the basic truth that communism was, and is, a fundamentally evil system of placing the state in control of the individual, and disregarding the value of human life. For nearly a half century, he was one of the world's prime practitioners of that evil. Now that he's gone, there's no reason to sugarcoat who he was and what he did to his people; to do so is an insult to all who lost their lives.
And until Trump murders someone for expressing a differing political view, let's keep the Hitler comparisons where they belong.
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