A Boy and a Nation - Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez

National Review, Feb 21, 2000 by John O'Sullivan

'IN a drop of rain," wrote the historian Lewis Namier, "can be seen the colors of the sun." And it is undoubtedly true that small events can reveal large truths. The dispute over whether Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his father in Cuba or allowed to stay in the United States with his Miami-based relatives is a small event by most standards. But, owing to the extraordinary circumstances of his story, the child has become a cause celebre. He is either an actual victim kept from his loving father and family in Cuba by an outdated anti-Communist mindset, or the potential victim of a cruel regime and its naive allies in the American body politic. Of course, that is not quite how the choice is portrayed in the mainstream media-perhaps because many in the media are themselves naively "useful idiots" through whom Fidel Castro hopes to influence the U.S.

For whatever reason, the mainstream story does indeed frame Elian's plight in a way that subtly directs viewers and readers to favor his return to Cuba: namely, as a clash between "politics" and "family values," or between "anti-Communism" and "family values." Yet something prevents us from accepting these interpretations at face value. It is hard not to notice, for instance, that those denouncing "politics" in this case are liberal Democrats who otherwise see government as the cure for all ills. Or that "family values" in this one unique instance is the slogan of feminists and radicals. Or, above all, that a clash between anti-Communism and "family values," which might have been expected to provoke a civil war within conservatism and the GOP, has produced no such strife.

Almost all conservatives recognize the rights of Elian's father but doubt that he is free to exercise them in Castro's Cuba. They agree too on inviting him to Florida so that he can decide Elian's future free from actual or implied threats. And no conservative has suggested that the father's wishes, once genuinely known, should be disregarded because it would be a victory for Castro and Communism. Outside of the Cuban- American community, anti-Communism has never made an appearance. It is the bogeyman in this debate.

Anti-anti-communism, however, is in full flood. The longer the controversy continues, the more echoes of Cold War rhetoric are heard from the Left. It is as if the Sixties generation, having almost burst from frustration since the Fall of the Wall, has finally recovered its early "idealism." Veterans of campus revolutions have awoken from their long sleep of compromise and feel like revolutionary campesinos again. Here is a conflict in which Fidel is opposed by those awful old Cuban- American reactionaries in Florida. In that battle they do not need to think about which side to take-even if they have to be careful about what arguments to employ.

Feminists are in the deepest disguise on this issue. Fathers who normally appear in their rhetoric as "deadbeat dads" or worse are suddenly the indispensable pal every boy must have for a healthy upbringing. Unconventional families are no longer praised as equally valid or a matter of "choice," since Elian's relatives in Miami might benefit from such radical gender politics. No, they are indisputably second-best to the traditional family. And when contemplating Elian's fate, not a single feminist even thinks of "children's rights"-not even Hillary Clinton.

Also traveling in heavy ideological camouflage are the Christian Friends of Castro, in particular the National Council of Churches and its secretary, the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, who was among those urging that "we need to be concerned for a small boy rather than politics." Politics rarely crosses the Rev. Joan's mind. In 1998 she called on Christians to support the Kyoto Treaty as "a litmus test for the faith community." In 1994 she demanded that Jean-Bertrand Aristide be restored to power in Haiti. And some years later she told the New York Times: "If you look at the Nazi regime, you see in it the philosophy of Christian superiority."

In Elian's case, the NCC has been assuring the media that the boy's father is under no pressure from the Havana regime and really does want his son to return. And it arranged for the visit of Elian's grandmothers to the U.S. The smooth operation of this agitprop went wrong only when a Catholic nun, Sr. Jeanne O'Laughlin, whom Janet Reno had asked to superintend the meeting between Elian and the grandmothers, reported that she had sensed real fear on the part of the grandmothers and, as a result, no longer believed that Elian should be returned. No such fear had been noticed by the NCC and its operatives; maybe they were the cause of it.

That leaves two other specimens. Gary Hart must represent the frank and open Fidelistas. The former senator has become a novelist, his latest being I, Che Guevara, a fantasy about how Castro resigns and holds free elections. Curiously, Hart sees his scenario as a Bad Thing: "Any sort of election in Cuba would be dominated by the worst excesses of American politics-corrupting campaign costs, media sensationalism, money polling." In the novel, Cuba is rescued by an elderly Che Guevara who returns to the island, preaches a simple Jeffersonian liberalism against the corrupt politics of television and money, and beds a blond American reporter.