So Long, Fidel

As you know, I am the biggest anti-Communist around. I advocate making the late great Hon. Joseph McCarthy's birthday a national holiday. I refuse to spell "Army Street" as c-e-s-a-r-space-c-h-a-v-e-z-space-s-t-r-e-e-t. I don't get all teary when reading accounts of various dictatorships cracking down on college-student-activist-turds. Shucks, I'll be the first to remind the world that Paul Robeson was a crappy singer and that Victor Jara was a pain in the neck.

However, there remains a soft spot in my heart for Fidel Castro. Part of it is my own dislike of the Kennedy clan, something that Fidel shares. Part of it is that he might have been a Commie dictator, but he was a good model for a dictator. I also admire the fact that he held on to power for decades, in spite of a crippling economic embargo (one that is a disgrace on our part, especially as we bend over backwards to enslave our economy to the really villanous Red Chinese). Although he later backed down due to the evil influence of his pervert granddaughter, Fidel Castro had the most enlightened AIDS policy in the world.

He represented an era when our enemies were Reds and not Lavenders, and I, for one, miss that era. It is much easier to love your enemy when the enemy is a real man than when the enemy is some Harvey Milquetoast who whines about not getting enough respect for his sex life. Marxist Leninism is crap, and it is murderous evil crap, but its motivation shares something with all sane economic systems: to generally improve the lot of its subjects. Now, from that good start it quickly goes off the rails into Hell, and Fidel was not the least immune from that unfortunate trend. But there is something infinitely nobler about a Communism that starts with trying to improve the lot of its subjects and a political movement that starts off with fulfilling the basest of illicit desires and tries to build a whole universe based on that.

Will Cuba be better off without Castro? Probably. Will Cuba be better off when the last vestige of Commie-ism is tossed into the sea to feed the tiger sharks? Undoubtedly.

But I still salute the man who outlived Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ron Reagan. Now that he is out of office and the temptations of office, he might find time for introspection and meditation. Now it is especially important to pray for his conversion.

John Paul the Great, in your life you met with Fidel Castro and were instrumental in bringing down the evil of Communism. Please pray for the conversion of Castro that he may not be lost to the abyss but instead may spend the remainder of his days making atonement for the evils of his regime and that he may find salvation in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.