A Graduate of my ‘Commie’ High School Goes to Cuba and Sees Paradise, or How One’s Education Can Warp You for Life
I recently finished reading Paul Kengor’s important new book The Communist: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, which I’m reviewing for a forthcoming issue of National Review. One of the points that Kengor raises is the question of how important a mentor is for any young person, especially when his relation to the individual he is mentoring takes place during the impressionable high school and early college years. Kengor argues that contrary to what mainstream journalists have claimed, Davis was a most influential figure in Obama’s life and a man who obviously led Obama to the very left-wing stance he took when he entered college.
Did Obama ever have a real conversion experience, and consciously move away from the type of politics that Davis espoused? The truth is that we don’t know, since our president has never been upfront about it at all. Many people, of course, have moved from communism to either social democracy, liberalism, or conservatism. The late Irving Howe departed from Trotskyism to become a social-democrat; Whittaker Chambers moved from communism to a deep religious conservatism; in our own time, my friend David Horowitz moved from the ranks of the communist left to become a major conservative intellectual and activist.
Readers of my own memoir, Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, know that over many years, I too began a long move away from the left-wing milieu in which I grew up. One of the chapters in my book is about what I somewhat facetiously call “the Commie high school” that I attended from 1949-1955, the “progressive” Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Begun by Irwin, a disciple of the educational philosophy of John Dewey, the school became a virtual who’s who of the emerging Old and New Left from the 1930s through the 1970s. Its graduates include the Weather Underground’s Kathy Boudin; the Communist African-American leader Angela Davis; the late folksinger Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary; the former publisher and editor of The Nation, Victor Navasky; the wives of both Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger; and the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Michael and Robert Meeropol. The elementary school is named the Little Red Schoolhouse, and many of us called it “the little Red schoolhouse for little Reds.”
Recently, I was interviewed by a writer who is working on an official history of the institution. He asked me to take a guess as to how many of those who taught at the school when I attended were actually members of the CPUSA. I told him that all the teachers were either sympathizers or fellow travelers, but I could only say for certain that I knew two or three who were definitely members. I was shocked when he told me that, in fact, almost everyone teaching when I was there was an actual CP member, and that even the school’s principal was a communist (I thought of him as simply a left-leaning civil libertarian).
So the questions arise. What paths did the graduates of that era take? Have any of them changed and broken out of the left-wing box in which they were educated? Aside from myself, I know of only two others, Abby Thernstrom and Elliot Abrams. At the last class reunion I attended, almost all my classmates had the same views they held when they attended EI.
All of this came back to me when a member of the class of 1954 e-mailed me the following report he sent to his class newsletter about the trip he recently took to the Castro brothers’ workers’ paradise, Communist Cuba. What follows is what this EI graduate wrote just this past week, in August of 2012:
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I know that some of you have strong opinions on Cuba, but I didn’t go as a political analyst, I went to see and photograph the architecture and I was impressed by the concern for historic preservation and the success of the restoration program in Habana Vieja. I went legally on what is called a general license for full time professional research. I could have gone on my own and I intend to go again, but I went with an educational tour group of mostly teachers and got to see many places that I wouldn’t have on my own which included Santiago. So I got to see some of the rural areas by bus and boat. Of course the tour guide worked for the government, but I found him to be very candid in his answers to our questions regarding the successes and failures of the revolution and I learned a lot about how the country is actually governed which doesn’t seem all that different from our own. In my opinion all governments infringe on personal freedom. I was very impressed with the achievements of the literacy program and the totally free education system through college and graduate school. I spoke with Cubans and was told that the free health care system is excellent. The country is poor and struggling, but this is mainly due to the U.S. embargo. My conclusion is that Socialism is alive and well in Cuba and the U.S better forget about regime change.
I spent a day on my own wandering around Havana before the tour group arrived and stayed in Havana another week after they left. The architecture of Havana amazed me. Unlike most cities in Latin America, the variety of eclectic styles from the Spanish Baroque, neo -Gothic, neo -Renaissance, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco are very authentic and sophisticated. Havana and Santiago were filled with tourists from all over the world. It is absurd that U.S. citizens are not allowed to go there. I was not aware of any military presence and found the local police to be very friendly and helpful unlike the police and guards armed with sub-machine guns on the streets of Mexico and Guatemala. There are no restrictions on where tourists can go in Cuba. As always on my travels I roam around the non-touristed neighborhoods and back alleys to see how people live and photograph street life, people at work and at play as well as buildings. I did notice that every shop and every home had a picture of Che Guevara ( a hero of mine too) on the wall and not Castro. I didn’t see any homeless emaciated dogs or beggars on the streets as in all other L. A. countries, but surprisingly I was constantly approached by beautiful young prostitutes. I was told that prostitution is illegal, but that the police ignore it. I took over 2000 photographs and it’s worth a trip to Cuba just to see the 50s cars. The poorest people will spend their last cent restoring one and resourcefully keeping it running. Did I just say, the poorest people? Yes there are rich and poor just like anywhere else, but not to the extremes as in the Capitalist world. And of course the music is everywhere, in the streets as well as the clubs. I went to several of the most famous clubs in Havana and Santiago where I danced and even took Salsa lessons. My most memorable evening was New Years in the central plaza of Santiago with hundreds of scantily dressed Cubans wildly dancing to live music under a spectacular display of fireworks. Certainly not an oppressed people. Go.
If anything, this man’s comments reflect how a supposedly educated individual, who became a successful architect, is nothing but one of the thousands of political pilgrims who, since the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, went on solidarity tours, saw paradise, and came back to report in glowing terms on the great benefits of communism. Somehow they missed the real picture and did not see any evidence of the Gulag in Russia, the prisons in China, or the oppressive police-state conditions in Cuba. The story, for those interested, is best told in Paul Hollander’s classic book Political Pilgrims.
And so this graduate of EI’s class of 1954 follows in that same path. Notice his pure naiveté about how his tour guide gave honest answers that were “candid,” and how Castro’s Cuba is governed no differently than our own government is. Does this man not know about the thousands who braved their freedom to submit a petition demanding free elections, only to be met by arrest of those who wrote the petition and formal rejection of the demands by the government? He found the local police to be “very friendly,” unlike those in countries like Mexico and Guatemala. Evidently, he did not know about my experience during my trip in the 1970s. After taking a photo of ration lines a few blocks longs in front of a nationalized Woolworth’s store, I was promptly arrested by the friendly police and held in a cell for hours. I was told that I was guilty of taking photos that would be embarrassing to the regime.
Then this imbecilic man is surprised to find that he was regularly approached by “beautiful young prostitutes.” Does he ever read any reports available on the internet of what life is really like for Cubans? Sure, prostitution was declared illegal; the reality is that it is a safety valve for the regime. Its people are near starvation, and many do not have relatives in the USA who can send them money with which to get by. Middle-class students, housewives, and other women have no other way to feed their children and families than to prostitute themselves for the new sexual tourists from Europe who flock to Cuba instead of Thailand for cheap paid sex.
Then there is the fascination of how all those poor people spend so much time fixing those old American cars. Doesn’t it occur to him that with crowded and often impossible public transportation that is hardly available and without funds to buy American and European cars like the apparatchiks of the regime, they have no alternative if they are to get to work? But oh, they have wonderful music. For years the regime banned the musicians whom the leftist guitar player Ry Cooder made famous and brought back to the U.S., until they found that was a new source of income for the government. In the ’70s, U.S. rock and roll, rap, and later hip-hop was banned, and most recently, some of the new crop of young musicians emulating the most recent sounds from our country found themselves in trouble when they wrote lyrics slyly critical of the regime.
Finally, this useful idiot of the Cuban regime tells his classmates to also go to Cuba, so they too can dance wildly on New Year’s Eve with fireworks in the background among scantily clad women. Viva the Revolution! No pasaran! Isn’t Communism wonderful?
So the evidence is in. The mis-education one received in a leftist high school, freely existing in the midst of the so-called repressive McCarthyite years in the United States, is seen to have worked. Few who graduated, I am sad to report, ever allowed themselves to think outside the box and to grow up. The school song had a verse about how those who attended would always stay true to the traditions of the institution. It certainly seems, sadly, that so few of its graduates were able to resist holding on to the leftist traditions of their youth.
Goodness! Most of the girls I roomed with at Wisconsin were Little Red and EI grads, I had no idea you and Abigail and Elliott were also there. Small world.
I think your point is interesting. For myself though I must say I considered most of my teachers not worth paying much attention to, just as the movie “Reefer Madness” had no substantial dent in the choice of the next few classes recreational hobbies.
How did it happen the America’s schools were taken over by communists wihtout anyone realizing it? It happened so gradually. They use the language of the heart to impose tyranny and dictatorship. The Soviet Union sounded like an ideal Christian commune on paper. In reality it was a brutal regime of mass murder and human degradation. Someone should investigate and write a book about how the infiltration happened. Pick a typical 1950′s school and then trace, year by year, teacher by teacher, how it happened. Probably it goes back to the Universities. Once you control those, the communists could begin pumping full brainwashed professionals that fan out across the whole nation. A few decades of that and you own the country.
People did try to warn us. Look what they did to McCarthy? His only mistake was in NOT giving the right response. Look what they’ve done to everyone who tried to denounce this communist crap. Have you ever listened to the hated Rush Limbaugh? He’s spent 20 years trying to tell people about this stuff. There are dozens of others.
The problem is the commies got to the journalists and the lawyers long ago and the only time you ever hear about something Conservative is when the left has a chance to either pillory it or prosecute up the person or cause that goes against the commie cause.
For Christ’s sake no one even questions how the color of communism – red – became a term for Conservative.
Good rebuttals, Mr. Radosh.
PSF/Useful Idiot/Little Red Schoolhouse graduate:
… it’s worth a trip to Cuba just to see the 50′s cars. The poorest people will spend their last cent restoring one and resourcefully keeping it running.
In a country like the US, where auto ownership is nearly universal- we had 450 cars per 1,000 people in 2008- some poor people may keep an old car running for decades. In Cuba, which had 21 cars per 1000 people in 2008, ownership of a car is beyond the financial capabilities of the poor- and beyond the financial capabilities of the vast majority of the Cuban people.
Anyone who believes that “the poorest people” in Cuba own an auto is woefully disconnected from reality.
According to the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, life expectancy for Cuba for 2010-2015 is 79.2 years, which is 4.5 years greater than Latin America’s life expectancy of 74.7 years. Ask the Little Red Schoolhouse graduate if this difference of 4.5 years in life expectancy between Cuba and Latin America indicates that Fidel Castro and his brother Raul have been good stewards of the Cuban people. Undoubtedly the Little Red Schoolhouse graduate would say yes, and emphatically so.
Then point out to him that for 1950-1955, life expectancy in Cuba was 8.1 years greater than Latin America’s life expectancy: 59.4 years for Cuba versus 51.3 years for Latin America. Ask the the Little Red Schoolhouse graduate if this difference of 8.1 years in life expectancy between Cuba and Latin America indicates that Batista had been a good steward of the Cuban people. (For 1955-1960: 62.4 versus 54.2 years)
(World Bank data: passenger cars per 1,000 people)
We are the only country that embargoes Cuba so it’s not clear why Cuba is poor because of it; it might account for slightly higher costs due to transportation at most. I wonder if he asked his candid guides what Cuba did with thirty years of Societ financial support.
When he says Cuba is ruled much the same way we are–except for those minor features we have here such as a free press, elections, independent judiciary, etc.–you have to wonder if he’s just an idiot or he wishes we were run the way Cuba is. If the latter, I’d bet he imagines himself as not the people fixing sixty year old cars.
As to Cuba’s life expectancy, or any other statistic, is there any reason to believe that these are based on actualities? Totalitarian governments are not known for being open about such matters.
As to the life expectancy figures
I know people like Mr. Radosh’s classmate. They are fairly successful, college educated, upper middle class, and to a man(woman), all incredibly arrogant. Somewhere in their education, they latched on to the concept that liberals are intelligent and conservatives are stupid (or in need of educating, which they are happy to provide).
These are people for which political debate is pointless. They can be no more swayed by argument than a fundamentalist Christian can be talked out of the existence of God. Neither their divorces, kids in jail, bankrupties, or personal failures can ever be tied to their liberal beliefs.
A hallmark of these people, is that they aren’t fazed by Communism’s shortcomings. Their arrogance precludes that they would be anything but part of the politboro and the party elite. If you do point out what often happens to intellectuals in Communist countries – gulags, prison, or death, they just give you that all-knowing smirk that tells you you’re an idiot.
“The country is poor and struggling, but this is mainly due to the U.S. embargo. My conclusion is that Socialism is alive and well in Cuba ….”
Cognitive disconnect.
I lived in Cuba in the 70′s and I can say that the embargo is just political. Have you ever heard of triangular market ?
Chrislers cars were sold to Argentina who in turn sold them to Cuba !
We used to say that Alpha Romeo killed more Cubans than the Revolution
The nomenklatura used theese cars, they used to go to Santa Mariaa or Varadero on week ends, drink a lot and died in car crashes.
any way, the embargo does not apply for medecines and medical instruments. Only obligation pay cash and with dollars. At that time Fidel prefered to use hard cash to by arms and send troops to Angola rather then by drugs.
I have been to Cuba. Every line that man wrote is a lie, except for the one about prostitution. Debunking this nonsense takes more space than writing it. There is NO way you cannot notice the true living conditions, so maybe he just liked the cheap sex.
And the sad thing is, he doesn’t know he’s lying.
If he were in the antebellum South, he’d declare that slavery was good: “look at all those _____* in the fields. They must enjoy slavery, they’re all singing, in unison!”
*insert your own racist slur, I’m not going there.
Such a number of young hotties who are eager to enjoy sex with fat old white guys! Castro’s society is truly superior and free!
In the Capitalist world, these hot young girls would be toiling in offices, hospitals, studios, classrooms, restaurants, and private homes (their own) without the fun of constantly opening their legs for skeevy old white guys!
Viva la Revolucion!
You’re either joking as polite sarcasm or you’re mindlessly uninformed and indeed illiterate in terms of history
What? You can’t tell which?
Well, the former. Now read it again and shudder.
This idiot is a example of why Bill Ayers went out and got a degree in education.
They are infecting children every day with the cultural marxism that has helped gain them 95% of the black vote.
You are right, I lived in Africa in the 50s, Cuba in the 60s and then in Ethiopia in the 70s, all are good nations who should be rich, and all are poor and starving, I blame communists/socailist and muslims.
President Obama will try to destroy America. He will fail if those of us who are Christian fight with prayer to the one and only God. I must add the the moslems are cowards, they attack the unarmed in food bazzars, on buses, in pet stores , they attack unarmed women and children and US soldiers, the moslems never attack in uniform or in an open war, cowards all of them, and they hide behind civilians. 72 virgins ??? Let the killers get 144 of our perveted men and women who will any sexual act for free !!!!
Do you note the comment about the 1950s vehicles, represented vaguely as if this is our fault? Our embargo has “impoverished” them somehow?
Well, if they *do* have trade and relations with the rest of the world, even if *we* won’t deal with them, why are the vehicles all still archaic? Could it be that the Communist Paradise just plain doesn’t provide a sufficient wage to buy newer, more modern ones?
Hmm…
I always go by the simple rule of thumb “If the border guards are there to prevent escape it isn’t paradise”
Paul Kengor’s but another Illiberal boob.
Communist countries and their usurpers, like Kengor ALWAYS conveniently blame others for their mediocrity.
If Communism or Illiberalism is so fantastic, ‘progressive’ so to speak- why is it these minds/ neighborhoods/ counties/ states and countries always need assistance, aid, have dated (insert the MANY fields, items here) etc., ?
Every country which doesn’t promote immigration (legal, of course) of educated, intelligent people, upward mobility, not having a functional commerce ( taking advantage of and improving one’s natural resources, development of hydro-energy, dams amongst thousands of other resources etc.,)will have a stagnant economy (like, Cuba) or financial leeches (Gaza.. and Cuba!).
@Ron Radosh
What is it always the pampered brats from middle-class families buying into the marxist schtick. How many people died fleeing socialist police states? These people are delusional fools and should be rediculed non-stop. Castro’s own daughter, as did Stalin’s, defected to the US at some point.
If Cuba is such a great place, why don’t we see boatloads of “oppressed minorities” trying desperately to land on its shores? Why do the desperate boatloads always go in the opposite direction?
Here in the USA, we have places where food, clothing and medical care are free, and where everyone is treated equally and has equal access to resources, but from which no one can leave. We call them “prisons.”
Loved your comment out prisons!
Bill Whittle wrote in 2006:
I haven’t seen anyone make the point so definitively.
And now the guiding precepts of the Little Red Schoolhouse and John Dewey’s philosophy of using school to reimagine a transformed America without much knowledge of the current America beyond personal experience is being mandated nationally. And internationally too via the UN.
No country can remain great while simultaneously insisting its students must not know much so they can feel the need for political, economic, and social change. Of course they only say that to each other. We parents and taxpayers just get endless explanations for troubling practices that make no sense. So I go to the sources like Bill Ayers’ acknowledged mentor and Dewey scholar, Maxine Greene, to read what she says they are up to.
Yes, mentors are an important source of understanding.
It’s not that they’re wrong. It’s that they know so much that isn’t so.
Honestly, the question to the marxist has to always be, “What color is the sky in your world?”. Once that question is answered, then you know who and what you’re dealing with.
Utopia, for all it’s fascination, is a creation of the mind. But, even the die-hard marxists, stalinists, etc were, at their core, just the epitome of very angry individuals seeking to wreak some form of justice against people they hated.
Some say Hitler hated the Jews because they wouldn’t accept him in art school and it all grew from there. I don’t care what his problem was, it’s clear that when people like him are awarded power, the rest of the world has to suffer in and because of their very presence. But, the strangest animal of all is that there are so many willing accomplices.
Has to do with being self-critical, aware and knowing the boundaries between right and wrong. Marxists often say all of that is “relative” and “fluid” such as our home grown variety try to apply to the Constitution.
Since the human mind is such a complex thing, it’s difficult to understand the mind of totalitarians and their willing reprobate helpers. Right now, there is among us, a million Josef Goebbels, Dr Mengele’s,etc. All they need is the right enablers to come along and allow them the freedom to do their evil. I find it incredibly easy to see Obama as a hateful, spiteful, brutal dictator. When his guard is down and the teleprompter absent, his anger becomes highly visible, his hatred for the United States glows in the dark.
My own mom dismisses my fears but then I ask her, “You were a kid before and during WW II, how many of your neighbors thought that Adolf Hitler was doing good things for Germany? That he pulled them out of an economic mess and that he would be a good ally for the US? She admitted that many thought so up until Germany attacked Poland. Then I said, “You really think it can’t happen here? Look who’s sitting in the white house…a monumental failure of a man who’s never had a job, never balanced a checkbook, never been told no.” And she changed her demeanor and said, “But I just can’t believe he would do something as bad as all that.”
Nobody every does…until it’s too late.
The problem with Utopias, is that it denies many of the fundamental traits of man – greed, lust for power, egotism for starters.
The problem with Communism is that at some point you will be forced to make the people agree to work for the “common good” by pointing a rifle barrel at them.
The Cuban people are not permitted to come and go freely; they are not allowed to leave their paradise by their own government. But many do, making improvised rafts from milk jugs and coconuts, and old cars and then throwing themselves into the ocean in the hope they will drift to the US. What more needs to be said?
Cuba is a sex store for venal European men who use their strong currency to allow them to live like kings off the misery of Cuba’s immiserated citizens. They buy whores two at a time at bargain basement prices and then crow how wonderful Cuba is. I never miss an opportunity to press the good Eurotrash who go to Cuba about their sexual escapades there; some boast, but most cringe and feign indignance, or act incredulous. Either way, I assume them to be whoremongers, and that makes for an entertaining conversation one way or another.
Will this man go to his grave still a useful idiot, spreading the propaganda about the communist paradise? It is the tourists (who can afford to be tourists) and the emotionally damaged who spread the propaganda. Thanks for the insights, Ron. Not much has changed from the 1930s, eh?
A couple of years ago i stumbled upon a report that a raft had been discovered adrift with 8 or 9 mummified bodies on it.They must have caught the wrong current. Thats all i need to know about Cuba!
Heaven help those who have stopped learning after graduating!…{and Heaven help us too}.
Graduate school tends to finish them off which they tend to usually drift into lawfirms, goverment offices and academia like barnacles on a hull.
He didn’t see all the people shot by Che and Fidel; no they’ve been long gone, dead and buried. He didn’t see the people starved to death in the political prisons. And he didn’t see what the “handlers” wanted him not to see. There is no one so blind as those who refuse to see. Communism breeds a two tiered system. Wealthy government types and everybody else. You get the rice & beans, they get the steak. Any wonder why they’re driving 50′s cars? Maybe, just maybe, they don’t have enough money to buy a new car like our middle class.
And don’t blame the U.S. embargo for Cuba’s problems. There are plenty of other countries to trade with. You can get cars from Japan or Korea. And just why do they keep people from leaving? Why are there still people trying to leave the Cuban paradise for America? If its such a paradise, the people should be more than willing to stay there. Hummm, perhaps a bit of introspection is needed?
“I did notice that every shop and every home had a picture of Che Guevara ( a hero of mine too) on the wall and not Castro.”
What a jerk. What a slimeball. Anybody who has Che Guevara as a hero should really have his or her head examined. The man was a brutal murderer and his name should be scorned just like that of Mao or, especially, Stalin (who Che really took after). For ANYBODY to try and extol the “virtues” of a psychotic killer like Che shows you just how far gone they really are, and I have nothing but contempt and scorn for people like that. They are beyond “useful idiots.” They are aiders and abettors of totalitarian killers and should be shunned by all rational human beings. I hate these people so much, not only for their willful ignorance but for promoting individuals who should have been thrown in prison rather than allowed to run a country. They are the people who keep murderers like Castro and his brother in power and if they love them so very much, they really should go and live in Cuba. Let them find out first hand what life in that “workers paradise” is like. The fools.
I strongly recommend a book called “The Forsaken”. It details a time in the 1930′s when a large group of American left for the worker’s paradise of the Soviet Union. They were spurred on by a previous generation of useful idiots who sounded much like the ones we have praising Cuba today.
Most of them ended up in Gulags.
“The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent”
Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Okay…here’s the plan.
We unload the thousands of unsold Chevy Volts on Canada, and let the Canadians sell them to Cuba as the “CHEvy Volt”.
We see SOME return on our buyout funds, the Canadians make some modest coin, and Cubans get new eco-friendly cars on their island where the Volt’s limited range and propensity to lose it’s charge in cold weather doesn’t matter.
Everybody wins!
I’ve always been curious about the architectural styles of Potemkin villages. Now I won’t have to make the trip.
“…the totally free education system through college and graduate school. I spoke with Cubans and was told that the free health care system is excellent. The country is poor and struggling, but this is mainly due to the U.S. embargo.”
And all that “free” stuff will set you “free”.
Guess what. Somehow reality exists too. It really is free. Really. “Totally”.
In fairness to this doofus, there are plenty of U.S. residents who don’t quite grasp the “no such thing as a free lunch” thing. Just look at those who shriek that we should just tax those gosh durn corporations, choosing ignorance of the basic economic fact that individuals pay all taxes, regardless of who cuts the check.
Mark Belling outlined that today while guest-hosting for Rush. He had a caller who pointed out that all the home-grown socialists who hate the “evil” corporations don’t seem to understand that without the tax revenues from said evils, the gravy train for the give-away programs would all stop. So…the socialists are dependent on those evil profits in order to advance their own agenda. Curious thing, that.
The poor ride on the backs of the people(and corporations) who pay taxes. By taxing the corporations out of existence, the poor get less. So, they then lay the blame on the corporations..as fewer of them now need to pay higher costs to keep “the poor” from being without.
I’m a huge fan of social darwinism. Let them what can, do. Them what can’t (or won’t) do without.
However, for them what can’t…through no fault of their own…I believe strongly in alms. But the real number of can’ts is very, very small compared to the full rosters of those on taxpayer assistance. Naturally, the cover came off years ago as it became widely known as a vote-getting scheme.
Unfortunately, like any addict, if cut off cold turkey “the poor” turn to violence. So…before we employ social darwinism, increase the size of police forces tenfold, build another thousand prisons. Let them have the utopia as mentioned above with free food, clothing and equal access to everything…prison. Give them the opportunity to either take a job or go to prison indefinitely. I’ll bet you many would choose prison because they have no job skills, no talents other than stealing or lying or other “down-low” abilities and when faced with having to provide for themselves, they would panic and opt for the free meal every time.
Or, put them in the military. I have often thought..if you’re a decent physical specimen, and can follow orders…then if you want to get free sh*t, you have to serve the nation that you want to drain of its resources. ie: NO FREE LUNCH. If you decline then…prison, where you have a place to sleep, free food, TV, clean clothes and a potty and a sink. Paradise. Everything a person could ever want or need provided by the government.
Easy Peasy
Let’s see. Shape and name shifting fathers; a spoiled, radical, hate-filled mother; Indonesian Muslim elementary school indocrination; Frank Marshall Davis as a mentor; Marxist friends and professors at college; Chicago leftist community, Bill Ayers and Dohrn; community organizer-lawyer with ACORN; Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. It is the most natural thing in the world that Barack Obama, present name, is so screwed up.
What I’ll never understand is how so many of our countrymen could have voted for him — and are about to do so again. One answer: The Ayers-infected schools in this country are really rotten.
The millions who were killed in camps, gulags, prisons, and mental hospitals, or where murdered out right, would be happy to know that they did not die in vain. At least this idiot got to cavort among beautiful young prostitutes and vintage cars in a communist paradise before he died.
I love how he declares Che is a hero to him. A mass-murdering racist is one of his heroes? How telling.
surely the second greatest wonder of the universe is the human mind’s ability to deceive itself.
Oh my, education and medical care are “totally free”!
That’s when he lost me. Very, very early.
But is the “mentor” really responsible for Obama? I’d guess no. He certainly may have been a factor, and a big one, but ultimately we make our own lives based on our DNA. Stalin’s and Castro’s kids come to the U.S. for freedom; the industrialist’s daughter becomes a hothouse lefty and imagines herself rushing to the barricades whenever she leaves her posh East Side apartment. My guess is that the architect who sent the incredibly idiotic letter from Cuba (“yeah, this is a paradise except for some reason all the women seem to be selling it”)would have become a lefty even without the little red schoolhouse. Jim Morrison was singing “The End” as his father, an admiral, commanded carriers off Vietnam.
That particular mentor may well be biologically responsible for Comrade Obama as well. It would be worth the journey to some lower level of Hell to swap stories with the now long dead KGB or GRU operative that set in motion the plan that got the Dunhams to first Harry Bridges’ Seattle, then to Harry Bridges’ Honolulu and then installed young Ms. Dunham/Obama/Soetero as a CIA asset in Indonesia. Along the way somebody contrived the arranged marriage with the Kenyan communist to cover the fact that she’d whelped young Barry off a card-carrying CPUSA member. Sure wish the media could pay as much attention to the doings of the Dunham family as they do to Mitt Romney’s dog.
Let’s get the National Enquirer on this…seriously.
Most of Latin America is poor because of exploitation by American capitalists, but Cuba is poor because the American government has laws to prohibit American capitalists from exploiting Cuban workers.
I love it. Well said.
Brilliant summary of the liberal thought process. . . .think I will steal it!! Thanks!!
Exactly, and Cuba used to be poor before the revolution because they were being exploited by American capitalists, but now it’s poor because the American capitalists are not allowed to trade with Cuba. No matter how you slice it, America causes the problem and Cuba (and any other poor nation)are victims. That’s commie policy ever since Lenin couldn’t come up with an explaination for why the industrialized countries seemed to be getting richer and less likely to have a revolution; it’s because they were exploiting the rest of the world.
Castro isn’t a communist, he’s a Castroista, communism was convenient for him to adopt to his country. I have less distain for Che, who was part of the youth guerrilla movement railing against moribund untra-conservative societies of Latin America that were stiffling its movement into the 20th Century.
The writer is a fool. He would be held in the same contempt that Matthews was by the Castroistas. Castro lets Americans in to build up cash, creates a, “crisis” then keeps them from influencing the bulk of Cubans. Unfortunately, this won’t change until both Fidel and Raul fall from power.
It is unfortunate that our sniper didn’t take the shot he had to kill Castro back in the 60′s.
Hey Ron,
My daughter informs me that her aunt told her that when my daughter was about 2, during a visit by her aunt to the commune where we lived, there was a poster of Che above my daughter’s bed.
I wonder who could have put that up there?
May G-d forgive me. At least I’m on the Conservative plantation now, huh?
LOL
“At least I’m on the Conservative plantation now, huh?”
At your own free will and cognition. You also understand you are free to leave at anytime you so desire. “Liberating” isn’t it?
Great piece. May I add that when people visited Berlin and the rest of Germany in the mid-1930′s, they say the same thing – “happy” poople all employed and gloriously praising their benefactor – Adolph Hitler. Well, we all know what happened in 1939 – World War II.
If Cuba is such a delightful place, then why didn’t he stay there????????
After all it has free health, schooling, great music; and the best part, you get to tinker with old cars. Who would ever want to return to the ‘paradise’ called America??
Just goes to show what a college degree will get you!!
I don’t buy the Idiot’s claim that widespread poverty is due to the US Embargo – They can’t trade with anyone else? What mindless, knee-jerk claptrap – reflexive regurgitation.
Is it the cars or the cheap sex? It sounds about like Barbara Ehrenreich on a Caribbean Island during Mardi Gras: young people willing to be felt up for a low,low, public school teacher affordable price.
ew. just ewww.
Ronnie, your examples are 40 years old. They would be more compelling if they were a little more up to date.
“Brothers & Sisters: I have always been curious. Perhaps one of you can help me out?
We all know condtions in Haiti are deplorable. Has been that way for generations. “Brothers & Sisters”, do desperate Haitians risk their lives to get into Cuba? After all, Haiti ain’t that far from Cuba and certainly, a lot closer than the U.S..
By the way, one need not be a “Brother or Sister” to help me out on this.
I’ve never been to Cuba but Anthony Daniels (who also writes under the pen name Theodore Dalrymple) has been there (and in many other dictatorships) and notes that Havana’s architecture is NOT being lovingly preserved as Ron Radosh’s classmate claims but has been allowed to crumble for decades. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble tracking it down just now. However, he gives details about life in Cuba in this article, written as Dalrymple: http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_3_urbanities-why_havana.html
Daniels also points out that Cuban achievements in health care are not nearly as dramatic as the Castro regime claims: http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/cubashealthfalse.html. I should note that Daniels is a retired medical doctor who has travelled widely and practiced in the third world for extended periods.
Daniels has some insights into Che Guevera that are interesting: http://www.trenblindado.com/therealcheguevar.html. It appears that, just like Ron Radosh’s friend, Guevera never grew up.
your old classmate did not say “dance with scantily clad women” …he said “scantily dressed Cubans”
your classmate is gay.
sad that these freaks go there and say how nice it is. the Cubans would say different if they were free to speak. I know …I worked there.
Thank you Mr. Radosh for a really fine article. Cuba is a country frozen in time, and you make that point perfectly obvious. One commenter mentioned that you should have used more modern examples. In my opinion, you did – simply because modernism has been excluded from Cuban culture. The 50′s for us is today in Cuba. The clod that wrote that “dear sisters and brothers” letter comes across as the stupidest critter to have ever held a fork. I truly feel sorry for the guy.
“The truth is that we don’t know,” — the HELL we don’t! If you read the book you can se he STILL uses the same words, as well as the ideas of class warfare, hating Churchill, sticking it to corporations… that Davis used… what more do you need…some people don’t want to recognize that we have a communist in the white house, these ostriches will ruin the country by default.
And a mere thirteen blocks to the north, Dan Carey S.J. did more for the working man from the basement of Xavier High School than all the EI/Little Red graduates put together.
I went to Nicaragua during the heady days of Sandinismo and people told me the same things and made the same excuses and the Sandinista police I met made a favorable impression, but it was very easy to find people who had a less happy assessment of the regime. The people who were unhappy usually spoke Spanish and the people with favorable reports invariably and conveniently spoke English. A Presbyterian lay worker explained to me how Christians must learn to engage in revolutionary violence. I had read Hollander’s book before I went and I met revolutionary tourists all over the place.
The new front in revolutionary tourism is in tourist guides that help the traveler understand repressive regimes in their historical context. [Other writers would have used scare quotes in that last sentence, but I try to avoid them.]