Key
Issues
In all your discussions on this issue, there are five key points to
focus on:
(1) Elián's right to his own life comes first.
Elián's right to his own life comes before anyone's
custody of Elián.
Elián's right to his own life comes before everything—including his father's
rights. Elián has the inalienable right to be a free human being. In
Cuba Elián, like his father, is
a slave, since Cuba is a
communist dictatorship. For this reason he should not be returned
to Cuba.
(2)
The argument of "family values" against "Cuban
politics" is a smokescreen designed to cover up the real issue: Elián's right to life.
In
Cuba Elián is
a slave of the state, as Cuba is a
communist country.
Those who want to send Elián back at the cost of Elián's right
to his own life, know this, and bring up the smokescreen
of "playing politics". They want politics to be ignored
because if the political issue -- would Elián be free in
Cuba? -- were addressed, they would lose by default.
They would lose
because a human being's right to his own life comes before all
other 'rights', including a parent's
right to be a child's guardian (which is why parents who sexually
abuse their child lose custody of their child). A parent may not lay claim to a child at
the expense of a child's right to his own life, i.e., a child who
escapes National Socialist (Nazi) Germany should not be sent back
there because his father in a concentration camp requests
it.
The argument of "family values" against "political
rights" is a false alternative: the purpose of a family is to
help a child become an independent adult -- not to ensure that a
child remains a slave. To send Elián back to Cuba would be to
place him in the same position that resulted in the death of his
mother. This would be a moral crime.
(3)
Those who wish to send Elián back to Cuba are guilty of 'playing
politics' by ignoring Elián's political right to his own life.
If Cuba were a free country, there would be little
question of returning Elián to his father (assuming his father
was a good father). The problem is that Cuba is a
dictatorship, and in Cuba Elián is a slave.
Any court of
law that recognizes human rights, would not send Elián back to
Cuba, since this would be an act of sentencing a free human being to
slavery. (The entire justification of the rule of law is that
it is a vehicle to objectively protect human rights).
Politics is not a "game" people play, it is something too serious,
of too much importance, to be ignored. Politics is the branch of
philosophy which deals with an individual's relationship to the other members
of society -- it is a matter of life and death. It is
because of the politics of communism that Elián's mother died,
and why the life of young Elián is in such a predicament to
begin with.
(4) Free
speech does not exist in Cuba; those who disagree with the
Cuban government are beaten and/or imprisoned.
According to his relatives in the United States, the
father knew that Elián was coming to America, and the
father wanted to come
later when his three month old baby was older. Elián's
father did not change his "line" and demand the return
of Elián to Cuba, until after Castro came into
the picture.
Now imagine what would happen to the father if he disagreed
with Castro, and said "I want my boy to live in freedom as
his mother and I desired. Curse Castro for forcing my ex-wife and
my son into such a situation!" Does anyone think he would
still have his food rations, and his government job (in a country
where the only legal employer is the state)? In Cuba one is
only free to speak what the government says.
But, even if the father wished Elián to return to Cuba, he would
not have the right to do so, since Elián's right to his own
life comes first (see point 1 above).
(5) Those
who want Elián to be reunited with his father in Cuba and
not in America are more concerned with sending Elián back
to Cuba, rather then reuniting him with his father.
If reuniting a father with his son is so important to Castro's
American appeasers, why does it have to be at the expense of Elián's
right to his own life as a free individual in America? Why can't
Elián have both freedom AND a father? Why is letting the father
and his family come freely to America -- without any restrictions or
conditions -- NOT an option for them? It is because
reuniting the two is not their real concern. If it were, they
would leave open the option of Elián remaining in the U.S.
(6) Those
who wish to send Elián back to Cuba are guilty of sanctioning
communism.
Those who cry that one should not "play politics" are in effect
sanctioning
communism by their stance. By their refusal to address the
political situation of Cuba, and pretend that a dictatorship, like
Cuba, is
the same as a free country -- which is the pretense one must
maintain in order to send Elián to Cuba -- they are in fact sanctioning communism and dictatorship.
This is
not an issue of playing "cheap politics". It is the
moral issue of standing up for the right of Elián Gonzalez to
remain free in America.
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