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THE WEEKLY STANDARD
May 8, 2000
Bloody Nonsense
By Dennis Prager
Since Elián González was rescued on Thanksgiving
Day 1999, most liberals and many conservatives have been certain
about what to do with this boy whose mother died trying to bring
him to America: Send him back to his father in Cuba.
For the record, I acknowledged from the outset that, all things
being equal, a child who loses his mother should be with his
father. But from the beginning, I also rejected the certitude
of those demanding that Elián be sent back to Cuba. Did
the mother's dying to bring Elián to freedom count for
nothing? Were we really prepared to send a child to a parent
in a totalitarian state before knowing what that parent really
wanted? Without ever meeting the father on free soil, from where
did the certainty derive that he was a fit father—after
all, he hadn't been married to Elián's mother in Elián's
lifetime, and the boy's custodial parent had been his mother.
How could anyone be certain that the father did not want his
son to escape Cuba? Finally, once the father did not come for
his son for months, and Elián began bonding with relatives
in Miami, especially with a surrogate mother, shipping this boy
to his absentee father in a country he could never return from
seemed less and less morally justified.
In light of all these questions, why did nearly all liberals
advocate sending the child to a father about whom they knew nothing
and to a place to which no child should have to be returned?
One reason was the post-1960s liberal hatred for anti-Communists.
While few liberals actually praise communism, ever since the
Vietnam War, liberals have fought anti-communism with much greater
zeal than they have fought communism. There were two major cold
wars. One was between the United States and the Soviet Union,
and the other was between anti-Communists (mostly conservatives)
and anti-anti-Communists (nearly all liberals). Liberal hatred
of anti-Communists could be seen these past months in the liberal
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