It would be nice if Americans who knowingly profited from the communists’ looting of Cuban households would be prosecuted.
For some reason the Left, including too many Americans, treats Cuba as a kind of giant amusement park where moral rules that apply everywhere else can be ignored without conscience. So the gaily painted antique cars and dilapidated architectural facades become fun photo backdrops rather than occasioning questions about how the most advanced society in Latin America became one big slum. And it’s OK for tourists to pay Cuban teenagers for sex, because it’s all voluntary, right? Never mind that in any decent country these kids would be in school rather than out hustling to supplement their families’ incomes. And what’s a little stolen property? It all happened so long ago, and the revolutionaries were trying to accomplish great things and the people whose property they ripped off were probably rich and had it coming. Or maybe we shouldn’t apply our standards to another society.
It’s all a rationalization for self-serving corrupt behavior, as so many defenses of unfree societies are.
(Read the comments at the Babalu post for more anecdotes about the Castro regime’s generosity with stolen property.)
Not something new, alas.
The Soviets permitted Hammer sweetheart deals on sales abroad of precious czarist art. (When Hammer depleted his stock of Faberge eggs, no problem: He counterfeited them in New York.)
[The secret history of Armand Hammer]
No, not new. But perhaps public attitudes about this kind of behavior can change.
You mean like they prosecuted March Rich?
“It would be nice if Americans who knowingly profited from the communists’ looting of Cuban households would be prosecuted.”
May I extend that ‘principle’ to the concept that ‘It would be nice if Americans who knowingly profited from the ruling caste’s looting of Mexican’ households would be prosecuted.’
It bowls me over that in our contemporary world , the Communist rulers in Beijing have instituted policies and programs that have created more jobs and opportunities for their people raising the standards of vast numbers literally of peasants in the last decade than the ruling caste in Mexico has done in two decades. China does not have an ‘escape’ valve to dump its multitude. The intelligent people at the top understood that it was reform or revolution. The Mexican ruling caste does have an escape valve operated by enablers within the United States to avoid serious reform and revolution. As enablers, those Americans are just as much stealing the future of the Mexican people as those who participate in the looting of Cuba.