williepete
Platinum Member
- Banned
- #421
Castro apologists will be busy rewriting history over the next week.
It will be truly wince-worthy:
Years ago, my former National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger shared this memory of being in Valladares’ presence:
The year was 1986 (or thereabouts), and the place was Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The speaker, at a student forum, was Armando Valladares, the great Cuban dissident. He wrote a memoir called Against All Hope. Everything that is important to know — vital to know — about Castro’s rule on Cuba is in that book. Not for nothing is the author known as “the Cuban Solzhenitsyn.”
After Valladares’s speech, the students came after him: Hadn’t Castro “done some good things for his people”? Hadn’t he delivered universal health care? Hadn’t he brought about universal literacy? They echoed the standard propaganda line, learned from their teachers, the New York Times, and so on. Valladares gave an answer I will never forget. He said it gently, earnestly, yearning for the students to understand. I will paraphrase it: Say all those things are true. They’re not, but just say they are. Can’t you have those things without torturing people? Can’t you have them without wrongly imprisoning them? Can’t you have them without killing them? Without denying them rights? Without forbidding them to speak freely, without forbidding them to worship, without forbidding them to vote and have a normal political life and pursue their own destinies, and so on? Why is material well-being — not that Cuba has it, or anything remotely like it — but why is material well-being incompatible with freedom? Or not even with freedom: with the absence of a stifling, horrid dictatorship? Why?
I doubt that Valladares moved very many of those people. But every time I hear the phrase “Castro has done some good things for his people,” I wince.
Fidel Castro Is Dead
It will be truly wince-worthy:
Years ago, my former National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger shared this memory of being in Valladares’ presence:
The year was 1986 (or thereabouts), and the place was Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The speaker, at a student forum, was Armando Valladares, the great Cuban dissident. He wrote a memoir called Against All Hope. Everything that is important to know — vital to know — about Castro’s rule on Cuba is in that book. Not for nothing is the author known as “the Cuban Solzhenitsyn.”
After Valladares’s speech, the students came after him: Hadn’t Castro “done some good things for his people”? Hadn’t he delivered universal health care? Hadn’t he brought about universal literacy? They echoed the standard propaganda line, learned from their teachers, the New York Times, and so on. Valladares gave an answer I will never forget. He said it gently, earnestly, yearning for the students to understand. I will paraphrase it: Say all those things are true. They’re not, but just say they are. Can’t you have those things without torturing people? Can’t you have them without wrongly imprisoning them? Can’t you have them without killing them? Without denying them rights? Without forbidding them to speak freely, without forbidding them to worship, without forbidding them to vote and have a normal political life and pursue their own destinies, and so on? Why is material well-being — not that Cuba has it, or anything remotely like it — but why is material well-being incompatible with freedom? Or not even with freedom: with the absence of a stifling, horrid dictatorship? Why?
I doubt that Valladares moved very many of those people. But every time I hear the phrase “Castro has done some good things for his people,” I wince.
Fidel Castro Is Dead
