Raul Castro Asks: What’s Wrong With You Cubans?

[Rapunzel]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/raul-castro-asks-whats-wrong-with-you-cubans.php

July 7, 2013 by John Hinderaker in Cuba
Raul Castro Asks: What’s Wrong With You Cubans?

Today Cuba’s president, Raul Castro, addressed a session of parliament. His speech was devoted largely to decrying the loss of bourgeois virtues in Cuba:

    Raul Castro spent the lion’s share of a prominent speech Sunday scolding his countrymen for all kinds of bad behavior, everything from corruption and theft to public urination and the odoriferous practice of raising pigs in cities.

    Speaking before legislators at one of parliament’s twice-annual sessions, the Cuban president railed against decaying morals, a deteriorating sense of civic responsibility and vanishing values like honor, decency and decorum. …

Cuba has achieved the socialist dream of equal poverty for all, except of course the elite

    Other examples of bad behavior cited by Castro:

    * People showing up late to work.

    * Graffiti and vandalizing of parks, monuments, trees and gardens.

    * Loud music that disturbs neighbors’ sleep.

    * Scavenging metal from phone and electrical lines, sewers, signs and traffic lights.

    * Fare evasion on public transportation.

    * Failure to comply with school dress codes, and teachers who accept bribes for higher grades.

    * Lack of deference to the elderly, pregnant women, mothers with small children and the disabled.

    * Children throwing rocks at cars and trains.

    “All this takes place right in front of our noses without inciting public condemnation and confrontation,” Castro said.[/i]

Well, let me explain it to you this way, Raul: more than 50 years ago, you and your brother Fidel seized control over Cuba by military force. Fidel had two objectives: 1) to enrich your family and a few cronies, and 2) to sleep with as many beautiful women as possible. He accomplished those goals in grand fashion, having perhaps stolen more of his country’s total wealth than any warlord in recorded history. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else slowly became destitute, an inevitability under kleptocratic socialism.

So, after more than half a century of lies, brutality and corruption, you have finally figured out that society doesn’t thrive without the bourgeois virtues? And that Communism extinguishes virtue of every sort, save for the courage of those who resist it? Do tell! Fidel, one of the most cynical men ever born, knew exactly what he wanted, and he got it. But you, Raul? Are you really the dumbest man on the face of the Earth? Or are you just pretending?

JOE adds: You can find more images of modern Cuba in “Postcard from the Island of Individual Mandates.”

[Cincinnatus]

The impact of the Castros in America was quite dramatic. Marx once said, The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

The leaders of the Cuban Revolution, or at least its public face, were young intellectuals. Fidel had a law degree. Ernesto “Ché” Guevara was a doctor. Regis Debray, their chronicler and colleague, was a professor of philosophy.

Some in America, rebelling against what they saw as the staid America of the 50s, adopted these men as role models and thus another stream was added to the river which became the New Left of the 60s.