Gloria Estefan on Fox News....

I just saw her appearance on the FN morning show, and came away with this-- (pp)

"of course, you never want to celebrate death, but if Castro's death is what it takes to change Cuba for the better, then that's the way it's gotta be."

She should know, a Cubana with countless terrible stories from friends and relatives, some of the stories without ending to this day. Imprisonment, 'disappearings', beatings, 're-education' and of course lack of freedom to choose a life course (and the resultant poverty and despair) all these things have been part of Cuban daily life for decades.

Oh, can't forget the wonderful health care system where everyone gets top quality care.

Just ask El Gordo Michael Moore-o.

But I did want to offer a contrary view to that of Gloria Estefan.

I believe the entire world should celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, with no tears and plenty of jubilation. The net value of the deeds he has done in this life are so far overbalanced in favor of blackhearted, vile, murderous evil that a sensible human being cannot even consider that any good in him makes any difference at all. It is a philosophical musing, of no practical value, an inquiry into the nature of man but insufficient for the defense of one man.

Anyone who wants to publicly argue for Castro's good must step over a hundred thousand tombstones just to get to that podium.

I'm reminded of an acquaintance I made a couple of years ago, a man of about my age who left Cuba with his parents in the 1970s. Few were allowed to do so; a token couple of hundred a year, just so Castro could say he was allowing it.

I was told that the family was selected in the lottery for permission to leave, but that it took years afterward for the paperwork to clear. When it did, they were told they had two weeks to leave, and if they failed, they must stay.

So frantically they sold everything and bought tickets to Spain (they came to America soon afterward) and made their appearance at the airport.

The security men began to take everything from them but the clothes on their backs, contemptuously seizing his mother's wedding ring and telling her that nothing of any value was to be taken from Cuba. They left literally with the clothes they were wearing. He was twelve years old, fully aware of the injustices visited upon his family.

He told me of the 'sugar slavery', of men seized from their homes in the night and put to work on the other side of the country in the cane fields, a brutal task with long days and physically scarring conditions. Their families did not even know where they were, or if they were alive or dead. And of course, when there were no more men, they seized the women in the same manner.

Sugar, you see, was one of the few products of Cuba that had a decent market price and was worth producing, even if only with slave labor to keep costs down.

So, Ms. Estefan, remember the stories you hear and the people you love, and do not hesitate to celebrate the death of a man who deserves eternal flames if any man ever did.