The point it, people talk about freedom, but even in countries where freedom is a priority and meant to be in large amounts, you still have to live within the structural boundaries that exist before you are born regardless of whether you accept them or not, and they determine just how much freedom you have.
How do we rank what is important in terms of being free, how is this determined? It's just preselected for the illusion of freedom.
Is freedom of speech subjective? Freedom of the press? Freedom of association?
But these are chosen as the things people should be entitled to because the country allowed them to be. Where is this rule that every country should automatically have them or they are bad?
Okay, so you are going to say that if left to a democrat vote people will vote for these as the majority of humans consider them to be basic rights, and I would be one of them, but they are restricted by Castro and his government because they believe that if left to be "free" they will be exploited by certain forces that will use them to overthrow him, he didn't want people to swoop in, maybe outside forces like the USA, and destroy his "good" work.
How about freedom of movement, access to a home as a human right, access to healthcare as a human right, these things? Why aren't they held in such high regard as freedom of speech or freedom of press? Because we are taught that they are not important and fundamental aspects of being in the same way.
A lot of people would disagree with you though.
Again, see above, and my earlier posts in this thread. This is not some nuanced question about what value freedom has to the poor, or whether people can be better off sacrificing economic freedom for some greater social welfare. This is literally murdering people for disagreeing with you.
I do not think this is the reason why he murdered them though. You think he just wanted to kill them for the fact they disagreed with him? Or the greater implications that if opposition was afforded the opportunity to grow, external forces would soon be able to swoop in and overthrow him. He attempted to participate in legitimate elections and such earlier on in his life and had seen a US backed government suppress him, so he was attempting to do the reverse.
Yes, I know what his view was (or what he says it was). I'm asking about your view: did he make people "more free overall" by depriving them of all the rights I mentioned above?
It's difficult to say because it's impossible to know absolutely everything about both his intentions, and exactly what he did.
What I will say is that I think if he lived longer, hypothetically lets say 50 healthy years more, it would have been more interesting to see what he would do post-Cold War. Once his position had been consolidated, international relations cooled and such, I think it could have been likely that reforms would make the country more democratic and give more rights to the people. I would say, admittedly hesitantly, that he did a good job of improving the country.
Leaving aside how good their actual healthcare system was (spoiler: not very)
I'm not sure how correct "not very" is, but I'm pretty sure they had an important role in the Ebola crisis, they've been successful in getting rid of a number of diseases. Also stuff like infant mortality and that have decreased massively, life expectancies increased, clean water etc.
[quot]are you suggesting you'd trade the rights mentioned above for socialized healthcare? And are you saying people should not be allowed to decide, democratically, to make this choice for themselves? Because that's what Castro did.[/quote]I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to decide, and it's not what I would have done. But I think it's understandable giving the circumstances.
Just so long as you read what they tell you.
Okay. But what about stuff like them now having one of the highest literacy rates in the world?