Ziva’s post below reminds me of a recent post I made at Cuban-American Pundits dealing with the issue of how to answer those that are so quick to point out Cuba’s health care and education track record as an excuse for fidel’s destruction of a country. I decided to formulate a very simple answer to all of those questions. The pertinent excerpt is below but you can read the whole thing here.
Assuming that Cuban healthcare system is as great as advertised, which it’s NOT but that’s another matter, but assuming it is the best healthcare in the world, and assuming that in Cuba you could get a top-notch, free education would you be willing to give up ALL of your civil liberties in exchange?
Think about it, one might say that you’d be the most healthy, well educated slave in the world. But in the end you would still be a slave. You would be healthy enough to live but be living in a country that people are literally dying to get out of. A country where the suicide rate is unbelievably high. You’d be able to read but only what someone else has approved for you. You’d be educated but deprived of any opportunity to reap the financial benefits of that education.
Does that sound like a fair exchange OR would you rather take the American (Australian, British, or fill in the blank) health and educational system, warts and all, along with the liberties and freedoms which we take for granted but 11 million “healthy and educated” Cubans dream of?
I love how some people talk about the Cuban health care and literacy as if no one has those things without communism. I read quite well, have health insurance, and am free. Communism not needed.
good point conductor…
good point Paula!
Perdoneme el off-topic,
but fidel esta en vivo en cordoba, con un imponente aparato de seguridad; con este evento el va tomar el comando DEL CONTINENTE.
http://www.tn24horas.com/elcanal.asp
Excellent. Thank you. I get into plenty of arguments, and this will help. You are right on the mark here. It is so much smarter to give them their main point with the “OK, even if it’s true that castro has brought…”, and then get right to the real, inescapable reason that communism is an intolerable evil. It is slavery. You live and you learn. Same goes for reading this excellent blog.