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.
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.
This nation will pay..... IS paying.
You've outdone yourself in foolish hyperbole with this nonsense!
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 ;)
Case closed.
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?
Not me!
ML/NJ
A commie woulda kept the child even though the child's father was doing everything in his power to get his son back.
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
He had both the second he set foot on US soil.
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.
Hey Doe Eyes!
I think you belong on a Lesbian board. Fathers don't have enough parental rights.
ML/NJ
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.
Looks like he's standing on US soil to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.