To: Robert H. Bork
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Elian and his Dad
When I read your WSJournal column on Monday, “Castro Fools Even Some
Conservatives,” it got my blood to a simmer, but not to a boil, which is why
I simply tossed it aside. As an old friend, though, I should have given you
the benefit of my simmer. In writing about why some conservatives have been
fooled into thinking Elian Gonzalez should go back to Cuba with his dad, you
got me close to a boil with these lines: “The issue is not Juan Miguel’s
preference, but the good of Elian. It is impossible to deny that he would lead
a far more fulfilled life in Miami than is possible in Havana.” Whoa! Impossible
to deny? How the heck can you be so sure that Elian’s life would be more
fulfilled in Miami without his father (or mother, now deceased) than with his
pop in Havana? The idea Robert Bork actually could pen those words made me
think I may have been wrong to think you would have made an excellent Supreme
Court Justice, when I defended you against the “borking” that finally
defeated your nomination. Or, maybe you would not have had such a silly
thought back then, but have become grouchier and more authoritarian as you
have slouched toward twilight in Gomorrah? A life more fulfilled without his
father? Why? Because there are better schools, better TV shows, better
restaurants, better supermarkets? Better jails? If I had been wrenched from my
father and given to my uncle when I was six, I probably would have turned out
like my uncle, an anti-Semitic, racist bigot. And he lived in Pennsylvania,
Bob, not Castro’s Cuba.
What propels me to write now, belatedly, is a commentary that appeared Tuesday
by my friend Cedric Muhammad at his website.
Cedric is a young black man who has thought long and hard about the legacy of
slavery in the United States, especially how routine it was in the old days
for boys to be separated from their fathers by morally superior white men.
Maybe the boys were better off, but I don’t think it is impossible for you
to deny maybe they weren’t. As much as you will find Cedric’s comments
unsettling, I think you should read them carefully, before you become even
more morally superior.
