Communist Cuba as a toilet. Good metaphor.

There is an article on TED where an African economist George Ayitty describes his native continent as a leaky boat, that as much as well-meaning American academic elite want to fix with "Swiss Bank Socialism" will always continue to leak.

http://blog.ted.com/2007/08/premiere_george.php.

He made a lot of good points, one of them was that these nations in Africa and South America are actually resource rich. The United States when it was collonized was a third world nation WITHOUT these resources. The only resources the United States had was the capitalist model that it was organized based on. When this land started absorbing the globe's poor and oppressed people four hundred or so years ago, it had nothing. It had no gold like was rumored. It had no spices. It had no easy to grow crops. It had no bursting mines. It had no overflowing oil wells. It was a very harsh, unforgiving terrain with nothing much to generate naturally itself except for war, disease, pestilence and hardship. The wealth that later fills the coffers of philanthropists that save TODAY's third world was GENERATED. By CAPITALISM.

This guy picks up a metaphor that was similar to the one Fidel Castro used when he took over Cuba. He knew that even with a heavy dose of oppression and clamp down on opposition, communism does not work as a common man's Utopia. It must be an open system. There must be another system to deal with Cuba's poor. Their mentally ill. Their criminals. The terminally ill. Even with machine guns and socialized medicine no Cuban utopia can handle the suffering that opressed centralized economies will generate.

So this man describes Africa's socialism as a leaky boat. Castro describe's cuba as a toilet that must regularly be flushed. Onto the shores of Florida. Even as heavily flawed as Cuba is and as many millions as have to flee to this country, there are many others that come here on the rafts that Castro himself sends when he flushes the toilet. Very similar to the principle of the Soviet Goulag, the actual infrastructure of communism doesn't even work as well as the very best example may work in theory. The very best example of communism that exists in the twentieth century, which is pretty bad, it only works that well because the United States is on hand (as much as those on the left hate this country for its inequity even if that inequity means that at least SOME people do well, as opposed to pretty much all of them doing terrible like in Cuba).

What would happen if Castro wan't able to flush the toilet anywhere? The United States, which is hated on the left for.... um, really it is hated because it proves them a perpetual failure, is the sewage system that is able to keep Cuba looking as good as it looks. With millitary government, with no freedom of speech, with central planning, the only reason that Cuba is actually able to keep even the base pretense of socialized health care or any of the things that the left holds up as a model of what they want the United States to be like in a limited distorted way is that Castro HAS somewhere to flush his toilet. That is why I find it so amazing that Castro has any fans at all.

What exactly are Castro fans, fans OF? The only ways in which Communist Cuba can be said to not be a dismal failure and oppressor of its people is the extent to which the United States, with a very small percentage of the resources that are generated by the excesses of the miracle of capitalism, saves their rear end. Otherwise the sewer that is communism would continually back up. There would be no where for it to go. So that is why it is so scary that these people would change the United States into a communist system if they could. They know that there would be no place to flush the toilet without the United States being capitalist. They know it, yet they still think there might be something salvagable in this dismal system. Clearly the only thing they think would change is their ability to be in charge. But that is the hubris that scares me even worse. They cling to the dim likelyhood that if communism is tried just one more time it wouldn't be as dismal of a failure with them in charge. They don't have any reason WHY they think that, they just do.

Chaim Potok had the best quote about communism and capitalism that I have heard yet. Capitalism is judged for its deeds; Communism for its dreams. Those on the left really don't have anthing that they want more than ending the resentment they feel toward others that win while they succeed. The deeds of capitalism, while all it does wrong is allow the vices of those who are given their own freedom, are so bad that allowing all of the actuall success to disappear in leu of what will be clear failure, but at least it will be FAIR failure where no one is required to resent another's success. That is clearly what people resent about capitalism. It is not that millions of people are ground up in the gears of a system that has never yet worked and no one has any reason to believe it will.

The reason why people will always be willing to give communism another shot is because nothing is worse to people who resent the United States than allowing it to continue as a testament that principles of freedom (doing nothing for someone but allowing them to take care of themselves) works much better than the best laid plans of those who would take away that freedom. The only way that enemies of freedom can get rid of the testament of their failure is to get rid of the United States. That is why nothing will be good enough until the United States is changed into the system that will need its toilet flushed. Even though they know there will be nowhere to flush it.