Keep 'em down!

A remarkable story in a Madison, WI newspaper begins:

Sister city activists and other Madisonians with ties to Cuba said today they fear the Bush administration will use the transition in power from Fidel to Raul Castro as the occasion to activate a plan to replace that nation's communist system.

Yeah, one of the things that keeps me awake at night is the "fear" that a nation's citizens might gain speech, press or other basic freedoms or have the opportunity to raise themselves out of poverty and despair.

Retired UW English prof Robert Kimbrough typifies Madison's fatuousness with this howler:

"It is disgusting. The 2004 report said, 'We pledge to help the Cuban people, and a new transition Cuban government, as you move away from the totalitarian Communist dictatorship and toward a free and representative democracy.'"

Such naked contempt for the Cuban people is disgusting. This guy, although probably young at the time, must have been absolutely crushed when Hitler committed suicide...

The affection a naive segment of the left gives to the brutal tyrant Fidel and the mass-murdering butcher Che Guevara and the credulity with which they parrot the regime's propaganda has always fascinated me in a macabre sort of way. It seems that as long as you hate America you will always find a willing audience, no matter what your crimes against humanity, we've seen it over and over throughout the last century. The phenomenon is so common that the Soviets famously had a term for them: useful idiots.

James Lileks hit the nail on the head when he said "Given the left's romance with revolution and guerrillas, it'll be only a matter of time before Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah appears on T-shirts like Che, and his merry band are lionized as the new Viet Cong. Hizballah builds schools, you know. Granted, they're schools where the biology lesson consists of sawing off the heads of infidel frogs. But they build schools!"