If you believe in human rights, then please define the term for me. Do people have innate rights simply by virtue of existing, and if so, what are they?
And I am attempting to do that.
I don't see how. Direct quotes:
Me: "I'm asking about your view: did he make people 'more free overall' by depriving them of all the rights I mentioned above?"
You: "It's difficult to say because it's impossible to know absolutely everything about both his intentions, and exactly what he did."
Me: "I'm not asking you about his intentions ... I'm asking you to defend the idea that he was a good leader who helped his people, rather than one who consistently oppressed them."
You (just now): "I believe that he did what he did with good intentions."
I never asked about intentions, and you replied by talking about his intentions. I then explicitly said I wasn't asking about his intentions, and you again defended his actions based on his intentions.
So no, I don't see any actual attempt to answer the question. I see you saying you think he meant well (a statement for which there is precious little real evidence, anyway, but one thing at a time).
That's just one of the freedoms I mentioned, and I mention it because in countries like US and UK its not seen as something that should be given out to people in the same way as freedom of speech.
The point is, it's one of the "other" freedoms you chose to emphasize, and one that varies a bit more than the others in terms of culture...and he completely denied people that right. Shall we compare your reaction to Brexit and its effect on freedom of movement, to your reaction to the life of a man who completely denied people the ability to leave his country, and literally killed them when they tried?
I'm not sure how something like freedom of speech and press safeguards other freedoms are right like access to a home, healthcare and education.
It's obvious in both theory and practice.
In theory, the ability to speak, report, associate, and vote freely are the mechanisms people have to replace anyone who would tyrannize them. Without them, no other freedom is real, because it only exists at the whim of the tyrant. You don't really have a "right" to something if someone can unilaterally take it away.
In practice, you can look throughout the world and find basically no despotic state where people have these rights. And you can also see that the places where they do have them are almost universally among the happiest and most prosperous.
What good is that belief if you can't bring yourself to criticize people who would suppress it? What on earth does it mean to believe something if you not only won't criticize people who work to destroy that belief, but are willing to actively praise them?
Personally I support freedom of speech
You're trying to have it both ways. You say Fidel was a great leader, but when I point out all the terrible things he's done, you just say "I wouldn't have done it like that" or "I personally support those freedoms." So he's a great leader whose entire governing philosophy is at odds with what you believe? Huh?
but I'm not in a war environment with people trying to assassinate me on a daily basis.
Notice how self-fulfilling this is: you oppress people, so they want to overthrow you, which you in turn use to justify oppressing them more. Control is used to justify more control. This is how tyranny works.
Yes, kind of. But more complex, its not just persuasion he was afraid of, but coups, violent action, assassinations, all of which also go against human rights.
This is another way of saying "he killed civilians to protect himself." Which is, quite possibly, the worst thing a leader can do.
I was talking about how he attempted to get into politics through legitimate means which were quashed by the corrupt government at that time, so he knew about the extent people went to stop him getting into power (with the help of the US) when doing it fairly, so he knew the extent they would go to remove him once he was there.
...which makes no sense as an explanation, given that he put a government just as corrupt, if not moreso, in its place. How can his outrage at government corruption be the argument for his own government corruption? If government corruption is justified, he has no grounds to overthrow Batista. If it isn't, then he has no grounds to stop people from overthrowing him.
Every bit of logic you use to support his coup is simultaneously an argument against his resulting reign. It is logically inevitable that you will end up arguing either for Castro the revolutionary and against Castro the dictator, or the other way around, because his arguments before and after seizing power are mutually exclusive.
Yes, although I think 50 years is too long, I think it goes a long way in explaining it. It is normal in a war situation for elections not to be held or for supporters of enemies to be punished.
It's also normal for wars not to last 50 years, or result in the wholesale suspension of civil liberties at all, let alone for the entire duration.
There really isn't any way to pretend, several decades in, that any kind of "war" was really going on, anyway. Unless you count Castro's own citizens repeatedly wanting to overthrow him.
And my answer is a hesitant yes. You keep trying to reduce his achievements down to simple labels like "socialized medicine" which you know they are greater than.
They are not much greater than that, no. And you seem to be setting the bar absurdly low. You say he "improved the lives of his people," but you seem to only mean "in some ways." Improving the lives of your people in
some ways is quite easy, especially if you dramatically harm them in many others. There is no world leader in history who did not improve the lives of their people in
some way. That doesn't make someone even a mediocre leader, let alone a good or great one.
Yes, because the point is that the next 50 years would have been nothing like the previous 50 in terms of the world situation, the country is less at war, Obama looked like he wanted to improve relations and so on.
You realize you could make this argument about any tyrant, at any point in history, right? You can always say something had changed, and therefore they were about to start being good. Your claim is not based on any evidence, or any reason. It's just trying to use the unknowable nature of the future to justify the unjustifiable.
Not sure of this is relevant when there is a lot of evidence of the bad stuff he has done, and lots of people out there who openly criticise him that I am able to see. So this does not have an impact on by ability to form an opinion about him.
The point is that staying in power and oppressing people affords one a lot of control over the narrative.
I'm literally watching
Narcos right now, a show about Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The similarities are striking: he preys on people, murders anyone who gets in his way...and then, when he has more money and power than he can ever use, he gives a little of it away to the poor. What's the difference between him and Castro? Because as far as I can tell, you're basically saying you can look the other way on any horrific act if the person committing it turns around and hands out a few textbooks.
And yes, that is a deliberately glib summary of Castro's social programs, because it is manifestly ludicrous to put things like the literacy rate up against torture, murder, and basic human rights.
Well I choose to believe from evidence, articles and reports that Cuba has done a very good job in reducing infant mortality and done well in a lot of other areas of healthcare. It is not just the Cuban government saying these things, there is proof of a lot of good work they have done too, including stuff like Ebola. They often said aid to countries that need medical assistance where other countries including the US won't go.
Nobody said Castro was bad at PR. Just bad at improving the lives of his citizens.
Again, that's just what "you think"
It isn't what you think, too? You would accept state-controlled media and literature if it came with a higher literacy rate?
I'm going to choose to believe what I have read and that's that literacy rates have massively improved.
I'll accept this for the sake of argument, and point out that this is a ridiculously low bar to clear.
Again like the socialized healthcare statement, you're reducing the argument down to simple things to try and make my support seem sillier, when you know that it is for more than just a "higher literacy rate".
It isn't far more: it is very little more, and it is massively outweighed by slaughtering civilians, torturing journalists, jailing homosexuals, and doing all sorts of other things you would rightly decry if anyone in your nation or mine came within a hundred miles of.
I can't believe I'm trying to convince you that these things are, first, unjustifiable, and second, if not unjustifiable, certainly not justified by the paltry list of "accomplishments" Castro's defenders always trot out.
My guess is most of these people were upper class citizens how had benefited under the previous regime and thought they would now be better off in the US.
This makes it sound like you think the abuses we're discussing were just in the midst of the revolution! They're not. They've been going on the entire time, so no, it's not just people who were well-off under the previous regime. It is largely the poor who want to escape, and are desperate enough to risk their lives to try.
Please, spend a little time perusing the
Cuba Archive before you continue downplaying the abuses we're discussing.
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