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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

No Reconciliation with Communism

Pope Francis met with Fidel Castro over the weekend.

It’s not the first time the Bishop of Rome has met with a dictator, in Cuba or elsewhere. But it is the first time this particular pope has done so.

Next stop on this tour? The United States.

The pope’s most pointed words were directed not to the Communist nation but south by southwest, to Colombia, from where hail contestant parties to peace talks (the government versus leftist insurrectionists) now being held in Havana. The pope wishes no breakdown in the talks, urging that the world cannot afford “another failure on the path of peace and reconciliation.”

Pope Francis has been credited with the thawing of cold war relations between the United States and Cuba, and, for his part, praises both parties for the detente, which he has dubbed “an example of reconciliation for the whole world.”

But Cuba remains under tyranny; the people cannot speak freely and are impoverished under the thumb of socialistic regulation. The pope may not be seeing elements of causality here, of teleology, of purpose: Cuba’s poverty is not caused by the American embargo, really, but by a pernicious attachment to outdated ideas of government supremacy over people.

Unfortunately, many of the pope’s most famous remonstrances about capitalism suggest that he may be closer to the Castro brothers’ oppressive Marxist ideology than to a more liberatory approach.

While the pope publicly prays for reconciliation, Americans would be better off if we repudiated reconciliation with destructive ideas that too easily get packaged as “humane” and “Christian” when they are really, and deeply, precisely the opposite.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Pope, Castro, Vatican, Cuba, collage, photomontage, illustration, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Common Sense

 

Categories
crime and punishment

Cold War Casualty

The Cold War never quite ended. At least two countries still sport that old-​fashioned “Second World” status of ostensibly communist, definitely totalitarian, and utterly crazed leadership: North Korea and Cuba.

Alan Gross, age 65, was convicted of un-​Cuban activities in 2011, and has since been serving a 15-​year prison sentence. He was a subcontractor, working in Cuba, for the U.S. Agency for International Development. What, precisely, did he do “wrong”?

U.S. officials said Gross was merely trying to help Cubans bypass the island’s stringent restrictions on Internet access. But Cuban authorities say Gross was part of a plot to create “a Cuban spring” and destabilize the island’s single-​party communist government.

The two interpretations are not exactly at odds with one another. Sure, he was trying to bring the Internet to Cuba. And that’s why the communist government was suspicious: free information would likely bolster opposition to the commie way of stasis.

Which just goes to show how awful single-​party states are, how mind-​crushingly awful communism is: restrictive; vindictive; paranoid; cowardly.

These qualities are supposed to be absent from New Socialist Man, of course, qualities found only — at least, in ultra-​left theory — under capitalism and democracy.

But, instead, they serve as hallmarks of governments that cannot trust their subjects with even a smidgeon of freedom.

Gross is now reportedly weak, and has given up on life. Prison life in a prison society is not worth it, he says.

We can hope for a prisoner exchange. But really, what’s needed is a change of government in Cuba.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.