What we've learned from the seven-month saga of Elián.
By NR's editors. National Review. 6/28/00 3:55 p.m.
Elián González has been returned to his father in Cuba . . . which is to say, to Fidel Castro, self-appointed father of that nation.
The lad and his sperm donor had actually sent a Father's Day card to El Jefe from the estate of whichever Clinton pal was last to play host to them. The seven-month saga of this unfortunate child revealed a number of things about America, none of them reassuring.
We learned, or were reminded of, the following.
That most Americans do not know what life is like in a Communist country. That an energetic executive supported uncritically by the mass media, and with a well-drilled party in Congress and a judiciary well-seeded with hacks, can do anything it pleases to Americans and their liberties, under any
flimsy pretext it can think up on the spur of the moment. That our left-wing elites actually like Castro and his system and will go to any lengths to ingratiate themselves with him, regardless of the interests of their own nation. And that penniless immigrants who work hard for decades to establish
themselves as middle-class Americans are regarded with contempt and loathing by those same elites, especially when they manifest signs of religious belief.
No doubt these lessons, like Elián González himself, will soon be forgotten, leaving us with the melancholy, extremely un-Clintonian consolation that: "The truth is great, and shall prevail, when none cares whether it prevail or not."
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