THE PROBLEM WITH MOST REVOLUTIONARIES IS…
(they usually replace the tyrannies they overthrow…with one of their own)

Fidel Castro is dead.

In Havana, they’re sending him off with mass solemn ceremonials and respect for what he did accomplish for the Cuban people. In Miami, on the other hand, the Cuban exile community is celebrating and dancing in the streets, hollering the equivalent of…Hooray! The wicked witch is dead! A more bi-polar legacy for a long ruling national leader would be hard to find. We can only hope that both these extreme poles may somehow overcome the bitterness between them and, together, now work to reconcile their pasts to truly create a Cuba Libre for the betterment of its people.

It won’t be easy, especially if we Americans try to meddle in that process with our erstwhile evangelical approach about “democracy.” But perhaps we’ll keep our preachments about it to a minimum, and otherwise let the Cubans sort it all out for themselves. Both of these opposing perspectives may yet come to realize the truth of what one maverick philosopher discovered when he exclaimed…Oh, woe to my knowledge! I expected to see that good lands would be white, and that the bad ones would be black, but, the scene…is gray!

What this boils down to is that the problem with most revolutionaries like Fidel, like the Ayatollahs, like Mao, like Stalin, and a host of others throughout history, is that they usually replace the tyrannies they overthrow…with one of their own.

Well, Shakespeare probably summed it up best for us…”The evil that men do lives long after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Such will be Fidel’s legacy, no doubt.

CENTURION