Sometimes we forget that there really are huge differences between Democrats and Republicans. I was reminded of that a couple weeks ago when I went to an Angels Baseball in the fine city of Anaheim (mentioned only because there is very little else in this entry that relates to CA government or politics) game with a group of friends, mostly Democrats.
Cuba became a topic of discussion. I had explained that I wanted to visit the communist country before Castro dies and things change. However, I expressed that I would have a certain sadness in enjoying the wonders of the tropic island nation while the locals lived without freedom. My Democrat friends were quick to downplay the lack of freedom in Cuba saying. "Freedom is relative." "Do you call waiting in line at the airport for 2 hours freedom?"
As a matter of fact I have come to really dislike the commercial air travel experience, but it does not have anything to do with freedom. And I failed to convince my Democratic friends that freedom is not at all relative but a static experience that is not pliable. Either you have it or you do not.
The very fact that we have an ongoing argument about freedom in America is evidence that we in fact have it. That exchange of ideas is not allowed in Cuba and thus they do not have it.
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Adam:
One of the many brilliant things George Orwell wrote applies to this subject
quite powerfully:
“The survival of Freedom largely depends upon the ability of ordinary men
and women to MAKE DISTINCTIONS.”
People who cannot “make a distinction” between waiting at an airport, or
being sent to Fidel’s notorious torture chambers on the “Isle of Pines”
need a major dose of reality.
How some Liberals continue to make excuses for this 47-year-long brutal
dictator is beyond my comprehension.
When I visited Moscow in 1993, after Communism fell, I found dozens of
newspapers and pamphlets criticizing President Boris Yeltsin. That’s
when I know Freedom had finally come to Russia.