Two thoughts. One; my wife moves to another country, takes our son and sadly dies...that country doesn't like the politics of my country so the son I dearly love is kept from me. That is not a triumph of liberty. Imagine a theocracy taking the children of atheists away from their parents because atheism contradicts the state position on God.
Second thought. Sadly, we now see the ultimate sacrifice made all too frequently, and without speaking to Patrick Henry's motivation I will suggest that many of those who have so recently given their lives have done so to make the world better for their children.

OK, it's late but perhaps one more thought. If the children asleep upstairs are not "ours", then whose? Do they belong to the state? To the church? Do they belong to the village or maybe just the guy up the road.

Maybe I shouldn't've brought this up. Sugarchuck and have disagreed about this since it happened.

I'm all for loving dads. I just cannot bring myself to believe that a loving father could retrieve his son from the US to Cuba. Somebody who would do that is fundamentally not a loving father. I think Juan Gonzales was a puppet of Castro. A loving dad would have wanted liberty and opportunity for his son.

Your arguments really stand on equivalence: "that country doesn't like the politics of my country" makes it sound like Broncos fans vs. Vikings fans. One country is free, the other is not.

JK and I happen to be in complete agreement on what we would do if we were Elian's father. Elian's father, on the other hand, might be one straight up, card carrying communist who thinks Cuba is just where his son should be raised. We have all projected our politics and our values onto this situation without knowing the particular dynamics of this family. I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. The mother was not selfishly trying to stay with her boyfriend; she was risking her life for her son's freedom. The American relatives were not seeking status and financial benefit in their community of exiled Cubans; they were protecting the boy and doing their utmost to make the mother's sacrifice count. The father, no doubt pressured by Castro to seek the boys return, was doing what he would have done anyway, seeking to raise his son. Any time the state, any state, seeks to create a wedge in the family a grave injustice is done. The family has been around long before our current batch of "-isms" and "ocracys" and God willing it will continue to last. We all agree that democratic capitalism has produced more freedom and more wealth than any other system of government in history and that the rights of the individual are paramount, but if you are willing to take a man's child away from him because he is a communist, what stops the next guy from wanting to take a child away from the atheist, or the Christian or the Muslim, or the democrat. Actually taking children from democrats might not be a bad idea.... This is probably going to be one of those things we agree to disagree on but I will never accept that a good man, even a communist in a communist country, shouldn't be allowed to raise his son.

This is good. I pressed this discussion because I realistically believed that I could "change Sugarchuck's mind" about Elian. I'm still optimistic! There are two topics under debate here. The first is the specific situation of Elian Gonzales, and the second is family social dynamics in general (where I think there is no disagreement.) First, Elian:

Taking into account everything that's been written in these comments and those on JK's blog that started this, there is a consistent theme - "Any time the state, any state, seeks to create a wedge in the family a grave injustice is done." In Elian's case, the state of Cuba created a wedge by forbidding Elian's mother from freely emmigrating to join family members in South Florida, and the US government created a wedge by sending armed agents into a private residence to forcibly remove a minor for "return" to his father in another (the previously offending) nation. JK and I condemn the actions of our government in taking this action. We advocated that the government not interfere in the affairs of a private family. We said, "leave them alone." There is a monumental distinction between that position and the policies of nations like Cuba and Saudi Arabia. In those countries the government does not use force to return individuals to other nations in custody battles, they actually use force to prevent the reunification. Had Elian been left alone by the FBI goons he could have freely left any time he liked. This is not true in totalitarian states.

Now, regarding family social dynamics, we all agree that our children are "ours" but this possession is one of responsibility not ownership. Every individual belongs only to himself. Those children have a right to liberty from the day they are born. Without attempting a complete treatise on child-rearing, better results are obtained by teaching, disciplining and rewarding children with reason, rather than force or authority. This is because liberty is the fundamental necessity of human life. (See Patrick Henry.) That fact regards our relationship with our government AND our family.

I finally get Sugarchuck to post some comments around here (he is my longest-term friend and prob'ly the smartest guy I know) and we all gang up on him! I love this stuff!!

I think this remains more divisive to me than the Impeachment imbroglio because of how the liberals hated the Cuban exile community, and how the charge of "McCarthyist!" to any anti-communist started to be discredited.

Couple o' things I remember:
1) Some nun from the liberal/pro-Castro ICC visited the family in Florida, expecting to call them unfit and recommend Elian be sent back. Some Sister-somebody had her mind changed visiting with them and decided that Elian would be better staying with the relatives in Miami.

2) There was DUMBFOUNDING SEETIHING ANTIPATHY ginned up against the Miami Cuban exile community. Not since reconstruction has a minority group been so publicly reviled. I can still close my eyes and see/hear a friend spewing a tirade about those filthy bastard brown-ass Cubans! All the liberals were doing this!

Caring, loving relatives in Miami Florida, USA or Dad in Cuba. No contest to me -- maybe that's our fundamental difference: does the paternal bond supersede the delta in opportunity? To me, no.

"Just when I thought I was out...they drag me back in again...." I do believe that we have no quarrel regarding social dynamics within the family so we'll shake on that and commence to fussin'.
John Galt is correct, the initial assault on the family occured in Cuba. He is also correct in pointing out that the jack-booted conclusion to this sad episode was indefensible. Further more, as JK points out, the NPR depiction of the Cuban community in exile was outrageous, though entirely predictable. JK recalls the nun's visit, as do I; I remember feeling at the time that the nun's visit and the encounter with aunts was all rather bizarre and ad hoc. If we were to sit Solomon like and make a just decision as to custody we would certainly insist on fact based information rather than the punditry of Goerge Will and the Nation and we certainly would have left the aunts and the nuns on the bench for use in later innings.
Without Solomon's breifing book we are reduced to arguing philosophy and values using "Elian" as a set of criteria. Fair enough. In JK & JG world, the end, Elian's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in this great country justifies the means, the destruction of his remaining nuclear family. In Sugarchuck world, it's not that simple. I am sympahtetic to John and JK's arguments and understand fully how they arrive at the conclusion they do because I made a stop on that line too. At the end of the day I had to side with the nuclear family and dad. John Galt refers to the Saudi's that hold American children against the will of their mothers. Our legal and moral arguments for their return are simple, the Saudi men in question freely entered into legal arrangements through marriage and divorce settlements in this country, kidnapped their children and broke laws they consented to. The Saudi's response is equally simple; we don't recognize American law. Now before you all decide I am creating a moral equvillance between the US and Saudi Arabia let me just say that I am not. I am saying that our legal system and I assume Cuba's grants custody to the surviving spouse in the event of death. Elian's father had every legal right to assume he would retain custody. To deny custody seemed a denial of the rule of law. We condemn the Saudis for this, don't we? This argument alone wouldn't have swayed me, but coupled with my fear of the state's intrusion into the family and my sympathy with a father's desire to raise his son, I was tipped towards dad.
Tryanny seeks to exploit the fault line between parent and child, be it the tryanny of Mao's Cultural Revolution pitting Mao against Mom, or the more benign tryanny of Hillary and her lawsuits. There are plenty of folks in this country, on the right and left, who would insert themselves into the family for ends they see as being every bit as desirable as your wish to see Elian with extended family in Florida. We protect ourselves and our nuclear familys by protecting his.
Just an afterthought... it is possible that everything JK says is true. Perhaps Elian's father was pressured to regains his son. Perhaps he was threatened with prison, torture and murder. Perhaps his children were threatened with torture and murder. It is possible he sought Elian's repatriation in order to save his other children. I hope I would have the courage to face prison or death to insure the safety, liberty and freedom of my children. I don't know if I would sacrifice two of my daughters for the freedom of a third. I would most likely choose to keep the family together and alive and hope for another shot at freedom in days to come. Did it happen this way...I don't know. We all have punditry and our own opinions but very little in the way of facts. Sometimes being Solomon like is a bitch.

This is admirably well said Sugarchuck but I've gleaned some inconsistencies. Your characterization of the FBI home invasion as "indefensible" may have been a poor choice of terms because that's exactly what you appear to be doing - defending it on the grounds of parental custody and, unfortunately, presumed rule of law in communist Cuba. I don't think I've been forceful enough in my argument that rights don't exist in totalitarian societies. If Juan Gonzales' government gives him no rights so long as he resides in that sovereign land, why should ours? You've cited this as a test case protecting our parental rights but if we were on Cuban soil those rights would be completely and arbitrarily at risk, no matter what happened with Elian. This is a fact.

The hypothetical situations you close with are telling, for they are exactly the choices being faced by subjects of dictatorial regimes in Cuba and throughout the world every day. (And would be still in Iraq if J F'n K had had his way.) This is also a fact.

JK reminds me of another factor in the entire episode: The liberal intelligentsia who demanded Elian's return to Cuba based on the same arguments you make, plus everything else they could gin up, care not a whit about principles. This crowd employs the same arbitrary decision making criteria that rules the land in places like Cuba. Any victory, no matter how small, for the "capitalist pig" Cuban exile community over the "worker's paradise" back on the island is unacceptable. They'd have wrestled Elian from the arms of his father and gay lover in south Florida to send him back to "loving cousins" in Cuba if both parties politics had been reversed. (This is a fact too but since it's a hypothetical, you'll have to take my word for it.) ;)

Finally, Sugarchuck, please accept my sincere thanks for getting engaged here on the blog. We all benefit from the rational interaction of ideas.

Ok guys, from now on I'll stick to the jazz and guitar stuff (how about a mean letters to Ernie Ball Strings for featuring smiling Chinese soldiers sporting Mao hats in their advertising. But...
1. I don't think "indefensible was a poor choice of words; their actions were simply that. I am defending the repatriation, not guns in the night. This was typical Clinton/Reno incompetence. The child should have been immediately placed in the care of a nuetral third party as soon as the custody dispute arose, until legal custody was determined. This is all pretty basic, Social Worker 101 stuff or better put, "common sense." Kind of like "arrest the guy while he's alone, away from the compound instead of burning it and everyone in it to the ground.
2. I am sure the Cuban constitution emumerates any number of rights and that their law books probably look very much like ours; the difference being that their government will violate those rights and laws on a whim, with impunity, whenever it suits them. Our laws, on the other hand, are more than ink on paper and should we ignore them out of convienence, even for a very good reason, we diminish the rule of law. Do we suspend the rule of law because the petitioner for his child lives in a country where the law is routinely suspended and ignored?
3. Finally, it is the wild eyed liberals you and JK refer to that sway me most. With the exception of some on the far religious right, the camp that will most likely remove my children for ideological reasons is the left. I found it exteremly ironic to be on the same side of the fence as the left wing advocates of Castro's Cuba, basically demanding the same things they did without sharing their point of view. They see Cuba as a greenworld of free education and free healthcare, a place where the state beneficently intrudes on families for their own good and they couldn't wait to send Elian back to paradise. I am sure they would love to play a similar role in this country, benificently indoctrinating and gently correcting the misinformation my children aquire under my roof. For this reason I see a great need for a very high wall between the state and the family. Think Hillary and the NEA and then tell me I am paranoid. Supporting Elian's father seemed to me not only right for Elian's family but an essential part of keeping our own wall strong. I agonized over this question for a long time and you certaily know my conclusions by now, so I won't rehash them.
4. So that's that. JK and I went back and forth on this forever and were still standing in the same spots we began in. I do not hope to convince you and I doubt you'll convince me. Perhaps Elian will grow up to be Cuba's Lech Walesa, the first democratically elected president of Cuba. Perhaps if he'd remained here he'd have become a Scarface wannabe, dying in a drug deal gone bad. Perhaps not. Life is strange. In the meantime, I appreciate your close reading of my text and your criticism. Stay away from those Ernie Ball guitar strings.

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