Anti-Climacus

LINK: (Can you tell I'm supposed to be doing writing today?) From Marc Cooper on Cuba:

"Do the math and see that Fidel has been in power for...um...more than 46 years. It's a staggering and ultimately shameful notion. A revolution that promised a "New Man" has instead produced an Old Man dictator who jails his opponents and governs by decree.

Give me all the jibber-jabber you want about the unfair way Cuba was and is treated (and all that's true) but nothing justifies four and a half decades of one man rule. Indeed, Castro's personal power monopoly is an insult to the Cuban people as well as to anyone who identifies with the revolutionary, humanist principles in which the regime so cynically continues to cloak itself."

And he makes a point of mentioning the latest roundup of dissidents, which, apparently, France has been at the forefront of trying to get them freed. And also apparently getting a hold of some of the people suspected to be behind 3/11. Now, I dislike France as a political unit as much as anyone--the centuries of aggression, nationalism, and appeasement, at turns--but, as with everyone else, we ought to be willing to welcome them fully when they do what they ought to be doing. And so I do. Good work, France!