The Cuban Embargo Destroyed American's Freedom
02 December 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst increasing speculation that President-elect Trump is going to reverse
the Obama administration's attempts to normalize relations with Cuba, this
would be a good time for Americans to start pushing back against any further
destruction of their rights and liberties at the hands of their own
government. A good place to start pushing back is by standing firm in favor of
a lifting of the decades-long failed, deadly, and destructive U.S. economic
embargo against Cuba.
In the Declaration of Independence, a document whose principles Americans
celebrate every Fourth of July, Thomas Jefferson observed that everyone has
fundamental, God-given rights with which no government can legitimately
interfere.
Economic liberty falls within the category of fundamental, God-given rights.
It holds that everyone has the right to engage in economic enterprise, the
right to enter into economic exchanges with others, and the right to keep the
fruits of one's earnings. In fact, economic liberty is part of what the
pursuit of happiness, to which Jefferson referred in the Declaration, is
partly all about.
What Americans must come to realize is that the Cuban embargo is not just an
attack on the economic well-being of the Cuban people. First and foremost, it
is an attack on the economic liberty of the American people.
Here is how the embargo works. The federal government effectively tells
Americans: ''The federal government hereby prohibits you from investing or
spending your own money in Cuba. If you do it (without our permission), we
will hunt you down, arrest you, have you indicted by a federal grand jury, try
you, convict you, incarcerate you, and fine you.'' All for exercising the
fundamental, God-given right to spend your own money the way you wish to spend
it.
Statists say: The government has to do this because Cuba is a communist
regime.
But the question every American must ask himself is: Why should I have my
freedom infringed or destroyed simply because the Cuban government is
infringing or destroying the freedom of its citizenry?
Moreover, everyone knows that the embargo, which has been in place for more
than 50 years, has totally failed to alter the communist system in Cuba. That
means that for more than 50 years, the U.S. government has infringed or
destroyed the economic liberty of the American people for nothing.
But even if the embargo had been successful in altering the political and
economic system in Cuba, Americans must still ask themselves an important
question: Is that worth sacrificing their own fundamental, God-given rights at
the hands of their own government? Does that particular end — an alternation
of another government's system — justify the loss of freedom of Americans here
at home?
There is another factor to consider: Is disdain for communism really a
motivating force for the Cuban embargo?
After all, consider Vietnam, a country that is also run by a brutal communist
regime, one that, in fact, killed more than 58,000 American men. The U.S.
government doesn't maintain an embargo against Vietnam and Americans are free
to travel there and trade with the Vietnamese people. That's the way it should
be. The matter of communist and socialist tyranny in Vietnam is the business
of the Vietnamese people, not the business of the U.S. government.
Some people say that the U.S. government should negotiate the lifting of the
embargo by demanding that the Cuban government stop jailing dissidents,
censoring speech, and prohibiting elections.
Three questions arise: Why are such things the business of the U.S.
government? Why should Americans sacrifice their own rights and liberties just
because the U.S. government wants to fix the situation in Cuba? What are the
chances that the sacrifice of American rights and liberties will pay off,
given that the embargo hasn't worked to achieve such things in 50 years?
Moreover, is U.S. government disdain for tyranny really a motivating factor
for its decades-long embargo against Cuba? Consider Egypt, which is run by a
brutal military dictatorship. The Egyptian government is every bit as
tyrannical as the Cuban government is, if not more so. It censors speech,
jails dissidents, and prohibits elections, and its centrally planned economic
system is a mirror image of the Soviet Union's socialist economic system. Yet,
the U.S. government has long embraced and generously supported the Egyptian
military dictatorship with money and armaments in order to assist it in
maintaining its iron grip on power.
If disdain for tyranny were really the motivating factor behind the embargo
against Cuba, then how does one explain the U.S. government's ardent support
of tyranny in Egypt ?
There is no doubt that people around the world are suffering from the absence
of freedom. The best way to help them is by example — i.e., to show them how
to achieve freedom. A good place to start restoring economic liberty to our
land would be by lifting the freedom-destroying economic embargo against the
Cuban people. It's simply a question of whether and how badly the American
people want to be free.
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