[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 55 (Friday, March 24, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 FALSE PRAISE FOR ANOTHER AUTHORITARIAN

                                 ______


                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 24, 1995
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention an 
article that recently appeared in the Albany Times Union regarding 
France's warm welcome for Fidel Castro. The Mitterrands, who decry our 
cruel and barbarous treatment of Fidel the liberator, would do well to 
read up on their history before embracing another petty dictator. How 
quickly we forget that the socialist's dream of equality for all is 
nothing more than the tyranny of few in the name of many.
                       Fidel Castro, French Hero

       The Issue: He is hailed by the Mitterrands, who denounce 
     the U.S. embargo of the island.
       Our Opinion: They show an appalling ignorance of history.
       Among many politicians and intellectuals in France there 
     has been a tradition of viewing communist systems in an 
     exceedingly favorable manner--no matter how brutally those 
     regimes were in fact behaving, Mainstream French intellectual 
     enthusiasms might shift from Moscow to Beijing or Havana, 
     depending on the fashion, but they always had a red tint.
       Against this history the Mitterrands warm embrace of Fidel 
     Castro this week begins to make a little sense. For the 
     Socialist French president and his wife, Fidel and the Cuban 
     revolution never represented a threat to civilization as much 
     as its promise.
       Mrs. Mitterrand especially was effusive in her praise of 
     Fidel and his work, singling out as his greatest achievement 
     the ``equality'' he had ``brought to the people.'' It did not 
     seem to bother the president's wife that he had realized that 
     goal at the considerable cost of liberty and fraternity.
       We concede that equality has to a considerable degree been 
     achieved in Cuba. Save for a small ruling class, the people 
     are nearly equal in their poverty, equal in their ignorance 
     (notwithstanding near universal ``literacy''), equal in their 
     servitude, and equal in their fear.
       Furthermore, we cannot but agree with Mrs. Mitterrand when 
     she says that the Cuban government has accomplished ``the 
     summit of what socialism could do.'' That, of course, is the 
     problem. Communism promises paradise but is only able to 
     deliver the gulag.
       The French thinker, the late Raymond Aron, hit the mark 
     when he called Marxism the opiate of the intellectuals. It is 
     clearly a heady drug for many of them, an hallucinogen that 
     induces cerebral giddiness and grossly distorts the senses. A 
     lifelong imbiber like Mrs. Mitterrand can look across the 
     Atlantic and see the American embargo as ``cruel'' and Fidel 
     Castro as ``nothing like a dictator.''
       Thankfully, the communist menace is almost wholly a thing 
     of the past. Once, apologists of Marxist dictators posed a 
     real security threat. Today they might give start to a good 
     belly laugh.
     

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