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“It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”     Ronald Reagan

February 19, 2008

Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

by Doug Mataconis

Fidel Castro has resigned as President of Cuba:

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 19 — Fidel Castro announced early Tuesday morning that he is stepping down as Cuba’s president, ending his half-century rule of the island nation.

“I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief,” Castro, 81, said in a letter posted on the Web site of the state-run newspaper, Granma.

The announcement ends the formal reign of a man who, after seizing power in a 1959 revolution, not only outlasted nine U.S. presidents but his communist patrons in the former Soviet Union as well. Prior to the Soviet Union’s collapse, support from the Kremlin sustained Cuba as a socialist outpost on the doorstep of the U.S., and placed Castro and his country in the middle of events central to the Cold War, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis.

And to finally see him out of power, while it doesn’t yet mean the dismantling of Cuba’s totalitarian state, is gratifying nonetheless.

Here’s hoping his retirement is short-lived and thoroughly unenjoyable.


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4 Comments

  1. [...] today’s announcement that Fidel Castro is stepping down as President of Cuba, the curtain is drawn on one of the longest international rivalries of the 20th [...]

    Pingback by The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Tuesday Open Thread: Time To Lift The Cuba Embargo ? — February 19, 2008 @ 5:17 am

  2. Here’s hoping his retirement is short-lived and thoroughly unenjoyable.

    Considering the botched job the Cuban doctors allegedly did on Castro, I suspect that will be the case…

    http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-1-17/50550.html

    Comment by UCrawford — February 19, 2008 @ 8:42 am

  3. his brother raul negotiated the Soviet missiles on cuban soil during the crisis.

    Comment by oilnwater — February 19, 2008 @ 9:49 am

  4. after seizing power in a 1959 revolution, not only outlasted nine U.S. presidents

    Isn’t it amazing how he outlasted nine presidents? Yeah, if our presidents could claim dictator-status, they probably wouldn’t have been stuck with only serving up to eight years. It is truly an amazing guy. /sarcasm

    Comment by trumpetbob15 — February 19, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

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