Cubans weary of being treated like animals without
rights took to the streets, shouting “Freedom!” “Down with the
dictatorship,” and, most pointedly, “Down with communism!” In some cases, protesters carried American flags. This was not an isolated
demonstration: According to the Spanish-language data site Inventario, some 63 cities
and towns were roiled by demonstrations on Sunday through early Monday.
Here in the U.S., some on the left initially tried to
portray this as Cubans being upset over COVID-19 infections and a lack of
vaccines. A State Department spokesperson styled it as Cubans “exercising their
right to peaceful assembly … about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine
shortages.”
“We call for calm and condemn any violence,” Julie Chung,
acting assistant secretary for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western
Hemisphere Affairs, tweeted Sunday.
Nice try. To begin with, Cubans don’t have a “right to
peaceful assembly,” nor any other real enforceable rights. All their rights
depend on the government’s willingness to grant them. As for the
demonstrations, the reasons plainly went well beyond a mere “medicine
shortage.” Watch videos: You’ll see it has nothing to do with
COVID-19.
Saying we “condemn any violence” is a joke. The Cuban
people have lived under perpetual threat of actual violence committed by the
Communist regime for 62 years.
In fact, the demonstrations were an outpouring of rage
and disgust with the ongoing failures of communist rule. Videos of average
Cubans standing in front of Communist Party headquarters, chanting “Cuba isn’t
yours” and calling for President Miguel Diaz-Canel to step down, shows they aren’t
afraid.
Cuba’s government responded as expected: “The communist
dictatorship … started cracking
down on the protests, allegedly inflicting violence on the unarmed
protesters and cutting off internet access,” wrote the Daily Wire.
Faced with the demonstrations Sunday, the Biden White
House at first remained mum, deferring to the State Department’s inane pabulum
referenced above. Realizing the scope of the uprising and understanding that it
would be carefully read, Biden aides issued a much better statement Monday:
“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call
for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the
decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected
by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Joe Biden said. “The Cuban people are bravely
asserting fundamental and universal rights.”
We give Biden credit for that statement, which will
surely anger his party’s far left. But please remember, Biden, as Barack
Obama’s vice president, supported “normalization” with Cuba’s regime. How’d
that work out?
So far, the Democratic Party’s left wing has been quiet.
Will America’s other Democratic leaders react? You know, the socialist “Woke”
ones?
How about something from Obama? Or senator and former
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an unabashed admirer of both Cuba and
the USSR? Or maybe Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and
Jamaal Bowman, all members of the Democratic Socialists of America?
Just two weeks ago, a delegation from Democratic
Socialists traveled to Venezuela and “embraced” the Venezuelan dictator,
Nicolas Maduro. This was no rump group; a news report says the delegation included “the chairperson
of the National Political Committee of the DSA, members of the International
Committee, and members of the organization’s Political Formation, Foreign
Policy and Bilateral Relations sections.”
This is who they are. Their silence now on Cuba speaks
loudly.
It’s bizarre that failed socialism gets so
much love in our nation’s capital. That our elected officials
would be so ignorant of history and the tragedy of communism is alarming. And
it’s sad that free American citizens are foolish enough to vote for socialists.
As Investor’s Business Daily noted four years ago on the
100th anniversary of communism:
These “socialist” ideas espoused by people like Sen.
Bernie Sanders and his allies in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party
are the same ideas that have brought misery, poverty and loss of freedom in
other countries. But somehow millions of American voters believe it would be
different here.
A hundred years on, and communism isn’t dead, as many
believed after the USSR’s collapse. It’s still alive, and so are the ideas that
animate it. And while today’s political “socialism” and cultural “Marxism”
pretend to be different, they really aren’t. To paraphrase George Santayana, we
should remember communism’s many deep sins and tragic failures or suffer the
ignominious fate of repeating them.
Cuba’s turmoil, just 90 miles away, should be
a warning to all Americans: Chaos, violence, poverty and oppression are
socialism’s inevitable result. Socialism isn’t just ineffective and wrong; it’s
evil.
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/13/cuba-the-collapse-of-another-socialist-utopia-lets-hope-so/
