What best forms and nurtures the inquiring mind can be a difficult question.  But, I believe that fortunately, it is our essential longing for knowledge and truth that makes us evolve and has intrinsically made us human.  Certain aspects of society seem to have a stifling effect on our humanity through the many ills that you so articulately enumerated.  It is in this context, with one specific remark within your speech I now take issue.  Like you proudly call yourself, my father used to also call me a "bleeding-heart liberal" but, on this following subject, I have been confronting otherwise like-minded democrats and S.D.S. members throughout my college days and beyond; often seeming an unlikely thorn in their otherwise conformed presentations.  

In your speech, while urging censure of China for its human rights violations, you expressed an apparent approval of Fidel Castro and the current Cuban regime by advocating the recognition of Cuba's government. Coming from you, I found this seeming double standard on international policy somewhat confusing.  The deprivations and total media manipulation under which Cuban people live and have lost their personal and collective freedom of expression and their human liberty should not be lightly dismissed. Mr. Castro's government is anything but legitimate.

Cuba is a sovereign state and, some argue Fidel Castro may have fostered slight progress, but at what cost? The often voiced, blaming of many of his injustices on United States policy toward Cuba remains, I believe largely, a naive exercise.  To blame his atrocities on the embargo, a forty-plus year continual fear of a second CIA or US military backed invasion, would also be simplistic and inaccurate.

Though filled with idealism, I was too young to cast my first democratic presidential vote for J. F. K. in 1960 over Nixon.  After actively campaigning for Eugene McCarthy, I voted for Humphrey in '68.  Like you, I too campaigned for McGovern in '72. I voted  for Carter in '76 and  in '80.  For Mondale in '84, I was too disillusioned to vote at all but was hopeful when casting my vote for Dukakis in '88.  Too suspicious of the candidate, to vote democratic in '92, I futilely cast my vote for Perot in protest.  By 1996, my confirmed distrust for Bill Clinton convinced me that staying home was a sane option.   In 2000 I was, and remain, a proud  Nader-voter.   The party may have become more reactionary, myopic and self-serving than even its opposition; it needs to radically reevaluate what's next for Democrats? 

'Every issue is a bipartisan issue'.

SOME  ON-SITE LINKS:

'Cuban Education'
'An Innocent Victory' (Ithaca Journal:06/01/00 )
'Cuba'sYoung Pioneers'
Cuban Totalitarianism
Cuban 'Psychiatry'
Cuban 'Journalism'
'HISPANICS & OTHERS'	The NY Film Festival Accused of Intolerance

PEARL FILMS - HOME

TRAITORS

ENDORSEMENTS