My husband escaped Cuba when he was nineteen years old. His father said "Go to America where you can live free". He never saw his mother or father again - they died in Cuba. When he saw what Clinton and Reno did to Elian he was devastated and horrified. Well poor Elian got President Bush elected. We recently had a town-wide garage sale and we set up. Some ladies asked my husband, because he has a slight accent, where he came from. He said Cuba. One said something about Cuba's free medical care and how great it was. He said "Why are so many Cubans risking sharks and what have you to get to America and I don't see ANY Americans risking their lives to get to Cuba for free medical care. The woman did think about it answered "Yes, that's something to consider". My husband and I are stunned about some American's ignorance about dictators.
"Free medical care"!
Here's one of my favorite net pundits talking about just that subject:
Socialist intellectuals will tell you that Cuba is a model nation: universal free health care, near total literacy, and essentially no gap whatsoever between the rich and the poor. They call it an island paradise where brotherhood and compassion reign in stark contrast to the brutal inequalities of the heartless and racist capitalist monster to the North, ruled by it’s Imperial Nazi King, who is the devious mastermind of all manner of Conspiratorial Wheels and also a moron.
Capitalist intellectuals – and there are not many, since most of these people have jobs – argue that Cuba is a squalid, corrupt, poverty-ridden basket case, a land of oppression and secret police and torture chambers run by a megalomaniac who practices the most idiotic, inhuman and degrading economic system ever invented.
So here we sit in the chartroom, with our competing maps. What to think?
Well, we can agree that the act of giving up your home, your friends and your family must be traumatic, especially since you will face prison, or worse, if you are caught trying to vote with your feet. And I think all can agree that placing your infant daughter and your aged mother on a raft of inner tubes would be a trifle more traumatic and horrifying than not getting enough whole cane sugar in your grande frappucino at Starbucks.
So, is Socialism a better way to live, or is Capitalism? Leave the armies of experts and intellectuals down in the bilge where they belong.
Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself:
Which way are the rafts headed?
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My hope for Elian is that he will be treated relatively well given the world media spotlight.
Did anyone in the Clinton administration praise or even recognize Elian's mother's heroic sacrifice? God bless her.