Though it may be distasteful to some to “speak ill of the dead,” the passing of a tyrant or a murderer should not serve as an excuse to erase the evil they did while they were among the living. However, in the make-believe world in which President Barack Obama operates, the death of a murderous despot like Fidel Castro, is indeed occasion to sing his praises; especially since the recently departed despised the United States.
It is not only Obama who took the occasion of Fidel’s long-anticipated death to wax eloquent about the Cuban’s wondrous accomplishments. Lefties from across the country and Canada verbally prostrated themselves in praising the communist Jefe Maximo.
Jill Stein, the middle-aged radical hippie who recently carried the Green Party’s banner in the presidential election, praised Castro as “a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire.” Stein’s statement would be simply hilarious, but for the fact it came not from the mouth of a child with no knowledge of concepts such as “justice” or “empire,” but from the mouth of a grown woman.
Then we have Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, and one the Left’s standard bearers in the Congress, who decreed that Americans need to “stop and pause and mourn [Castro’s] loss.” The California Representative then piled on the plaudits; declaring that Fidel’s “revolution” led to “social improvements for his people” – when gushing over the death of a fellow Leftist, why let facts cloud your vision.
However, none of these bleary-eyed tributes came close to the nonsense heard north of the border -- from Canada’s playboy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Canadian heartthrob expressed “deep sorrow” at Castro’s death; mourning him as a kindly grandfather figure. To the young Mr. Trudeau, Castro had nary a mean bone in his body, and was simply a good-hearted “larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.” As they said back in the eighties, “Gag me with a spoon.”
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To Liberal Pollyannas such as these, death squads, torture, government kidnappings, censorship, and imprisoning political opponents, can (must?) be overlooked if undertaken in pursuit of “social justice” (whatever that term means to them). We conservatives know that viewing the world through such rose-colored glasses, accounts in large measure for the revisionist double standard that guides contemporary Liberals. And, some of the results of this warped worldview are truly bizarre.
Take, for instance, a recent call by more than 450 professors and students at the University of Virginia to stop the university president from “quoting” Thomas Jefferson in school-wide emails. Despite Jefferson’s central role in establishing both the University of Virginia and the United States of America, these campus buffoons have decided that his wisdom is not only irrelevant today, but actually harmful to the sensibilities of 20th Century academia; because the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third President, owned slaves back in the 18th Century.
This is not the first-time Jefferson has been targeted in recent years either; Democrats in Connecticut voted in 2015 to remove Jefferson’s name from an important annual fundraising dinner, presumably to avoid offending those incensed by a rational review of history. “You can’t change history, but you don’t have to honor it,” was their excuse.
Sadly, this is a malady that has infected not only political leaders and academics; after all, we live in a society in which people – including multi-millionaire sports figure Colin Kaepernick -- wear t-shirts depicting Fidel Castro and his brother-in-arms, Che Guevara. The majority of those who display Guevara’s face on their clothing likely have no idea who he was; but to those who do, his visage adorns their shirt not because he was a cold-blooded killer, but rather because he has morphed into an heroic symbol of anti-capitalism.
By making figures like Castro, Guevara, and Hugo Chavez (who Obama was once photographed warmly greeting at a 2009 Summit of the Americas conference) heroes, and demonizing others like Thomas Jefferson, the Left has created a disturbingly partisan standard that distorts history in favor of its warped worldview. This may be easy to overlook in individuals like Kaepernick and Stein, but from world leaders like Trudeau and Obama, the impact of such revisionism cannot be discounted or ignored.
The Left may claim that it does not wish to “rewrite history,” but that is exactly what it is trying to do; through the media, academia, entertainment, and politics. We allow them to succeed at our and our progeny’s peril.
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