The NCC’s Peculiar Solidarity

Rod Dreher on Elián González

The agonizing question of Elián González’s fate, which is still up in the air as of this writing, has divided political and religious conservatives, with good people taking opposing positions for persuasive reasons. A fit father’s right to his child is inviolate, some say. Yes, say others, but what does fatherhood mean in a totalitarian state?

I incline to the latter view, because experience shows that the child, already a “Hero of the Revolution,” will be pressed into ideological child prostitution by Castro. If it were possible for Juan Miguel González to act as a normal father, poverty and oppression wouldn’t justify depriving him of his boy. That clearly will not be the case. Fidel will turn the boy into a model Young Communist.

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Rod Dreher is a contributing editor to Touchstone. He is a senior editor and blogger at the American Conservative and author of How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, and Live Not by Lies: A Survival Manual for Christian Dissidents. He is Eastern Orthodox and lives with his wife, Julie, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They have three children.

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