According to this interview,
So, exactly why is it that Cuba is lightyears ahead of the supposedly first-world advanced enlightened United States in so many core issues ? Why is it that our nation is incapable of doing all three of these things? What a pity.
Jeeeez. Dubya could learn a thing or two about humanity from Castro…
Cartooniverse
Because Cuba has one guy deciding everything, whereas the US is a messy Democracy/Republic? Could the answer really be that simple? :rolleyes:
Maybe you’re being sarcastic, JohnT. But I see it as a legitimate question. Don’t most of the US concerns about abortion and homosexuality and divorce come from the Bible? And isn’t Cuba heavily Christian? So how come it’s OK for the public there and not here?
Or are you saying the public really hates it and Castro just enforced his rule?
Our leaders have to pander to a vocal minority who vote in proportionally high numbers. Castro doesn’t have to pander to jack shit.
Cuba is officially Communist, but they’ve become a tad more tolerant of churches since a Papal visit in the late 80s (I think). But they’re not a Christian nation.
I don’t understand why we won’t deal with Cuba - criminy, Castro is old and believed to be suffering from a variety of diseases. His heir apparent - his brother Raul, is not much younger and not in much better health, plus he lacks Fidel’s charima. So very shortly, there will be a major regime change, and we won’t have to intervene militarily to make it happen. So why aren’t we making some inroads now? Why are we letting Chavez and the Iranian gov’t make nice so close to our shores? It makes no sense to me.
Of course, I’m not a politician, so I guess I’m not expected to understand. All I know is my husband was stationed in Gitmo years ago, and he thinks the island is wonderful - what little he saw of it. Heck, I’d sail there if it was legal. If our leaders would leave the Cold War behind and talk to our southern neighbors. Sheesh.
I’m sorry - sore spot with me.
The same reason that I gave in my last post (although I should have said <i>disproportionatly</i> high numbers). Florida is a key state and there are a lot of anti-Castroites there.
Who knows if the public hates it or not? They have no say in it whatsoever. Castro is not a Christian, certainly, so the guiding principles of that religion would have no effect on him, and the will of the people is not relevant in a dictatorship.
If you want a serious guess as to why they seem so enlightened, I would hazard a guess is that they do it on purpose just for that reason…so they SEEM enlightened to the world at large. Never mind the fact that the people live under a dictatorship and are denied basic rights that are assumed as a given in liberal democracies…freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, etc.
Would you give all that up in exchange for the legalization of sodomy?
Cuba is now officially secular, but not atheist. Many countries have a strong religious influence without having an official religion. Communism has little to do with it.
Let’s see. We have legal sodomy. We have legal abortion. We have lno-fault divorce. So explain again why Cuba is better than us?
You want a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion? You want divorce to be “simpler”? Well, if you’re an impoverished subsistance farmer with no assets then yeah, divorce is gonna be simple. The complex part comes when you split up assets and decide custody of children. That’s NEVER going to be simple.
Aaaaand you also have things like concentration camps for the HIV positive, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom to peacefully petition the government for a redress of grievances, the whole communist dictatorship thing. But you have simple divorce! Sounds like a paradise.
They have national health care and lower infant death rates than the USA.
The former U.S. Surgeon General seems to think Cuba has better preventitive health care than the USA.
I also think this is what you mean when you talk about HIV “concentration camps”. At least they were doing something about AIDS when it broke instead of hoping it will kill all the gay people and then go away.
That said, I don’t think Castro is the best guy in the world but I’d happen a guess if the USA sactions against Cuba were lifted they would excel past the USA on many points.
For a poor country they are doing something right.
Do you get that they are a prison island? That whether or not they are “doing something right” that it doesn’t matter because the people have no choice in their government and they can’t leave? No one has addressed the point that both Lemur and I have brought up…NO freedom of speech. NO freedom of movement. NO freedom of assembly. NO freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Even if their healthcare system is decent, this is NO SUBSTITUTE for freedom. Even if it is slightly better than the US system (which is hard to believe), people in the US have good healthcare AND freedom. You can have both, and something tells me the folks in Cuba would love to have both.
Not to mention that the absurdity of your link about the HIV sanatoriums is summed up from this quote taken from it:
I can’t imagine what the outcry would be in the US if the government did this to people who are HIV+? It would be considered outrageous to even consider it…and rightly so! But somehow it is OK in Cuba, because…why?
A nitpick. Cuba is socialist. Not communist.
Didn’t we go over this in a thread in Great Debates once?
Cuba was pushing athiesm back in the day. The pope’s arrival meant Christmas got celebrated again and that athiesm was no longer the official stance. They are much more tolerant of religion as of recent years.
People in the US have good healthcare?
You really need to ditch your programming, robot.
Compared to Cuba, they do.
Jesus, my irony meter just exploded. Talk about parroting the party line to the exclution of reality…
No party line. Just information I’ve read, my good man.
Except of course that percentage of Americans without healthcare. {Poor person without health care in the US} “Hmm, Food or medicine this week?” It is a tough choice and apparently gets a hearty “tough luck” from a certain segment of our population. There is plenty wrong with Cuba, why don’t you pick an area other than universal healthcare, even if it is below the standards of our insured citizens. This is an area Cuba has down well.
I strongly agree with those who would normalize relations with Cuba and forget our Cold War differences.
Jim