An Elegy for Elian Gonzalez

It finally happened: Elian Gonzalez has been reunited with his father. The President, the Attorney General, Congress, the media and a majority of the American people got the reunion they wanted at 5 a.m. last Saturday morning--at the point of a gun.

For all the talk about the rule of law--cast in dispute only last week by a ruling of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals--the act is perfectly matched to the idea upon which it is based: rule by brute force. There is no more suitable reintroduction to the world which awaits Elian than a gun; it is the means by which Fidel Castro captured Cuba, it is the means by which Castro controls Cuba and it is the means by which Castro will command the life of young Elian. Lazaro Gonzalez's family, acting on Elian's behalf in accordance with the law, if not with Janet Reno's interpretation, are victims of a conspiracy to commit a child to a totalitarian regime in the name of a father's rights.

What about the father's rights?

In Cuba, there are none, because no one has rights. The child is, according to Castro, the property of the state. That Juan Miguel Gonzalez wants to return to a land without laws, let alone rights, is his choice as an adult (if he's free to make it). But he has no right to make that choice for a child--even for his own son. There is no right to wipe out rights. Elian, like every child, is not a piece of property; he is a boy with the inalienable right to life and only those who recognize his rights are fit to care for him. The only related persons on the planet who meet that criteria are the Gonzalez family.

While it is true that love between a father and son is plausible under totalitarianism, it is also true that the requisite of love is life. A decent life under tyranny is impossible. A father's right to raise his son is not a license to torture his son and this is the principle that cancels Juan Miguel Gonzalez's claims. Elian, who must be protected from the physical harm of life under communism, has a right to his own life.

Therefore, the seizure of Elian is wicked not only for its harrowing images but for their meaning; the United States government ripped a boy from liberty and delivered him into the hands of tyranny.

Those who doubt the tyranny of Cuba should face facts: There is neither political nor economic freedom in Cuba. Liberals, who blame all of Cuba's misery on the U.S. embargo, should explain why suicide ranks among the leading cause of death in Cuba and they must account for the intractable truth: No one takes a raft to Cuba.

There's something else, too; cynicism has engulfed the nation, leaving many Americans hostile to the idea that a boy is better off in freedom. Those who would send Elian back to Cuba represent the convergence of the most vile notions of our age: hatred of Cuban Americans for being successful and collectivism, in its crudest forms--including contempt for the individual who dares to stand out in a group and a mens' backlash against feminism that seeks payback--the child's best interests be damned.

And, yes, there is--evidenced by the unmitigated stream of attacks by liberal blacks and whites against the Gonzalez family--the thinly veiled ignorance of racism.

For Vietnam's Boat People--for Cuba's Mariel flotilla--for generations of illegal Mexicans--America made exceptions to its arbitrary immigration laws. But for the individual who will live better in freedom than in Cuba, there is no mercy--there are only guns and the vicious baring of teeth from a gun-toting monster who grabbed a child in the night.

Elian is slipping away to a land of chains, guns, and vacant eyes. As Castro's thugs go to work on the exuberant boy, America's core principle, freedom, lives not in government, the media, or, tragically, the people, but in the defiant voices of a young American named Marisleysis Gonzalez and her father, Lazaro--both moral giants compared to the cowards who snatched the boy during negotiations.

As the auto mechanic's daughter said on the day that the state seized her young cousin: "This could happen to your kid, too." Marisleysis, in all her shrill outrage, is right.

What happened last Saturday is sure to happen again. For those who are in love with liberty, it is truly a time to mourn for a boy named Elian and for what his fate represents--America's dying freedom. Because, whether they know it, what happened to Elian last Saturday happened to every American as well.

Scott Holleran is a writer and journalist. His articles have been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. Visit his Web site at www.scottholleran.com