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His 15 minutes of fame long gone, Elian celebrates another birthday
Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | 12/07/03 | Scott Holleran

Posted on 12/07/2003 3:32:47 PM PST by Holly_P

Elian Gonzalez, who floated in Florida's waters four years ago on Thanksgiving, was 10 years old yesterday. The media spectacle that surrounded his arrival and departure has given way to obscurity; the world has forgotten Elian.

Those who ignore Elian's legacy may be driven by guilt: Most Americans opposed granting him asylum in America and their complete repudiation of the Statue of Liberty's Emma Lazarus poem was accompanied by unrelenting assurances that he would live like he owned a sugar plantation (if ownership were allowed in communist Cuba) or that he would become a media celebrity (if media were allowed). Elian, for anyone bothering to account for the child whose mother died coming to America, has disappeared, though he occasionally appears on state-run television in his communist uniform. The public won and moved on. Elian lost his freedom -- and America lost its way.

Each branch of government rejected Elian's right to live in liberty. The legislative branch refused to consider making Elian a citizen, though exceptions had been made for Vietnam's Boat People, for Cuba's Mariel boatlift, for Cuba's Operation Peter Pan and for generations of Mexicans, all of which included children. Congress granted no such exclusion to arbitrary immigration laws for the smallest minority: the individual.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Elian's plea for asylum, made on his behalf by Elian's Uncle Lazaro, an auto mechanic who fed, clothed and housed the child at his two-bedroom home in Little Havana. Though Elian's defenders failed to make the case for his asylum on principle, his Miami family stood against a judicial system that had fundamentally betrayed its founding principle: individual rights.

The nation's most powerful official approved the initiation of force. On April 22, 2000, President Clinton, backed by the public and by each branch of government -- executive, judicial, legislative -- dispatched gun-toting agents to seize Elian, marking the first time America's government forced a child from a free society and returned him to a dictatorship. The conviction that it is better to live in the land of the free than to live under tyranny had been abandoned.

Educated by modern intellectuals, Americans had become ignorant of life under communism. Throughout Elian's saga, people expressed disbelief that life in Cuba includes no right to property, association, travel or speech. Elian, they insisted, belongs with his father. Whether father and son lived in freedom or slavery was judged irrelevant: What mattered to most Americans was that the two blood relatives were bound together -- even if it meant they would be gagged by a dictatorship -- and, anyway, they chortled, communism in Cuba couldn't be that bad.

Over three years later, not one reporter has been permitted to observe his condition unmolested by communist agents. Elian Gonzalez is fully enslaved and unseen, except when he is used by Cuba's dictatorship as a pawn for propaganda.

Yet it is America that has suffered for its philosophical inversion. As government agents were snatching Elian, Islamic terrorists, living illegally in Florida, were busy plotting the worst attack in U.S. history -- an attack that would probably have been stopped had the government enforced its laws. Forcing a child to return to slavery while our enemies were miles away planning the most diabolical act of war offers proof that America has lost any sense of what matters. A free republic that refuses to judge its enemies while spurning a child refugee from tyranny is doomed by its own contradictions.

As America approaches its third Christmas at war, we must restore the idea of inalienable individual rights to a sacred place in our hearts. There is no better time to do so than Christmas, which still represents benevolence, redemption and the notion that children should bask in the light of joy, not totalitarianism.

We can start by recognizing that a truly happy birthday -- a celebration of one's life and future -- is impossible for anyone living under communism and by acknowledging that nothing -- not family, not tradition, not religion -- is more important than an individual's freedom. It is why the enemy hates us -- and it is why Elian should be celebrating his birthday in America.

Scott Holleran (scottholleran@mac.com), a freelance writer in southern California, was the first reporter permitted into the Gonzalez family¹s Miami, Fla., home, where Holleran met Elian Gonzalez and wrote about the encounter for several American newspapers.


TOPICS: Cuba; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: elian; happybirthday
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To: pcx99
A book recommendation for you:


41 posted on 12/07/2003 4:24:08 PM PST by MitchellC
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To: Ahban

The "loving familly" that refused court orders to return the child and met every technical definition of "kidnap". They he'd the child for political reasons where they had no rights to hold the child having lost in the courts.

The travesty is that this "loving familly" wasn't prosecuted for kidnap and child endangerment by forcing the police to raid their home in such a manner to enforce court orders on the matter.

42 posted on 12/07/2003 4:25:30 PM PST by pcx99
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To: mercy
You and yours sent that kid back to hell and you will pay.

This nation will pay..... IS paying.

You've outdone yourself in foolish hyperbole with this nonsense!

43 posted on 12/07/2003 4:26:24 PM PST by sinkspur (Adopt a shelter dog or cat! You'll save one life, and maybe two!)
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To: pcx99
Do you recognise Fidel as Elian's parent?
44 posted on 12/07/2003 4:26:57 PM PST by crude77
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To: Holly_P
Fathers don't have parental rights. They are at best sperm donors.
45 posted on 12/07/2003 4:26:58 PM PST by Doe Eyes
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To: MitchellC

Exactly. None of us can say the future so we just muddle through as we've always done and preserve the integrity of the familly and trust the boy's father will give Elian a good enough start that he'll be able to thrive in whatever role life hands him. Just as we do things here ;)

46 posted on 12/07/2003 4:27:55 PM PST by pcx99
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To: pcx99
Yres, we will try one last time: PARENTAL RIGHTS DO NOT EXIST IN CUBA. The father has NO RIGHTS IN CUBA. He was in the US laboring under the long cruel thumb of Fidel Castro. That poor guy would have been condemning his relatives back in communist Cuba if he had swayed from the proscribed. You keep writing about this like there is some sort of moral equivalence between the USA and communist Cuba. Newsflash: There isn't! That boy is doomed to live under communism. That is shameful and pathetic.
47 posted on 12/07/2003 4:30:28 PM PST by whereasandsoforth (tagged for migratory purposes only)
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To: pcx99
America did not lose its way. American's did what American's have always done: support strong familly values. When the boy's father wanted his son back that was it, case closed. Familly won out over politics and government, just as it always has and as we hope it always will.

You know as much about the situation as you know how to spell 'family'.
48 posted on 12/07/2003 4:32:24 PM PST by aruanan
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To: whereasandsoforth
But parental rights DO exist in the United States and this dispute was carried out on US soil and the US made the right decision. If the US had made any other decision we'd have been no better than cuba. If the father had made any indication he wanted to stay or wanted Elian to stay the US government would have bent over backwards to help him with the full support of its citizens. He didn't and whether we like it or not the US stood by its principles that the rights of the father are superior to the rights of the state and the US cuban community.

Case closed.

49 posted on 12/07/2003 4:33:27 PM PST by pcx99
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To: Holly_P
this kid kept Gore out of the white house, Bush won florida because of Elian, I am sure it tossed 538 votes (legal ones) to Bush.
50 posted on 12/07/2003 4:34:37 PM PST by oceanview
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To: pcx99
Excuse me but are you prepared to argue that your brothers and sister's in-laws can come take your child because you're a republican and they're democrates?

The ability of the GOP and Democratic parties to exist is due to the nature of this nation, so no, they would have no justification for doing something like that. This is a freedom vs. no freedom issue, something entirely beyond quibbles and disputes between two parties that exist in freedom. To equate it to such displays a profound ignorance.

Furthermore, parental rights do not and have never superceded all other rights; parents have never had such a scope of control over their children that they can place them in harm's way and have justification for doing such a thing. Are you next going to argue that all abused children should be returned to their parents?

51 posted on 12/07/2003 4:37:19 PM PST by MitchellC
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To: Holly_P
the world has forgotten Elian

Not me!

ML/NJ

52 posted on 12/07/2003 4:38:37 PM PST by ml/nj
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To: pcx99
Case closed, indeed. It's pointless to argue this. I am getting the same "logic" I got back then. I was then conversing with a devout socialist female of the species.
53 posted on 12/07/2003 4:39:47 PM PST by whereasandsoforth (tagged for migratory purposes only)
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To: pcx99
A commie woulda kept the child even though the child's father was doing everything in his power to get his son back.
Oh, good grief. Do a little research, please.

54 posted on 12/07/2003 4:41:37 PM PST by AnnaZ (::: RADIOFR :: Hi-Fi FReepin' 24/7 ::: http://www.theotherradionetwork.com/pgs/rfr_schedule.htm :::)
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To: pcx99
his father asserted parental rights

You are aware, are you not, that claims made under duress are not generally recognized by our courts? Elian's father was clearly a party to his escape based upon his, "Are they there yet?" call to his relatives. Sometime after that he apparently "changed his mind," and you cannot understand what happened.

Shame!

ML/NJ

55 posted on 12/07/2003 4:45:09 PM PST by ml/nj
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To: pcx99
He had both the second he set foot on US soil.
He NEVER set foot on US soil. Again, do some research, please.

56 posted on 12/07/2003 4:48:06 PM PST by AnnaZ (::: RADIOFR :: Hi-Fi FReepin' 24/7 ::: http://www.theotherradionetwork.com/pgs/rfr_schedule.htm :::)
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To: MitchellC

No this is a family vs. politics issue.

There was never a history of abuse with Elian. The only reason people had their panties in a wad over him was because of politics. There was not a single shred of evidence that showed Elian was the victim of abuse, and I guarantee you few children ever had such a microscope placed on them with the goal of proving that thesis.

Once abuse is ruled out, we're back to the democrat vs. republican analogy. And no mater how you try to twist and turn, that's exactly what Elian was all about -- politics, and the US quite rightly rejected the notion that a child can be removed from his father over something as trivial as politics.

57 posted on 12/07/2003 4:48:36 PM PST by pcx99
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To: Doe Eyes
Fathers don't have parental rights. They are at best sperm donors.

Hey Doe Eyes!

I think you belong on a Lesbian board. Fathers don't have enough parental rights.

ML/NJ

58 posted on 12/07/2003 4:52:50 PM PST by ml/nj
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To: pcx99
If the father had made any indication he wanted to stay or wanted Elian to stay the US government would have bent over backwards to help him with the full support of its citizens.

And Elian's family in Cuba would have, at best, rotted away in hellholes. If Castro dies and Cuba is liberated while Elian's father is still alive, I think he may have strong words for folks who took your position.

59 posted on 12/07/2003 4:56:49 PM PST by SupplySider
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To: AnnaZ
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/04/06/cuba.boy.03/

Looks like he's standing on US soil to me.

60 posted on 12/07/2003 4:57:40 PM PST by pcx99
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