Humdinger in Havana

Having visited and reported from Cuba maybe a dozen times over the years, I find the news coming out of Havana this past weekend to be no less than remarkable.

For the first time in the 46 years since Fidel Castro has been in power, a coalition of opposition dissidents were allowed to assemble publicly for two days without disruption from the Cuban government.

More than a hundred delegates from small, illegal groups dispersed around the country met in a Havana backyard, denounced one party rule and elected a 36-member steering committee.

In the past any such attempt was smashed with nightsticks and handcuffs. Remember, in Cuba, as Fidel warned sometime ago, you are “either with the Revolution or against the Revolution” and only El Comandante-en-Jefe decides who’s in and who’s out (Hey, didn’t George W. Bush say more or less the same thing when he declared the Global War on Terrorism?).

This time around, the Cuban State Security limited itself to arresting and deporting some European politicians and reporters who came into Cuba to observe the meeting.

That was pretty bad timing on Fidel’s part. Next month the European Union is slated to reconsider the diplomatic sanctions it imposed on Cuba after the regime locked up more than 70 dissidents in a hard-edged clampdown a little more than two years ago.

U.S. diplomatic representatives did attend the meeting and the delegates listened to a tape-recorded greeting from that renown Freedom Fighter, G.W. Bush.  This, of course, is the kiss of death in Cuba. And not just among Fidelistas. Some of the more prominent dissident leaders, indeed, boycotted the weekend meeting precisely because they felt it was too closely aligned with the U.S. and with the more frothy exiles in Miami.

Ignored (when not scorned) by both the Right and the Left, there is a tenuous current of democratic dissidents in both Miami and Havana who want no part of either Castro or Bush. These folks should be the key players in Cuba’s inevitable post-Castro transition.

I have argued for some years now that the longer Fidel clings to power, and the longer the democratic dissidents are snubbed, the farther and harder to the right Cuba will fall after Castro. The best way to guarantee that the next Cuban regime will be a mafia-dominated dictatorship is to continue the current paradigm—the absolutely stupid polarization of Cuba’s future as either pro or anti-Castro.

That the Neanderthal Right should promote this thinking is perfectly logical. It’s in their favor. But why the continuing silence of most of the American Left on Castro? Why is it left only to Nat Hentoff to speak out?  What does it tell us that a great civil liberties lion like Nat is left to publish his op-ed piece in the Washington Times? Why isn’t it on the front page of some other magazines that I could think of?

A number of high-profile European leftists publicly parted ways with Fidel after his last big round-up.

Still, much of the middle-class, guilt-ridden American Left continues to blindly focus the Cuba issue as solely an American foreign policy question (effectively cutting 10 million Cubans out of their considerations). Standing up to the Yankees is always amusing and often quite the right thing to do—but it shouldn’t win dictators like Castro a moral or political pass. 

For those on the Left who say they desire some sort of just society in Cuba in a post-Castro future, it’s time to put up or shut up. Simply apologizing for Castro, usually by repeating ad nauseum the old saw that we as Americans have "no right to criticize" him, will no longer cut it. The choice will only be Castro (who will eventually die) and the dead end Cuba finds itself in,  or the worst of the Miami wingnuts, unless that is, you help support and bolster a third, democratic alternative.

Comments

[Mork]

Marc - I agree wholeheartedly with your views of what would be best for Cubans, but I don't really get your attack on "The Left" here (to the extent that such exists). Maybe it's just the circles I move in, but I simply don't come across all these defenders of Castro that you see everywhere. Of course, I see plenty of people who are *accused* by various right wing blowhards of sympathy for Castro for trying to describe Cuba today in all its dimensions rather than simply reciting "Castro is evil". But I don't see many who are blind to the fundamental ugliness of the regime and the effect it has had on Cuba - particularly the Cuban economy.

As for the absence of noisy attacks on the Cuban regime from the left, isn't it this simple: political debate in America is only likely to have an effect on American policy. Therefore, people who want to actually effect change are going to address those things that are within American control. That means sanctions. Right wingers keep up a constant drumbeat of criticism not because it is virtuous or even educational, but because it advances their domestic political interest in maintaining sanctions. Those who think that the sanctions are wrong or counterproductive have no such motivation.

[Marc Cooper]

Why is every criticism of the left catalogued as an "attack?" cant one just criticize? It's not what the left is saying... it's what it is not saying. We fight pro-actively for Palestinian rights on the left, fo example. I want to know who is proactively fighting for the rights of the Cuban people in the U.S. Do u think it's a good idea to leave that job to G BUsh? That's what the left is currently doing.

[the burningman]

If Marc Cooper was a Cuban in Cuba, he'd be the first one spitting of a missive to Granma about the "counter-revolutionaries in the pay of the Miami mafia." Or, at best, he'd hedge his bets and say that "sure, Cuba needs to improve... but those gangsters are giving the 'legitimate' opposition a bad name!"

What Marc managed to leave out was that they broadcast a recorded greeting from none other than our dear Generalissimo GW Bush. It was played on the head of the US Special Interest Section Cason's personal laptop.

Do I lie?

[the burningman]

Duh! Cooper DID notice that Bush was there in spirit... he just didn't care all that much.

[Mork]

"Why is every criticism of the left catalogued as an "attack?" cant one just criticize? "

Fair question. Of course one can just criticize.

"I want to know who is proactively fighting for the rights of the Cuban people in the U.S."

Well, in my view, the embargo and the aggressive posturing of the American right have actively assisted Castro to maintain his grip on power. It follows that I believe trying to convince Americans of the counter-productive nature of these actions is the best way to advance the prospects of freedom and democracy in Cuba.

In other words, I don't accept that noisy denunciations of Castro and his regime are the most effective way to ameliorate the situation in Cuba. Nor do should you have to recite your disgust of Castro every time you wish to say something on the topic of the effectiveness of American policy.

[Michael Turner]

When Fidel kicks the bucket, power will likely go to Raoul. He's not much better, I've heard; maybe he's worse. But every transition is an opportunity for change, and anyway, Raoul isn't much younger, so he'll be gone soon enough. After Raoul ... well, who knows?

But, Marc, what I want to know is, what's your theory behind supposing that the reaction will be ever further rightward for every added year Fidel is in power? I think if you look at transitions away from long-lived tyrants around the world, they've been all across the board, from dynastic succession in North Korea to the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. It's hard for me to believe that Cuba will go back to being a mere Batistastan when both Castros are in their graves. Give me a theory, or at least a highly parallel precedent.

[Frydek-Mistek]

How about this for a pipe dream/Cuba policy.
1. American leftists, along with European govts (and communist nutjobs) that have directly or indirectly supported/apologized for Castro announce that Fidel is a nothing more than a pathetic despot worthy of imprisonment or worse.
2. The American right announces that after 3(4) decades, the embargo on Cuba hasn't worked and Castro is going to die in office. It is no longer worth it to appease former Batisita supporters and rightwing nutjobs in Miami.
3. The US State Dept. announces that it will be willing to negotiate an end to the embargo if Castro will allow dissidents to form opposition parties and meet, without police harrassment, whenever and whereever they want.
Frydek-Mistek

[PJ]

Actually, Bush was there. The dissidents played a video message from him on their laptop for the group. I'm sure that has something to do with the left ignoring this momentous meeting. Yes, Marc, they are leaving it to the Bushies. Again, they ignore everyday politics for some dreamy futuristic ideal.

You can go to Stefania's site and see more pics, if you'd like. Just keep scrolling down.
http://freethoughts.splinder.com/

Warning: many of the pics show dissidents who are openly pro-American. :)

[Mary Jones]

Marc Cooper asks, "But why the continuing silence of most of the American Left on Castro? Why is it left only to Nat Hentoff to speak out? What does it tell us that a great civil liberties lion like Nat is left to publish his op-ed piece in the Washington Times?"

Well, the answer should be obvious to anybody who is not drunk on anti-Communist ideology. Nat Hentoff has absolutely no leftist credentials. He uses his Village Voice column to slander the Mideast Languages and Culture Department at Columbia University as anti-Semitic. He argues vociferously against a woman's right to an abortion. He has even come to the aid of George W. Bush's dreadful federal court nominees lately. In other words, Hentoff belongs exactly to the reactionary swamp epitomized by Reverend Moon's Washington Times. It is sad that Marc Cooper cannot discern this, further proof of his steady march to Hitchensville.

[reg]

Marc - Didn't just about every notable member of that very large (!) and enormously influential (!) group, the Fairly-Far-Left, publicly condemn Castro's trials of dissidents a few years back ? I know that Hentoff wrote of a bizarre brouhaha at The American Library Association - which apparently has a faction on it's executive board who blocked expressions of solidarity with dissident Cuban librarians. But who even on the isolated and mostly irrelevant Fairly-Far-Left - the Chomskyites and such - doesn't share your view ? And, although I've occasionally read some bizarre comments after meeting Fidel Castro from individuals on the trendy cultural left, I haven't seen a defense of Castro among left liberals for many a decade. (For me personally, Fidel lost any luster after he supported the Soviet invasion of Chechoslovakia nearly forty years ago.)

I think you're overstating here...to the point of distortion. Maybe Alexander Cockburn would fit your profile of "the left" refusing to criticize Castro, and you could find a few politically marginal morons with cultural credentials like Alice Walker who profess great admiration for Fidel, but I don't know of anyone who's taken seriously in left-liberal circles who doesn't look forward to Castro's demise and hope it opens up new political space, much as we prayed for the death of Arafat.

How do we draw these lines in using the term "left" in the U.S., where Hillary Clinton is attacked as a "leftist" in some fairly prominent salons of the right ??? I guess the issue of definition and perception is part of my problem with your post...Pop quiz for conservative posters here - who is Stanley Aronowitz ? Mike Davis ? Michael Albert ? Name a book published by Verso Press. Which Trotskyist organization was Christopher Hitchens a member of? Anybody who can't answer at least a couple of those questions probably thinks of Ted Kennedy is a Leftist, so most of the terms of your discussion are shifted immediately into the realm of the irrelevant and arcane and the charges of "leftist" support for Castro become bizarre and essentially counter-factual.

As for Bush's tape recording, that's a stupid stunt that obviously hands propaganda points to Castro - who is still apparently fairly credible in Cuba because of his great abilities as a demagogue and the Cubans' having, despite a disastrous inability to construct a modern economy, created a floor for the poor - an achievement which looks pretty good when you simply compare it to the millions tossed into gutters elsewhere in what used to be termed the Third World. It appears, based on your report, that the U.S. has actually managed to create a fracture within the democratic movement in Cuba. The dissidents should have sent a tape-recording back to Bush asking him to lift the futile, counter-productive embargo. Now the response to that would have been interesting. This embargo is one of those cul-de-sacs created throughout the history of American diplomacy by the mindless rhetoric and political opportunism of the right, by which only a Nixon could go to China without being redbaited. Politically, Bush could end the embargo...but then he's not got the intellectual sophistication, the grasp of diplomacy nor the strength of character that Nixon had, so we're not likely to see it.

(Marc...I'm afraid that the growing evidence of Nixon nostalgia among liberals proves just how far removed we are from the days when Fidelismo was percieved as a viable strain among American "leftists".)

[Jason Schulman]

"But why the continuing silence of most of the American Left on Castro? Why is it left only to Nat Hentoff to speak out?"

It isn't. Read NEW POLITICS or AGAINST THE CURRENT or NEWS & LETTERS or any anarchist publication and you'll find no shortage of criticism of Castro.

[Michael Turner]

Fidel might not die -- Cuba has invested a lot in biotech (an issue that surfaced briefly during the Bolton fiasco).

YES, I'm joking. Jeez. You'll know I'm serious when I start gibbering about decapitating Jim Rockford.

[jim hitchcock]

Wanted: Investors to help finance an animatronics research lab in small Caribbean country. Must be willing to relocate to avoid capitalist lackey lawyers with big ears...

[reg]

"The choice will only be Castro (who will eventually die) and the dead end Cuba finds itself in, or the worst of the Miami wingnuts, unless that is, you help support and bolster a third, democratic alternative."

Marc...might I add that you rather remarkably skip over the main issue of agency in determining Cuba's future when Fidel passes - the Cuban people. The American Left - whatever that might mean to you - has hardly been the key to continuation of Castro's regime and they will hardly be the determinant factor in what comes after. Liberals have been pretty firmly opposed to the economic boycott and travel restrictions for many years (despite typical Clintonian caving to the Republicans). I just don't see how Chomsky's legions are going to make much difference one way or the other. The biggest danger to Cuba's future is that after Castro's demise the right-wing will push not for reform, democratization and shifting gears toward a modern entrepeneurial economy, but for maximalist market domination of all aspects of Cuba's economy and society and the imposition of a pliant government heavily influenced by exiles . That is an extreme scenario and would probably mean something approximating a civil war, cueing direct U.S. intervention, but it's pretty obviously the fantasy harbored by many in Miami and their allies in the Beltway Ideology Factories. Whatever happens, it won't be according to a blueprint put forward by The Left.

Democratically-minded folks around the world should be speaking out on human rights in Cuba as elsewhere, but it's not up to us to come up with a post-Castro strategy for Cuban reform. That's precisely the kind of hubris that makes the neo-cons so dangerous, delusional and, ironically, the inept heirs of the time-worn Leftist "solidarity" bullshit - a scenario in which Americans of extreme ideological bent and little more than academic, ivory tower credentials assume that they have the formula for global liberation and - rather than simply and responsibly asserting the limitations of our military power, the potential benefits of trade and economic interdependence and, thus, proposing a humane, rational, even-handed U.S. foreign policy combined with judicious use of foriegn aid and economic incentives - they begin designating their allies-in-exile, forming internationalist cabals for overthrowing governments and sending material aid to various and sundry militant factions they've deemed their comrades. All in an effort to exert their own will as righteous agents of the wretched of the Earth and the unjustly oppressed in a global "revolution". Generally a prelude to some combination of disaster and disappointment...and at best a diversion from making sure that our own house is in order when we're dealing with tough issues abroad. Many eggs are broken - according to the Leninist maxim - but the omelettes never seem to turn out to be as palatable as promised (Bahgdad being the current case in point).

All decent, sensible Americans support human rights and greater democracy in Cuba, but the rightwing agenda is currently the primary external impediment to Cuban liberalization, insofar as the U.S. has any direct influence on the process. If the Cold War taught us anything, it is that isolating populations culturally and economically makes absolutely no sense except to the most insecure Stalinists and crackpot Rightists. Handing Castro an opportunity to appear to be a proponent of greater openness toward the U.S. in this particular pissing contest is disgraceful and a measure of just how patently absurd the Boltonesque approach to Cuba of this administration and their hard-right ideologues has become.

[reg]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3702431.stm

An inside, anti-Castro view on Bush's policies...

[Nell]

reg, you rock.

Marc, if you have any concrete suggestions for U.S. citizens who would like to support democratic dissidents with positive actions (i.e., not more ritual denunciations of Fidel), please make them. You were there, you talked with them; what would be useful?

[Susan]

Truly great subject -- Castro......

For me at least, I have the most romantic viewpoint from the distant past - and hard reality for the current now -- did not read any of the links that you showed -- because my views are so strong, for many years now.....

Castro in basic terms for me is a dinasour, a lovely one from my Anarchistic days -- because of my great love affair with Che and the "Revolution".....idealogy at it's best in the 60s.....

Leaping forward several decades and cutting to the chase.....When Russia dropped Cuba and it was over, the support...it was over for any serious conversation.....

In fact, Fidel always wanted and courted the US... and oddly enough his great love of baseball, of all things not political...but back to the serious...

We NEVER gave up the sanctions to Cuba, idiotic by my take...in a large way, for such a small place...Cuba...I have found it all idiotic...you can swim from Key West to Cuba in short time...only 90 miles away...and all that portends.

I would not guess what will happen when Fidel is gone -- I will miss his glamour/angst and postions as a "young man"...those were great days, and great times for me in my own idealogy for then.......

I will never miss Castros inability the past couple of decades to come up to speed, nor will I ever miss our country, the good old US of A to be real about Cuba and make serious and honest attempts to take this tiny Island with a man of Great Ego and solve what I always believed had very simple solutions, had we truly tried......

[Mark A. York]

Kudos on the comparison with Bush. I mean that's the way dictators work. I don't get the ongoing embargo. Open up trade and bury the place in commerce. Hemingway would cheer the effort. Jimmy Carter advocates this approach and so do I.

[Jim Rockford]

Mary -- I can't speak to Hentoff outside the Columbia issue, but the coverage there suggests a large and fairly widespread anti-Semitism problem there in the Middle East Dept. that Jewish and Israeli students have complained about. In that he's objectively right (the poison in the Middle East generally is not to be believed; such things as publishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the PA website, Abu Mazen's Holocaust denial, "Zahra's Blue Eyes," or the recent Friday Sermon on PA-TV calling "the jews" a world-wide virus to be eliminated etc). It's not surprising that that Arab professors from foreign countries are poisoned by this, considering the ugly state of their home societies. Denying that is like saying the South didn't have a KKK problem in the sixties. Hentoff may or may not be wrong on everything else (I don't know much about him) but he's objectively right about that.

Fighting for Palestinian rights? Gimme a break. They are a bunch of nasty, horrible terrorists who pioneered the Beslan and 9/11 massacres (Maalot and Lod airport anyone) who won't take "yes" for answer in delusions of destroying Israel. Just another bunch of Hard Boy thugs like Charles Taylor or Msgt. Samuel K. Doe who's only expertise is killing people. I KNOW the Left generally gets a delicious frisson of delight whenever they bump up against pseudo-marxists hard core killers but give me a break. Moral equivalence is the road to Castro and Pinochet.

The real road to Democracy (and I think Marc is right here) is to criticize Bush and those supporting Castro. Bush can and should and MUST be pressed to bring Posada to justice for killing innocent civilians to demonstrate the US's commitment to justice. He's a terrorist, and should be turned over to Venezuela or Cuba even though those countries are nasty dictatorships and it will piss off the Miami exiles. Terrorism trumps EVERYTHING as 9/11 should damn well have taught us. At the same time, guys like Oliver Stone, PEN, Chris Dodd, etc need to be taken to task for supporting a thug (not the worst but he's still a thug) who throws librarians and poets in jail.

Marc is absolutely right in that Castro, and whoever comes after him through the military complex, will be seen as a total failure, with a turn towards the hard-right. What Castro has done has been to create a Napoleonic dependency, a new Party-led aristocracy (and an alliance with Chavez, oil for a mercenary army) that by it's very nature excludes from opportunity anyone who isn't the insider. As Europeans put up hotels, have tourists come in droves, etc. the argument that Castro put forward (the country is a basket case because of the US embargo) looks as self-serving as it is, since other foreigners come there and spend money, yet the country is still miserable and all the wealth goes to Castro and his cronies (ala Pinochet). Castro is just a kinder, gentler Saddam. With everyone inside the island in jail or completely marginalized only the Exiles who end up supporting large extended families on the island will have the economic and thus political power to effect a new government when the military finally gets tired of Fidel's less able successors. People inside Cuba are likely to see the Exiles as more inclusive than whatever "Castro-lite" alternative exists (largely based on Party cronyism).

Actual experience proves Reg wrong. Unlike Reg I've lived in Beijing (for four miserable sweaty months). From first hand experience I can say that trade ties and economic development are completely compatible with one of the most repressive police state regimes on earth. Trade ties would of course benefit both US farmers (mostly agribusiness) and Castro himself (skimming off the top ala Saddam) but would do about as much for political liberalization as a Guangdong sweatshop employing children to make your cheap Nikes. Extensive EU trade with Castro has produced nothing in the way of political freedom or even individual space for people to live their lives. Castro represses Gay Rights activists like crazy, to pick one example (though one that Leftists ignore).

Susan (though not the way she intended I'm sure) hit the nail on the head. Castro is a nostalgia "brand"; the reality is he's a somewhat more efficient and thus less brutal Pinochet but that's what he is. Che in any terms must be considered a total failure. Not only did he get his ass killed in a stupid attempt to revolutionize countries that didn't want it (and provoke repression of legit reformers who actually did something); he offered only a brutal Stalin-esque gulag in return. Che in the idealized Movie was supplanted by the guy who personally conducted executions of "counter-revolutionaries" who were former comrades who would not reject constitutional democracy, a child in his unit who had stolen food, a peasant suspected of being an informer, and more. Guevara praised the "extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless, and cold killing machines." Reality is that Che and Castro both are and were brutal thugs who imposed a profoundly illiberal and fascist regime in the search for social perfection rather than the messy liberalism of personal freedom, liberty, and imperfect justice based on laws not men.

This is what confronts Cuba today. Enabled by rosy romantics who have that frisson of delight when thinking about the hard boys with guns who (gasp!) kill people.

[Susan]

Ah Jim, but in terms of Castro being a "nostalgia brand" -- it is what I meant totally in terms of the very current "now" -- there we agree in toto...about Pinochet, interesting you would run them together, one being a revolutionary and the other being planted by the US to rid Allende.....................

About Che and your lengthy thoughts about him...do not agree on many levels...but another topic for another day...in the main, either because we differ entirely from those times, or entirely on a intellectual level, then too perhaps I am far older than you -- I lived through those times, you did not...or just again, I am far wiser than you......large smiles here.....

[reg]

Apparently Rockford thinks that the Chinese people would be farther along in their considerable, albeit uneven, progress out of the maoist nightmare had Nixon stayed home and we'd just continued to embargo the place.

[reg]

Susan...giving up Che's ghost makes you a better person. I know it's an awful lot like a Catholic giving up those prayers to The Blessed Virgin, but it's a lot healthier than clinging to a false icon. Che was a brutal, stalinist sonofabitch, albeit a brutal, stalinist sonofabitch with balls and considerable charisma. Like Mao, he started out as a talented young guy with quite a few admirable qualities whose revolutionary zeal ultimately turned into dogmatic monomania - his steady immersion in bankrupt ideology totally undermined what was obviously a humanistic impulse when he was first drawn to revolution. The anecdote that made me finally realize just how shockingly and totally fucked both Che and Fidel were from even the early days of the revolution was their response during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They would have, by Castro's own admission, chosen nuclear war over standing down. Here's Robert MacNamara's account of his discussions with Castro at a "survivors" symposium on the missile crisis held in Havana a few years ago. This was an open forum and Castro hasn't denied MacNamara's account:

I turned to Castro and I said, "Mr. President, I have three questions: Number one, did you know the warheads were there? Number two, if you did, would you have recommended they be used? Number three, if they were used, what would have happened?"

He said, "Bob, I did know they were there. I would not have recommended, I did recommend they were to be used, as you said. What would have happened to Cuba? It would have been totally destroyed." (end clip)

That's a scary guy. Fidel was basically in the same mad-bomber camp as Gen. Curtis LeMay, while both Kruschev and Kennedy were trying to negotiate a way back from the brink of Armageddon. Che was the guy who went to Moscow to appeal for the nuclear missiles in the first place.

"Actual experience proves Reg wrong. Unlike Reg I've lived in Beijing (for four miserable sweaty months). From first hand experience I can say that trade ties and economic development are completely compatible with one of the most repressive police state regimes on earth."

That's just frigging nuts. The difference between the freedom that individuals have now compared to, say, 1976, when economic liberalization began is massive. Of course it's still politically repressive, but normal people live most of their lives outside of the political sphere, and the state has generally retreated across the board.

"Fighting for Palestinian rights? Gimme a break. They are a bunch of nasty, horrible terrorists who pioneered the Beslan and 9/11 massacres (Maalot and Lod airport anyone) who won't take "yes" for answer in delusions of destroying Israel. "

All of them?

[Randy Paul]

Marc, I think that you'll agree that Eric Umansky and I have been strongly critical of Castro. Christ, I've been writing favorably about the dissidents as long as I've had a blog.

Yes the kooky left and the ALA still embrace Castro, but most of the rest of us (including your Nation colleague Eric Alterman) don't, unless one finds Bill O'Reilly credible. Susan Sontag criticized Garcia Marquez for not speaking out on behalf of the dissidents.

It may also be worthwhile to remember this 16 year old letter to Castro: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4150

How about a little of that high dudgeon for Yvon Neptune?

[reg]

marc - since much of what I wrote could be interpreted as quibbling or quarreling with your post, let me say that had you not posted this, I wouldn't know about it. I didn't see it in my scan of weekend papers - but more to the point, I didn't see any mention of it on The Nation, New Republic or American Prospect websites or any of the liberal blogs I read. Further, I didn't see any mention of it at the Weekly Standard website, which like the others mentioned includes daily posts, as well as the weekly content. It's an important story and one that no particular political faction should own. We are obsessed with Iraq, the "nuclear option", and other stories that have more currency than Cuba right now, but it's a damn shame that so little attention is being paid to this by damn near everybody.

(The American Conservative doesn't do daily updates, so they can be forgiven for not having anything up on this, but in making my rounds of daily digital discourse, it turns out that two of my Quasi-Comrade Pat's big stories this week are on the mistreatment of edible animals on factory farms and why conservatives should oppose the excesses of the meat industry, and the common social conservative cause with ultra-feminist Andrea Dworkin on...whatever. "Post-modern" politics is fascinating, if not very satisfying.)