Useful idiots

Listening to AM640 on the way to work this morning, I came across an interesting conversation between John Oakley, and three special guests, Rev. Charles McVety (President of the Canada Christian College), Rev. Robert Oliphant (Pastor at Eglinton St. George's United Church) and Henrey Beissel (founder and president of Secular Ontario) discussing the recent choice by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, to step down from power.

It was amusing to listen to two of the interlocutors seeking to justify their support of a despotic regime, tyranny and the suspension of liberty (I suspect it would be Beissel and Oliphant - call me prejudiced). The logical and ethical acrobatics these two went through to make a case for the tolerance of intolerance would have been worthy of a comedy, if not for the fact that numerous others drink the same koolaid that they do.

Some prime examples:
* Cuba has socialized medicine. Ergo, it is a more just and fair place than Canada and the U.S (which is singled out for particular scorn).
That's probably why thousands risk their lives, and many even lose them, in order to escape this "socialist paradise" by way of rafts and small boats. And quel horreur, they go to that bastion of tyranny and fascism, the United States.
* Cuba is a socialist economy, which means it's wealth is more fairly-distributed.
Perhaps that's why the average Cuban lives in conditions of squalor (outside of the tourist encampments/resorts, mind you) while the political elite are able to live lives of decadence and luxury. A corollary: if the country is poor, it means that everybody (except the political elite) is poor, regardless of how hard they work or labour. I guess you could call that fairness...
* It is the responsibility of rich countries to prop up these dictatorships, because that's the only way to help the Cuban people. As a corollary, tourism to 1939 Germany should have been unabated, as a way of helping the Jewish populace within. I love liberal theology and logic...

With brilliant points and logic like these, it really is a wonder that the Western world hasn't yet become a smattering of gulags, thought camps and ghettos. When ideological sacred cows like "socialized medicine" (and the attendant wait times, monopolies etc.) are valued over little things like freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of association, freedom not to be imprisoned or shot for one's thoughts and beliefs, etc., you can bet you're talking to a liberal.

Thank goodness Castro is out. One can only hope that as his influence fades, a new generation of Cubans will be able to regain their liberty, and from there, find prosperity and justice.
Until that happens, I for one will refuse to give a penny to the Cuban regime.