The American Spectator

Among the Intellectualoids

Pity the poor Cubans, who as of Tuesday have found themselves deprived of the benevolent care of their glorious leader Fidel Castro. So say today's Commie tools, anyway.

Reading the photosphere's reaction to Castro's retirement provides a gentle reminder that too many academics and other propagandists for socialist totalitarianism just don't care how many skulls must be cracked if the blood fertilizes their utopian fantasies.

p>Take this comment from Chris Bertram of the Crooked Timber blog: br> /p>

I haven't looked yet, but I've no doubt that there'll be lots of posts in the blogosphere saying "good riddance" to Fidel Castro (especially from "left" US bloggers like Brad DeLong who never miss the chance to distance themselves). And, of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc. Still, I'm reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth's surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let's hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let's hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let's hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let's hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let's hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!"

br> Who is Chris Bertram? He's only the head of the school of the arts, and a professor of philosophy, at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Other less exalted fools gushed over Fidel's alleged accomplishments in the chat rooms and comment sections of left-leaning blogs Tuesday and Wednesday. Here is a smattering:

p>From Lysistrata at Huffington Post : br> /p>

topics:
Education, Health Care, Business, Iran, Russia, Africa, Socialism