Is There a White Rose in Cuba's Future? - OpEd

In a hospital room 200 miles or so south of Miami, Cuba’s past half century is slipping into history, and an unknown future awaits. Whether or not Fidel Castro manages to rally from his life threatening surgery, it is certainly only for the briefest of time. His single-minded rule over the Island’s eleven million citizens is entering the shadows from which it must surely pass into history, and the transition has already begun.

The future beckons all Cubans wherever they are to carefully consider the options just ahead. For much of the past 20 years before I came to Charleston, concern with Cuba and things Cuban have kept me at or near the center of the relations between the United States and Cuba. Though an “Anglo”, I am proud and fond of the many Cuban American friends and associates I have come to know in this period and care as deeply as they do that Cuba chooses the right path for itself.

Which road will its people decide to walk? Both are strewn with the obstacles of Castro’s construction. Isolation, a continued lagging economy, and a society that chooses to be united only in its universal misery lies down one road, while the proven potential of free enterprise engaged in by a free people beckons down the other. It is this second road which holds vast promise for all Cubans.

Those on the island consider this. Until each Cuban is free in their life, their liberty and to pursue their individual happiness, the tremendous potential of the Cuban people and its land will be shackled to another larger economy that subsidizes bare existence. There was inequality and corruption under the Batista regime, but does not the present regime have its corruption? While not approving of the abuses of the Batista era from which we all have learned, at least during his time in office there was the possibility that you could better your and your family’s circumstances in an economy that produced a higher per capita income than most other countries in the hemisphere.

Looking for non market based solutions to the running of your economy will always leave you politically reliant on a “Patron”. Reliance on Russia has been succeeded by a dependence on subsidized oil from Venezuela and will last only so long as you do as Hugo Chavez demands. Is that the future you wish? Will China be next?

While Raul’s succession, particularly if, as rumored, he follows the China model, holds some promise of holding back the tides for a while, his time is likely to be brief. Dr. Jaime Suchlicki at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies puts it this way. “[Raul] would face significant challenges. A bankrupt economy, popular unhappiness, the need to maintain order and discipline in the population at large, as well as to increase productivity within the labor force….Raul would continue to be critically dependent on the military. Lacking the charisma and legitimacy of his brother, he would also need the support of key party leaders and technocrats within the government bureaucracy.”

Rafael Diaz-Balart, father of our two Congressmen of the same name as well as Univision’s anchor, responded some years ago to my query on Raul’s prospects for being able to stay in control for very long by responding in Spanish “…About as long as an ice cream cone at the school house door!” Rafael, who was my client for a period during the 90’s regrettably, has passed away before being able to see this day. He had much wisdom that could have made a difference in the challenging days ahead.

One additional challenge that doesn’t get mentioned much is the loss of the managerial class that ran Cuba’s economy before Castro and left at the time of The Revolution or in the two substantial boat migrations and daily “bolsa” migration that continues to drain Cuba of those who have both confidence in their own skills and God’s assistance to get them to the United States and a fresh start.

This migration has transformed the island from a mostly white, free enterprise centered economy to one which is heavily mulatto and black. Trained exclusively in socialist ways for the past half century and forbidden to engage in anything but the most basic of free enterprise, they are ill equipped to quickly adjust to a free market reality. For them, any substantial success brings only punishment rather that security. Although Castro deserves credit for his emphasis on universal education and health care, the emphasis on socialist thought as the only approved solution for the problems crippling its economy leaves a potentially explosive situation for those Cubans who inherit his bankrupt economy and have been only awaiting his death to begin to assert their desire for fundamental change.

There are many models from the Eastern Bloc that may prove helpful in tackling the confiscated property issues that confront us before relations between our nations can be fully normalized, but it is clear that the United States will be prepared to come more than half way in achieving normalization. It is also clear those American investments made throughout the pre Castro days were of a higher order of “investment backed expectation” than those found not certain enough to warrant a responsibility by the U.S. government to require their satisfaction when we normalized our relations with China.

The investments in Cuba were made pursuant to an unusually close relationship between our two governments and the active encouragement of their occurring including the stationing of a brigade or more of U.S. Marines at one end of the island in perpetuity. Also the legislation in which I had such a major laboring role and its implementation by our government specifically recognizes a statutory right of recovery. These factors and the strong representation of Cuban Americans in Congress are likely to result in a strong role for the government in fashioning a solution that will be fair for all parties.

Cuban-Americans are red white and blue Americans, and the hyphen is useful only in describing, even in the second generation, their love for the homeland from which they have fled. While most have full lives here, I do expect a number will want to expand their businesses to Cuba and that virtually all of our principle industrial, financial and communication’s enterprises stand eager to invest large sums of both financial and human capital in the Island.

One area in which they may not need much help is hospitality. Cubans are naturally good hosts. The beauty and exotic quality of a Cuban holiday has provided “world class experience” in the hospitality industry for its people. After relatives’ remittances, tourism now must be considered Cuba’s main source of continuing hard currency. Virtually all of those in this area would receive a huge boost from being able to fully realize income commensurate with that earned by those in similar positions in the free world.

I continue to be concerned about the political challenge of the returning Cuban American investor and those who stayed behind who have only known Castroism. Perhaps, both groups equally loving their land and its traditions can find unity in the words of Jose Marti, a poet and hero of Cuba’s attempts to free itself of Spanish rule in the late 19^th Century.

Writing in 1891, Marti wrote a poem entitled “Cultivo una Blanca Rosa” which has been translated simply as “The White Rose”. It reflected his goals of fighting for Cuba’s freedom from Spain without the loss of the historical affection between Cubans and Spaniards. The English translation goes like this; “I cultivate a white rose/ in June as in January/ For the sincere friend who shakes my hand frankly./ And for the cruel person/ Who tears out the heart with which I live,/ I cultivate not thistles nor thorns,/ I cultivate a white rose.

Today it laments the loss both in Cuba and abroad between those who remain and those who left and is a token of the affection that yet remains. If both those who went and those who stayed will bring their differing gifts to the task with a sense of what unites them rather than that which divides, the years of bitterness may be lifted.

In exile, Rafael Diaz-Balart formed an association called La Rosa Blanca that celebrated strong individual freedoms and opposition to Castro’s dictatorial rule. Going forward the imagery of the White Rose can be a talisman for those who wish together to construct a firm foundation for a free market Cuba that protects individual right but also is determined to go forward with a strong social conscience and commitment to avoid the mistakes of the past. May that be so! Both our countries would be the beneficiary’s of such an effort.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr, President of the Free Enterprise Foundation, is a Visiting Professor and the John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence 2005-2006, at The Citadel. He is a regular contributor to the Mercury and can be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. Have a favorite column from the past? Copies of his earlier columns can be found in the archive at www. FreeEnterprise.tv.

Charleston Mercury August 30, 2006. Page 16.

Summer of Our Discontent - OpEd

Fred Benson, one of the more astute of the Washington commentators recently described our political system in the following terms:

“The American political system is badly bent. Not broken, but misshapen. For starters, our political system has been described by various observers, including some members of Congress themselves, as: self-centered, irresolute, money-hungry, fractious, gutless, disingenuous, and recently, corrupt. On that latter point, it is unnerving that the U.S. stands in 17^th place on an international rating of clean government well behind Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.”

A similar lament has crept into a number of my columns in the last few months, and more columnists are treating this summer of discontent as being more than a matter of thermometric concern. I think it is time we put into perspective the source of our angst.

There is nothing wrong with our country or our countrymen. We are a true melting pot of nationalities, races and religions, and we are free. Protected by the best Constitution yet devised by man, we are free to pursue our own happiness as one of our constitutionally protected rights. Though life today is a lot more complex for all of us than it was when the nation was founded, feelings are no less strong. It is important to understand that strong counter currents in our national direction have been with us since soon after our independence. Strong opinion is basic to our social intercourse, and given our diversity and our enshrinement of free speech, it is surprising our discontent isn’t worse.

It has been worse at several points in our history, and we shouldn’t forget that. Remember, no one has been caned in the U.S. Senate chamber since Congressman Preston Brooks from the Palmetto State caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856 for slandering his uncle during debate about the expansion of slavery to the Western states. Recall that dueling was legal at that time, but Congressman Brooks considered himself a gentleman and dueling was done between gentlemen, which was not what Mr. Brooks considered this “damn Yankee,” Senator Charles Sumner. Hence, Congressman Brooks chose a cane to inflict damage in the same way he would have treated a biting dog. Those are serious divisions; yes, it has been much worse.

Our national crankiness first reared its head after the adoption of the Constitution. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the two primary advocates and allies in its adoption had vastly different visions of the republic they were creating. Madison never dreamed that he was signing onto a Republic with the strength in its central government that Hamilton knew to be essential if the new country was to hold its own among the wolves that surrounded us from Canada, Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi.

Both men worshipped national independence, but for Madison it was the freedom of an Arcadian dreamer dependent on vast lands dedicated to a few crops and on slavery for its economic viability. Many of the planter class also had a very jaundiced view of the English mercantile class to whom they were indebted and to whom they must look for the financial lifeline that kept their lives in a precarious financial balance.

To his credit, George Washington, early in his husbandry of Mount Vernon broke this chain of dependence by diversifying his crops and breaking the lands into smaller operating farms supporting local agricultural needs. Hamilton, a product of an urban environment and a region representative of shopkeepers, smaller farms, and manufacturers felt very comfortable in the world of commerce He understood the need for a seamless financial backbone including ready credit for the growing nation, saw the English as our most compatible trading partner and was comfortable with a strong central government to create the structure binding thirteen economies often at odds into one dynamic whole.

Hamilton’s energy and genius itself became an issue as he tirelessly produced reports on public credit and manufacturing and with their adoption in bruising battles in Congress, the system that energized the new government evolved. The result of the adoption of Hamilton’s proposals was as he predicted and brought a real boost to commerce. To the planter class the aggregation of power in the central government and “the class of money changers” that came with it smacked of English rule; hence Hamilton was lambasted as Royalist and conniving to substitute a monarchy for the freedom they had so ardently fought to achieve.

Let’s be clear about this dispute. This was no Marquis of Queensberry ruled contest. Hamilton, because of his ability and energy overwhelmed those who opposed his views and was vilified at every turn. Also, much as today, his moral lapse in what became known as “le Affaire Reynolds” involving his falling into the clutches of a blackmailing seductress was the scandal of the age and was used to weaken his proposals. His ultimate death at the hands of a political rival in the famous duel of 1804 also gives you some feeling how bitterly the divisions were contested.

These differences, based in an economic worldview in which slavery was the most visible mote, would consume much of the 19^th century until the Civil War completed the war of independence by settling the issue of federal preeminence in a perpetual union once and for all and further setting the notion of individual rights on the track we still are pursuing 140 years later.

If the War Between the States settled one issue of national governance, the social struggle to define and refine the issue of social and economic equality of opportunity continues. Industrialization and its ills followed as a source of discontent, and urbanization followed that. With the closing of the frontier and completion of the great immigration, economic angst replaced the issues of a prior age, and in different clothes we continue that national contest.

What has changed as we have debated and agonized is what I call the digital divide. Before digital convergence, there was some sense of locality to our lives that has been banished with 24-hour trumpeting of even the personal misfortunes of celebrities a nation’s expanse away.

The information age has brought with it almost infinite information about everything and everyone. Couple that with the emphasis in our society to break us into camps and to get us as riled up as possible to sell products including political candidates like soda pop, and we end up with a stew of our own devising, and it isn’t tasty. We are assaulted 24/7 with data individualized to the most personal level based upon what “the watchers” know about us. The purpose of all this information is to make the sale. Whatever sells magazines, diapers, movies, political candidates, beer and social causes, whatever!

Our commercial barons have decided that to fill the infinite need for programming on the expanded broadcast spectrum and to pay the bill getting it to us, the “product” has to grab us as it informs. It draws more favorable ABC/Nielsen numbers if it makes you feel and that pays the bills. Only by appealing in successive quick kicks to the gut do the media achieve their corporate numbers, and their lives are largely determined by those numbers.

In the political realm, those numbers are voters turned on and turned out on Election Day. The process has become as professionalized as the TV networks can make it. Very little in our society is built to encourage us to broadly agree.

Natural differences are encouraged, as is a tendency to demonize those with who we are not in lockstep.

Though it would be a very dull life if we all were in lockstep and a certain amount of controversy is good for the circulation, we have gone too far, and it is for us the consumers to do two things: 1. Let our entertainment and information providers know: “We have had enough, and we aren’t going to put up with it anymore.” Give us encouragement to find agreement not discord. And, 2. We must watch our own words and our own conduct. Words do hurt more than we know. Words can uplift us to new heights, and they can coarsen our lives. Know that we share the planet. Preserve your independent thought, but guard your words that they not intentionally injure. Disagree if you must but be not disagreeable.

As for the media, give us nuanced news coverage that understands and accurately presents that many problems out there are just not going away no matter what we do. To prevail in a disorderly planet, we need to treasure that which is good in our society, stick together and accept we will have to absorb many blows to the head and body no matter what we do. We are not living a sitcom.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr., president of the Free Enterprise Foundation, is a visiting professor and the John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel. He is a regular contributor to the Mercury and may be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. Have a favorite column from the past? Copies of his earlier columns can be found in the archive at www. FreeEnterprise.tv.

Charleston Mercury August 17, 2006. Page 16.

National Backbone - OpEd

John Adams was the first president to visit our then nascent professional military to extol its role in our Republic. Though echoed often over the two centuries since we first graduated a class at West Point, none have been more direct in noting our nation’s dependence on our Long Gray Line to maintain our freedom. It is not just the skill at arms of our military that makes them so important; President Adams noted that Republics are designed for a moral people:

We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

For two centuries now President Adam’s utterance has been our central guiding truth, and for two centuries presidents have often traveled to West Point in the spring when the new class of graduates is poised to leave the long gray line for the khaki of active duty. They come not only to pay tribute to the United States’ military, but also to absorb some inspiration from that place and from the Corps. It is not only for their military skill and courage that we need our armed forces but for the example of their lives lived for a greater purpose than themselves.

Late in his life, President Eisenhower noted that his time at West Point had transformed him. When he donned the uniform, ever after, the expression “The United States of America”… [meant] something different than it had ever before. “From [thereon] it would be the republic I was serving, not myself,” he said.

The backbone of the “religious and moral people” referred to by John Adams is constantly renewed, constantly extended at West Point. Each year a new class takes its place at the end of that Long Gray Line, and each year a new class of young officers graduates to take its place both as guardian and beacon of the liberty so dearly paid for by those who came before.

West Point’s two centuries of unbroken production of our nation’s military leaders has been supplemented by The Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel and then in 1845 by The U.S. Naval Academy. Perhaps with the Citadel and VMI, we have come closer to Adam’s ideal in that these institutions produce leaders of principle not just military professionals. Though schooled in the arts of war, their graduates predominantly have in peace time selected to return to the service of their communities, often rising to positions of civic leadership won with honest effort based on their leadership skills and moral fiber.

Soon after this is published, Charleston’s own heralded Long Gray Line will receive its newest class of “knobs,” its 164th. You can be sure it will be scoured, lathered with polish and buffed for four years to a high gloss ready to join either the military or the company down the street and to provide leadership to either.

As we celebrate this new reaffirmation of the eternal values upon which this nation has endured—and must continue to cherish in order to endure—let us recall the most eloquent summation of what this service means. I offer this quote as a reminder to the community and a welcome to the newest members of our Long Gray Line. If they will be guided by this excerpt from a speech by General Douglas Macarthur at West Point in 1962 upon his selection to receive the Silvanus Thayer Award for a lifetime of service epitomizing, “Duty, Honor, Country”, I feel sure of their successful time at The Citadel. I feel sure as well that our community will continue to thrive and benefit from the values they enshrine.

“Duty Honor Country”, began General Douglas Macarthur in his final address to the Corps of Cadets at West Point, “those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

“These are some of the things they [these words] do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

“They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

“They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman…

“The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong…

“You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

“The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, and Country….”

General Macarthur ends,“The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished—tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.

“In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, and the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, and Country.

“Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell.”

Welcome Knobs! You are undertaking life’s most worthy challenge to become men and women of principle. May you grasp the baton resolutely that is passed to you by The Long Gray Line that has gone before and carry it and us through your leadership to a brighter tomorrow.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr, President of the Free Enterprise Foundation, is a Visiting Professor and the John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel. He is a regular contributor to the Mercury and can be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. Have a favorite column from the past? Copies of his earlier columns can be found in the archive at www. FreeEnterprise.tv.

Charleston Mercury August 2, 2006. Page 16.