[lbo-talk] Re: Cuba petition

[joanna bujes]

At 03:47 PM 04/14/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>In an ideal world, one would have both full economic
>rights and near absolute freedom of speech.  In the
>real world though, one often has to make some painful
>choices, so that one might well have to give up some
>freedom of expression, in order to better secure such
>economic rights as the right to education or the right
>to have best healthcare, that one's society can afford.

Yes. And I wouldn't call it hypocrisy. Let's look at AIDS. Cuba's isolation 
of AIDS patients was decried in the west....but in the end, this policy, 
proved to be a socially SANE policy in the case of a disease to which there 
is no known cure and which, originally, was not understood. The patients 
who were sequestered were given the best care Cuba could produce (which was 
damned good) and their families did not starve. It's true that they did not 
have freedom of movement and that they could not fuck anybody they wanted 
to. To date, Cuba has the best record in the world in terms of containing 
the spread of AIDS. Bummer for the few that were isolated; good news for 
everyone else.

Individual rights are not an absolute, especially when you consider that 
there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as an individual. Every 
"individual" is completely dependent upon a society that sustains him/her 
materially, culturally, emotionally. The celebration of "individuality" 
that characterizes U.S. culture is an obscene lie....in theory as well as 
in deed.

Joanna

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