Mona Charen: moral failure | columnists

It is a moral problem. Sanders was not a liberal during the Cold War, that is, someone who favored arms control, peace talks and opposed support for anti-communist movements . He was an outright communist sympathizer, which meant that he was always willing to ignore or excuse the crimes of regimes like Cuba and Nicaragua; always ready to suggest that only American hostility compelled them, among other things, to stop their opposition, to expel the priests and to renounce the elections.

Good consistent ol Sanders took over one of the pro-Castro's biggest hits left last week on 60 minutes. When Anderson Cooper lobbied the senator noting that Castro had jailed many dissidents, Sanders said he condemned such things. But even this reluctant acknowledgment troubled the old socialist, who then rushed to add: When Fidel Castro took office, you know what he did? He had a huge literacy program. Is this a bad thing?

In fact, the first thing Castro did when he took power (note that Sanders' money laundering mandate took office) was to get 600 Fulgencio Batistas supporters to walk in two of the island's biggest prisons. , La Cabana and Santa Clara. Over the next five months, after rigged trials, they were killed. Some trials have been public performances. A crowd of 18,000 people gathered at the Palace of Sports to give Jesus Sosa Blanco a helping hand down. Before being shot, Sosa Blanco noted that ancient Rome could not have done better.

Batista was a villain, it must be said. But summary executions are frowned upon by true liberals.

Castro then announced that the scheduled elections would be postponed indefinitely. The island is still waiting. Within months, he started shutting down independent newspapers, even some that had supported him during the insurgency. All religious colleges were closed in May 1961, their property confiscated by the state. NB, Senator Sanders: Castro also found the time to bring the unions to their knees. David Salvador, the elected leader of the sugar workers' union, had been a vocal opponent of Batista. He was arrested in 1962 and is said to have spent 12 years in the Cubas gulag.

The Black Book of Communism says that between 1959 and 1999, more than 100,000 Cubans were imprisoned for political reasons and between 15,000 and 17,000 people were killed. Neighbors were encouraged to inform each other and the children to their parents. During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, Cuba imprisoned homosexuals in concentration camps. Like other communist paradises, the biggest Cuban export was the boat people. About two million of the islands, 11 million inhabitants have escaped. Countless others died during this attempt. Sanders ever wondered why a country that had done such good work on literacy and health care had to shoot people to keep them from fleeing?

Bernie Sanders reiterated with credibility the other great propaganda subject concerning Cuba, its so-called wonderful universal health care system. It is not wonderful. Even those who wish to give Cuba the benefit of the doubt note the lack of basic necessities. Many hospitals across the country even lack reliable electricity and clean running water. A 2016 visitor found that patients at a Havana hospital had to take everything with them: medicine, sheets, towels and more:

The only bathroom that worked in the entire hospital had only one toilet. The door wouldn't close, so you had to go outside with people to watch. The toilet paper was nowhere to be found and the floor was far from clean.

Yes, Cuba has high literacy rates, but the state wanted readers to spread it. Granma tells people what to believe and prohibits access to other sources of information. To date, the diet controls what people can know. There are two internets on the island. One for tourists and those approved by the government, and the other, with restricted access, for people.

Bernie Sanders has access to all the information he can absorb, yet he remains the apologist for regimes that violate all standards of decency. Unlike the Cuban people, he is responsible for his own ignorance and his pig head. He claims to be a democratic socialist, but as his remarks in Cuba suggest, the modifier may be right for the show.