Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

It’s no secret Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has a soft spot for socialist dictators. Sanders re-affirmed that affinity in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, saying Fidel Castro did some good things during his decades-long rule in Cuba:

 Sen. Bernie Sanders offered a partial defense of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, asserting that “It’s unfair to simply say everything is bad” with the way the late despot ruled the country.

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know?” Sanders said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday. “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”

Even the liberal Guardian newspaper pointed out that literacy programs and free health care were no excuse for Castro’s murderous police state. Writing on the occasional of Castro’s demise in 2016, Rory Carroll noted:

…some admirers of the late “maximum leader” ignored or only elliptically acknowledged: he was a dictator. He hounded critics, scorned elections and ran a police state – facts which impressive statistics about literacy, infant mortality and life expectancy cannot erase.

That only briefly captures the terror Castro used to keep the people silent, obedient, and destitute.

If Sen. Sanders prefers to hide behind the skirts of a communist “literacy program,” that’s fine. He can do it on his own time…far removed from any office of trust or profit under the Constitution.

Image Credit: By AFGE (AFGE Participates in #StopFastTrack Rallies) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons