On Fidel Castro as a “moral leader” and Cuba:
“I don’t think socialism has failed this country, it’s never really been given the opportunity. We see examples in Cuba, where there is full employment, full health care, there’s full education. Granted, you don’t have the freedoms of the press and speech. Those are political rights, but in America we don’t have the economic rights that Cuba has. We don’t have free education, we don’t have full healthcare, we don’t have full employment. And we pretend to be democratic when we are really not. We are bordering on fascism – depriving citizens of their rights and their freedoms, spying on their taking books out of the library, their medical records and their bank records, listening to their telephone conversations and emails – is this what capitalism is so good? Is this so-called democracy? It’s not a democracy.”
“He’s [Castro] treated people as human beings with dignity and given them rights. You know, before he took power we had Batista in there, a dictator, that our government supported. And he supported all this prostitution and gambling and the control by the mafia, and it deprived economic rights to many of its citizens – they were basically in servitude, in slavery. So, Fidel Castro has done a great amount good.”
“He sent doctors around the world, he offered to send doctors to Louisiana and Mississippi for Katrina…I don’t see the picture you paint of Cuba as much.”
“Cuba’s limitations pale, they absolutely pale, in light of what we have here. We pander to the right wing, fascist, Cuban terrorists in Miami who resent losing their monied interests and have paid off our politicians and intimidated them with economic deprivation and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have acquiesced that to that and bowed to it. And, who suffered? America suffered.”
“Yes, they ["right-wing fascist Cuban-Americans"] are terrorists. They have funded projects that have tried to undermine and assassinate Mr. Castro. They have done a lot of harm. They have even deprived Americans the right to entertainment and things like that in Miami. They have acted in a very undemocratic way.”
“It’s an embarrassment what our country has done for the cause of profit. I think we are hypocrites.”
On the Country and Tim Russert:
“It needs people to stand up and talk like this [to the problems of today] instead of these wusses, these gutless political leaders in the Democratic and Republican Party. They are afraid, they are self interest; they are protecting their survival. I mean even Tim Russert with Meet the Press – that is an establishment program. He catered and pandered to the status quo, the establishment – Bob Dole, John McCain, anytime an anti-establishment candidate came in there they were ridiculed, they were criticized, they were brow-beaten. And then the New York Times and the LA times and the Washington Post and all the other stations picked up the message. Howard Dean, you know, they used every negative word in the book on him, and Tim Russert did.”
“He used that program to reinforce the establishment and the status quo and it was detrimental and harmful and critical of people that were trying to assert new ideas and freedoms and they were ridiculed on that program.”
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Listen to the full broadcast here. Other topics discussed include foreign policy, nuclear energy, and the US Constitution.
Be sure to tune in tonight at 10 for our next candidate in our 3rd party candidate series.
[...] Here’s the original transcript. We apologize to anyone upset, and reiterate that we take journalistic integrity very seriously. [...]
I agree that socialism hasn’t failed and hasn’t been given the opportunity in the US and the rest of the world. However I strongly disagree with his comments about Cuba and Fidel Castro. I don’t know if Cuba has full employment or not, but their wages are very low. Freedom of press and speech aren’t the only rights Cubans don’t have. They don’t have the freedom to travel or the right to own property either.
Anyways the main point I wish to make is that Cuba has a Communist economic system not a socialist economic system. In a communist system the state owns all property and runs all domestic businesses. In a socialist system the workers collectively and democratically own and run businesses. There is no ban on owning private property in a socialist economic system. Socialism is completely different from both Capitalism and Communism. Any society that is totalitarian and undemocratic cannot be socialist. For a society to become socialist there must be both political and economic democracy. While Cuba is less repressive than America, it isn’t democratic.
Everything Mr. Moore said about America is true.
I wish to correct Mr. Moore’s statement about Castro. Castro didn’t give anyone rights. A right is not something you give to someone but something all humans naturally have when they are born.
[...] Moore, Castro, Cuba, Socialism | by Robert Burack Pulled from the comments section, a reader disagrees with Brian Moore: I agree that socialism hasn’t failed and hasn’t been given the opportunity in the US and the [...]
[...] from the comments section, a reader disagrees with Brian Moore: I agree that socialism hasn’t failed and hasn’t been given the opportunity in the US and the [...]