Dirty Little Commies on the Upper West Side

In what can only be described as un tremendo acto de repudio, the blogosphere and some editorial writers came out in force this past week to condemn a group of Manhattan high school students from the Beacon School and their teacher, Nathan Turner, for taking a trip to Cuba.

The group could not get a license to travel to Cuba for educational purposes because, alas, the Administration stopped licensing educational travel for high school students in 2004.

Mr. Turner reportedly organized the trip on his own and booked flights via the Bahamas, evading U.S. law. Agents of our Department of Homeland Security stationed in the Bahamas airport were alert, however, and the group may now be fined by the federal government.

“CLUB RED,” blared the New York Post’s headline. Immediately commentators leaped to the conclusion that Mr. Turner was a loony lefty because Cuban revolutionary posters hang in his classroom.

So what if he was?

I’ll disclose that I believe that Americans should have complete and unfettered freedom to travel to Cuba. I don’t believe in limiting that freedom to people who think like me, and I believe that my freedom is only secure if everyone else’s is too, especially those on each end of the political spectrum.

I don’t support breaking U.S. law. But if this group did violate the law, they violated a law that – setting aside whether it is just or not – is patently incapable of accomplishing its foreign policy purpose, which the Administration describes as denying Cuba a flow of hard currency to the degree that we will hasten change in Cuba’s political order or, short of that, starve the Cuban government of the resources it needs to engage in political repression. (Ironically, the only way to sell that proposition is to make sure Americans cannot see Cuba for themselves.)

I’ll also confess that I even find it appealing that people from the left, even the wacko left, travel to Cuba. Cubans surely cringe at some of the things they say, but Cubans are not naïve and know that the hard left does not represent majority U.S. opinion. I also like the message Cubans get about real freedom when they see that we do not restrict speech, not even speech by Americans on foreign soil in praise of a government like Cuba’s.

Of course, we don’t know what Mr. Turner did or said on his excursion.

But assume the worst: that he presented nothing but sympathy for the Cuban government and subjected his students to nothing but indoctrination by Cuban officials. The commentators unanimously assumed that these young Americans – dumb, malleable, uncritical, and innocent – would swallow those messages hook, line, and sinker.

Which makes me wonder if any of the commentators actually know an American teenager, or has ever tried out the phrase “Because I said so!” on an average American teenager. Good luck.

An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily deserves the off-the-deep-end award in this episode. In a newspaper more jam-packed with information than any on earth, the editorial puts no information behind its assertions that the students received only a “phony dog-and-pony show of the regime,” that they were “endangered,” that Mr. Turner had no “serious interest in educating youths,” and that to enter Cuba, “one has to disclose huge amounts of personal information to Cuba's spy agency.”

And then the editorial wonders:

“How did Turner contact Havana? What was his real aim? He’s part of a vast network of labor unions, Marxist organizations and activist groups that supply Cuba its agents here.

“A fine isn't enough; we need to look a lot closer at him – and others.”

Which leaves me with no comment at all.