I just read Kelly Daniels’ column, “America Betrays Freedom.” I’m not going to try to tell you or your paper what is wrong or extremely one-sided with 90 percent of the article, just an overall view that I took away from it. It is puzzling to me how people such as Kelly can look at Fidel Castro and basically say, “Wow, that poor, poor man. He could have lived a long, fulfilling life if our country full of bastards had just stayed out of his hair.” To say that Castro has been “sensationalized” makes it appear as if the American people were duped into thinking that this man is really a humble, gentle human being.
Was the Cuban Missile Crisis sensationalized? Were we overplaying the danger posed by Castro and the Russians? I guess what I read in “The Kennedy Tapes” was just a mere matter of JFK and Robert McNamara not “understanding” Castro and the Soviet Union’s “feelings” about us being “bullies.”
Castro, if incapacitated right now, was a danger. To say that it was simply a case of our government “sensationalizing” him is, in all honesty, relatively offensive. But I’m OK, and you’re OK, right?
I think that Miss Daniels should try to study Hugo Chavez a little more, and then go back and look at the meaning of “dictator.” If she really wants to see freedoms being taken away, look at Venezuela. If she was in Venezuela and she talked about Mr. Chavez the way she talks about George Bush, she might be a prisoner. Chavez is making just about every private company down there property of his government (and George Bush is running a “dictatorship”). Is that really freedom? But I guess that’s just a case of “our mainstream media … now sensationalizing [him].”
As for much of the other recited liberal rhetoric in the article (and also the incredibly patriotic title — way to go guys!), I don’t agree. I think the Patriot Act is a good thing, and it is a debate that would go in circles.
But as far as the overflowing sympathy for all of the Marxists mentioned in the article goes, I am glad to see our paper is run by such reasonable people.