What the Elián case reveals.
By John O'Sullivan, an editor-at-large of NR. National Review February 21, 200. Issue
In a drop of rain," wrote the historian Lewis Namier, "can be seen the colors of the sun." And it is undoubtedly true that small events can reveal large truths. The dispute over whether Elián Gonzalez should be returned to his father in Cuba or allowed to stay in the United
States with his Miami-based relatives is a small event by most standards. But, owing to the extraordinary circumstances of his story, the child has become a cause célèbre. He is either an actual victim kept from his loving father and family in Cuba by an outdated anti-Communist
mindset, or the potential victim of a cruel regime and its naïve allies in the American body politic. Of course, that is not quite how the choice is portrayed in the mainstream media—perhaps because many in the media are themselves naïvely "useful idiots" through whom Fidel
Castro hopes to influence the U.S.
For whatever reason, the mainstream story does indeed frame Elián’s plight in a way that subtly directs viewers and readers to favor his return to Cuba: namely, as a clash between "politics" and "family values," or between "anti-Communism" and "family
values." Yet something prevents us from accepting these interpretations at face value. It is hard not to notice, for instance, that those denouncing "politics" in this case are liberal Democrats who otherwise see government as the cure for all ills. Or that "family values"
in this one unique instance is the slogan of feminists and radicals. Or, above all, that a clash between anti-Communism and "family values," which might have been expected to provoke a civil war within conservatism and the GOP, has produced no such strife. Almost all conservatives
recognize the rights of Elián’s father but doubt that he is free to exercise them in Castro’s Cuba. They agree too on inviting him to Florida so that he can decide Elián’s future free from actual or implied threats. And no conservative has suggested that the father’s
wishes, once genuinely known, should be disregarded because it would be a victory for Castro and Communism. Outside of the Cuban-American community, anti-Communism has never made an appearance. It is the bogeyman in this debate.
Anti–anti-communism, however, is in full flood. The longer the controversy continues, the more echoes of Cold War rhetoric are heard from the Left. It is as if the Sixties generation, having almost burst from frustration since the Fall of the Wall, has finally recovered its early "idealism."
Veterans of campus revolutions have awoken from their long sleep of compromise and feel like revolutionary campesinos again. Here is a conflict in which Fidel is opposed by those awful old Cuban-American reactionaries in Florida. In that battle they do not need to think about which side to take—even
if they have to be careful about what arguments to employ.
Feminists are in the deepest disguise on this issue. Fathers who normally appear in their rhetoric as "deadbeat dads" or worse are suddenly the indispensable pal every boy must have for a healthy upbringing. Unconventional families are no longer praised as equally valid or a matter of "choice,"
since Elián’s relatives in Miami might benefit from such radical gender politics. No, they are indisputably second-best to the traditional family. And when contemplating Elián’s fate, not a single feminist even thinks of "children’s rights"—not even
Hillary Clinton.
Also traveling in heavy ideological camouflage are the Christian Friends of Castro, in particular the National Council of Churches and its secretary, the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, who was among those urging that "we need to be concerned for a small boy rather than politics." Politics
rarely crosses the Rev. Joan’s mind. In 1998 she called on Christians to support the Kyoto Treaty as "a litmus test for the faith community." In 1994 she demanded that Jean-Bertrand Aristide be restored to power in Haiti. And some years later she told the New York Times: "If you
look at the Nazi regime, you see in it the philosophy of Christian superiority."
In Elián’s case, the NCC has been assuring the media that the boy’s father is under no pressure from the Havana regime and really does want his son to return. And it arranged for the visit of Elián’s grandmothers to the U.S. The smooth operation of this agitprop went
wrong only when a Catholic nun, Sr. Jeanne O’Laughlin, whom Janet Reno had asked to superintend the meeting between Elián and the grandmothers, reported that she had sensed real fear on the part of the grandmothers and, as a result, no longer believed that Elián should be
returned. No such fear had been noticed by the NCC and its operatives; maybe they were the cause of it.
That leaves two other specimens. Gary Hart must represent the frank and open Fidelistas. The former senator has become a novelist, his latest being I, Che Guevara, a fantasy about how Castro resigns and holds free elections. Curiously, Hart sees his scenario as a Bad Thing: "Any sort of
election in Cuba would be dominated by the worst excesses of American politics—corrupting campaign costs, media sensationalism, money polling." In the novel, Cuba is rescued by an elderly Che Guevara who returns to the island, preaches a simple Jeffersonian liberalism against the corrupt
politics of television and money, and beds a blond American reporter.
If Hart confined his fantasies to novel-writing, who could complain except his readers? Like all the other resolutely non-political figures, however, he too wants Elián to be returned to Cuba. His rationale is the surprisingly candid one that Castro is an okay guy. Or, in his own words,
that he is "a fascinating creature . . . more a nationalist than a Communist." He "just doesn’t want the bad elements that ruled his country before him to come back." More a nationalist than a Communist! How can one really object to someone so untouched by knowledge of
totalitarian evil that he can happily repeat the agitprop phrases that even the totalitarians have long abandoned?
A more complex case is presented by Professor Tony Judt, writing in the New York Times. Judt also appears in a familiar guise, however—that of the sophisticated but sympathetic European intellectual who admires America’s energy and idealism but shakes his head over its perversion of
those virtues, namely its obsessive and dogmatic anti-Communism. What distinguishes Judt from Hart is that the former has no illusions about Communism while the latter has every illusion. "Communism was indeed monstrous," Judt writes, "a dysfunctional inversion of social and human
values . . . [in which] doctrinal projects took precedence; personal and familial relations meant nothing." But he goes on to argue that "dogmatic anti-communism shares many of these traits" and that, in particular, since "no one in his or her own right mind could live or want to
live a normal life under a communist dictator . . . there is no need to respect the claims or feelings of the citizens of communist states."
Obviously it is Elián’s father who is being discussed here. But is the professor giving a fair account of the skeptics’ argument? No one I have heard is arguing that the father’s demands should be ignored because it is in principle impossible to imagine that someone could
want to live under Castro. Plainly, as we know from eastern Europe, some people liked living under Communism—a small minority, to be sure, but a significant one. Most people do not like it; but they are restrained from saying so because they are subject to cruel intimidation, both directly
against themselves and against their loved ones. What former refugees from Communism like George Borjas have argued is that we cannot be sure what the father wishes as long as he and other family members remain in Cuba. It is precisely because we should respect the claims and feelings of those
living under such pressures, therefore, that we should ensure, as best we can, that their public claims genuinely reflect their private feelings.
Sr. O’Laughlin has already decided, on the basis of close contact and examination, that the grandmothers were acting insincerely and out of fear. Maybe that is true of the father also. A simple way to find out would be to invite all family members, including the father, to America to take
Elián back after a week of formalities. If they all returned to Cuba, my fellow anti-Communists and I would accept their decision. Does such an argument really place doctrinal projects over personal and familial relations?
Professor Judt’s apparent unwillingness to consider this solution raises the question of whether he is subject to some obsessions of his own. After all, whatever else the Elián Gonzalez case is about, it is not an example of "the world’s only great power exploiting a
private tragedy to score points against a diminutive totalitarian island." Quite the contrary. The U.S. government is seeking to return the boy, and is prevented from doing so only because his relatives seek to protect him legally against a poor and unfree future. It is in Havana that vast
state-sponsored rallies make Elián a symbol of anti-Yanqui imperialism; in the United States a skewed but serious debate is taking place about what will be best for him. And what exactly is diminutive about Cuban totalitarianism? Yes, Cuba is a small place, but its government is large, cruel,
and brutal.
In the midst of his reflections on the dogmatic harshness of American anti-Communism, does Professor Judt ever pause to wonder why a loving father would want his son to grow up even in a diminutive prison? And if not, why not?
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