And the left is fine with it

Raúl Castro to step down as Cuba leader in five years time

Well, at least the dictatorship isn’t hereditary in Cuba as it is in North Korea.

But it’s not even the party that picks the next dictator.

Not even a top level bureau of the party.

And yet, not only Castro but his regime, too, are still highly popular with the American left.

What with the spreading influence of Howard Zinn, strong now even among liberals at large, it’s less and less clear there’s much daylight between those who control the liberal brand – the narrow swath of liberal opinion that the Obama White House has called “the professional left” – and the hard left, not only on US history but on contemporary foreign affairs and politics abroad.

Once upon a time there were not only pro-Cold War, anticommunist liberals but pro-Cold War, anticommunist socialists like Michael Harrington, leader of the Democratic Socialists of America.

But there was also a pro-communist, anti-Cold War strain of the left that at all times had some influence on liberal opinion and does so, even now.

(I at the time was an anticommunist, anti-Cold War liberal with democratic socialist leanings.)

So true is this that the PC police of today’s liberal dogma deny Obama the title, “liberal,” rather than admit some liberals are OK with the global war on terror, with targeted killings of American al-Qaeda leaders, and with drone warfare, for instance.

If Hillary becomes president they will deny it to her, too, rather than admit some liberals are still as Zionist as Harry Truman, if not more so, as she certainly is.

And that some, like Obama, still want to use US power in Latin America to oppose the spreading influence of Cuba and the possible development of new communist regimes in the area.

PS. Odd, isn't it, that the hard left never complain that the communist leadership in Cuba is and has always been white, just like the pre-communist elites, though the island's population has long been majority black.