Here (emphasis added):
According to "The Black Book of Communism," between 1959 and the late 1990s, more than 100,000 (out of about 10 million) Cubans spent time in the island's gulag. Between 15,000 and 19,000 were shot. One of the first was a young boy in Che Guevara's unit who had stolen a little food. As for quality of life, it has declined compared with its neighbors. In 1958, Cuba had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Today, as the liberal New Republic describes it:
"The buildings in Havana are literally crumbling, many of them held upright by two-by-fours. Even the cleanest bathrooms are fetid, as if the country's infrastructural bowels might collectively evacuate at any minute.
"Poverty in Cuba is severe in terms of access to physical commodities, especially in rural areas. Farmers struggle, and many women depend on prostitution to make a living. Citizens have few material possessions and lead simpler lives with few luxuries and far more limited political freedom."
This left-leaning pope (who failed to stand up for the Cuban dissidents who were arrested when attempting to attend a mass he was conducting) and our left-leaning president have attributed Cuba's total failure to the U.S.
It's critically important to care about the poor -- but if those who claim to care for the poor and the oppressed stand with the oppressors, what are we to conclude?
Much is made of Pope Francis' Argentine origins -- the fact that the only kind of capitalism he's experienced is of the crony variety. Maybe. But Pope Francis is a man of the world, and the whole world still struggles to shake off a delusion -- namely, that leftists who preach redistribution can help the poor.
Has this pope or Obama taken a moment to see what Hugo Chavez's socialist/populist Venezuela has become? Chavez and his successor (like Castro, like Lenin, like Mao) promised huge redistribution from the rich to the poor. There have indeed been new programs for the poor, but the economy has been destroyed. The leader of the opposition was just thrown in jail. Meanwhile, the shops have run out of flour, oil, toilet paper and other basics.
If you want moral credit for caring about the poor, when, oh when, do you ever have to take responsibility for what happens to the poor when leftists take over?
We know what actually lifts people out of poverty: property rights, the rule of law, free markets. Not only do those things deliver the fundamentals that people need to keep body and soul together, but they accomplish this feat without a single arrest, persecution or show trial.
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