Well I am personally arguing the realpolitik. I don’t feel like arguing to Bricker’s moral standpoint, just his realism.
Your universe is preferable.
My problem: I don’t agree your universe is the likely outcome of your policy.
I see.
Really? That’s the best you could find of me holding a grudge?
It was the first thing that came to mind. You failed to identify your grudge posts with the label, “THIS IS A GRUDGE,” frustrating my broader search efforts.
Sorry. Had something to attend to.
To answer your question; In a world where every situation is exactly like every other, then yes, one would be required to treat Cuba and S.A. in the same fashion. But that’s not the world we live in and I think the crime of Apartheid is a far greater social wrong than the crime of nationalized property and lost investments due to a nation’s regime change 50+ years ago.
Obviously. How convinced are you that Obama’s policy would have no benefit for the Cuban people? What makes Cuba different from Vietnam or China?
Also, for how long will you support the embargo if nothing changes (e.g. if Castro’s successors are Castro clones)? At what point would you favor trying something new?
I’ll admit I hold some grudges. So, I guess you win and we should cut off ties with Cuba. I wonder, though, whether the “victims” of Castro’s nationalism policies even care anymore half as much as you seem to.
Really? “I am innocent because I had no idea that it was illegal to dump toxic waste into the river” ? Seriously? If one proceeds with a major enterprise, there is such a thing as “due diligence”, which I suspect would be wholly applicable when dealing with foreign countries. If you break a law because you did not realize there was a law there, I believe that qualifies, at the very least, as negligence. You might not bear the full weight of the penalty, but if your behavior was flagrant, you still might.
Factually incorrect: increased trade helped the people, produced jobs, and brought in money. Cutting trade off again has already hurt small businesses and ordinary people – even before the cut-off fully takes effect. People have been cancelling vacations and businesses have been cutting off investment plans already, solely on the basis of the announcement.
It wasn’t a “gotchya” question. I was just curious how firm a line in the sand your “don’t punish the country for the sins of the leaders” was. It’s fairr that it’s not chiseled into concrete.
Cites for these claims?
I’d favor hanging on until no one named “Castro” is in charge.
Why in the world would anyone characterise your position as a grudge. Lol.
One other question: If the last Castro is out of office and the new guy offers the US 10 cents on the dollar for corporations’ claims and something more generous for Cuban American claimants, would that be enough for you or is a much harder bargain required?
Bricker do you think Germans should be able to sueEastern European countries for loss of their property post-WWII?
In any case, I’d strongly dispute your characterization of the Cuban government ‘stealing’ the property of rich Cubans or Cuban-Americans, for three reasons.
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Compensation was offered, IIRC in government bonds, to people whose property was nationalized, although those offers were rescinded if the people in question chose to leave. Some rich industrialists were offered jobs managing the newly nationalized enterprises which they had formerly owned. There are cases of rich property owners whose properties were nationalized in the early 1960s, were compensated fairly well and didn’t have to work for the rest of their life (one of them became a famous poet, I forget her name). You can argue that the compensation was insuffiecient, you can’t really argue no compensation was offered. Cuban-Americans chose to leave the country and so they lost any chance at getting compensated.
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Like the aforementioned Germans in WWII, the Cuban elite lost a war. Loss of property is one of the things that happens when you lose a war, or a revolution.
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To talk about the nationalization of property as ‘theft’ presupposes that rich Cubans had a legitimate right to that prpoperty. I don’t view the distribution of income, wealth, and productive assets in pre-1959 Cuba as a particularly just one, so I don’t grant that they had any moral claims on that property.
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In any case, even the most famous Doctor of your own church held that in cases of strong social necessity (to alleviate starvation, for example), the right to property is revocable. I think the state nationalizing property in order to alleviate severe social inequalities is a good example of that (and incidentally, such exceptions to the right to property were recognized in the constitutions of even a number of capitalist Latin American states during the 1950s and 1960s).
Why does that matter? That really does make it sound like a grudge, not thoughtful opinion based on the positives outweighing the negatives or vice versa.
That would be fine. There just has to be a recognition. Frankly, even an apology would suffice.
I grant you it sounds that way. But it’s really more the fact that the Castros were the ones that orchestrated the theft, and while they remain in charge, it’s difficult to imagine a genuine Cuban renunciation of the theft.
No.
Castro’s action violated the Constitucion de la Republica de Cuba Art 24 and 87, which I argue was the correct law in force and not the illegal modification known as the Ley fundamental de 1959. But forget that – I acknowledge that he was the guy with the guns.
The Agarian Reform Act passed in Cuba in 1959 converted all agricultural estates over five caballerias into Castro-controlled farms. This dispossession affected not only “rich Cubans” but American owners as well. These were owners not able to take advantage of the compensation in play: they could not “choose to stay.” It is their losses I believe need recompense.
The American owners lost no war.
Then we disagree. That’s fine. I’m explaining why I regard the Trumpo move as a good one. I guess your viewpoint explains why you regard it as a bad one.
Again I disagree that the “severe social inequality” justifies the theft in play here. I recognize you don’t agree, and thus have reached different conclusions than I did.
But you said earlier that you’d be okay with my strategy if you believed that it would actually significantly help the Cuban people (and the American people in a smaller way, presumably), at least if I understood you correctly, even if it meant the Castros or their ilk were still in charge (at least for a few decades). In that post, the Castros didn’t seem to be important to your analysis.
How sure are you that your personal feelings aren’t throwing your analysis out of whack?