My wife and I went to see the film “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” on January 11, 2023.  Both of us are great admirers of the late Whitney Houston and were anxious to finally get to view a biopic of her life.

The film was released on December 23, 2022, by Sony Pictures. Kasi Lemmons directed it from a screenplay written by Anthony McCarten.  British actress Naomi Ackie – best known for her role as Jannah in the film Star Wars – did an excellent job playing Whitney and lip–syncing her songs. 

Moreover, American actor Stanley Tucci – well known for his TV series “Taste My Life Through Food”– did a great job playing record producer Clive Davis.

But before sharing my take of the film, I want to share what others have said about it.

Rotten Tomatoes markets itself and its Tomatometer score as “the world’s most trusted recommendation resources for quality entertainment.” Professional critics scored Whitney’s film with a 46 percent rating.  To receive a positive rating symbolized with a red tomato, the film must be rated at least with a 60 percent.  A score of less than 60 percent would award the film a negative rating symbolized with a green splat – which it assigned to Whitney’s film. On the other hand, users with a verified movie ticket purchased gave the film a 92% rating. Bottom line, the professional movie critics disliked the film, while moviegoers loved it!

The critics blame the film for failing to delve deeply into Whitney’s sexuality and drug addiction. In fact, they blame screenwriter Anthony McCarten of committing the same omission in regard to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality when he wrote the screenplay for the film “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  

Critics ignore the fact that moviegoers go to the theater to escape the hardships of daily life.  They are not interested in the struggles and foibles of their idols.  Documentaries are better suited for the latter.  They go to the movies to live vicariously for a couple of hours the lives that they dream of.  It is a high that they are after – which can only be rendered by giving free rein to their emotions, to their souls rather than to their intellects. 

Let’s not forget that the Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” was nominated for five awards at the 2019 Oscars, and it won four – including Rami Malek winning the one for the Best Actor.  Anthony McCarten proved that he knew what his clients looked for in films and what boosted his profit margin.   

It’s films like “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” that moviegoers go to get their money’s worth – and, thus, the explanation for their 92 percent likeability rating for the former.

The lesson to be learned is that when you are looking for great books or films, don’t look to the professionals to decide what’s best for you!  Look to what the general public has to say about the matter.  Excessive analysis of any topic brings about paralysis of the mind and the soul.  It’s better suited for academic circles than for general consumption.

I’ll proceed to share my thoughts on the Whitney Houston’s story.

I first started to pay attention to Whitney after attending a performance by George Benson at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia. After listening to Benson pay tribute to Whitney’s rendition of his “The Greatest Love of All” mega hit, I put Whitney on my radar.  I was not disappointed, as her rendition exceeded all of my expectations.  I became instantly one of her fans.

Fame followed her at an early age, and with it came challenges.  Rumors about a lesbian relationship with best friend and Creative Director Robin Crawford interfered with the sought-after portrayal as “America’s Black Pop Princess” and with her parents’ religious background.  Nevertheless, there are plenty of articles that this relationship was short-lived and ended when Whitney’s singing career took off.

One of the best scenes and lines in the film is when Clive Davis tells Whitney: “You smoking is like leaving a Stradivarius in the rain.” Clive always tried to steer Whitney away from her demons.

What drove Whitney to her drug addiction is mostly speculative.  One thing for sure, she started using them when she was in her teens – before her marriage to Bobby Brown.  She told Robyn Crawford that she first tried cocaine when she was fourteen.  Her father and manager John generated much stress in Whitney’s personal life with the mishandling of her finances and repeated efforts to shape her image.  Frequent criticism by some in the African-American community of her selling out to White audiences by her musical repertoire and her image did impact her immensely.  While denying it at first, she answered intelligently the question about her “white-washing” during an interview by saying that she only sang “great songs” without placing a racial or ethnic litmus test on them.  

Whitney was not the first nor the last to be criticized for her association with Whites.  Donna Summer and Tina Turner had no problem with what detractors said about their White husbands.  And I can’t forget the wonderful friendship and collaboration between Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers. Lionel wrote the song “Lady” for Rogers, and it became one of his biggest hits.  Love and music do not discriminate against anyone!

Attempting to prove her blackness and heterosexuality could have contributed to her tumultuous marriage to African-American singer Bobby Brown in 1992. Media coverage of the “bad boy antics” of husband Bobby dragged Whitney into the mud as well. Increased violence and infidelities led to a breakup in the marriage in 2007.  The stress of family career and family struggles led to increase in her drug usage, but public notice increased when her drug use started affecting her vocal range.  

The film shows a clip in February 2012 that portends the end.  Whitney goes to the bar in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, in Los Angeles. She meets bartender Stephen who has been a long-time fan and who reminisced about seeing Whitney perform at the 1994 American Music Awards.  Stephen thought that Whitney’s performance was the best that he’s ever seen.  He tells her how privileged he felt back then and now that he’s met her and treats her to a drink as a token of his appreciation.  Whitney grows pensive and nostalgic about the legacy that she might leave behind and her realization that her vocal range will never be the same again.

On February 11, 2012, Whitney is declared dead from drowning in her bathtub triggered by an accidental drug overdose at age 48.  A later autopsy in March 2012 revealed that her death was caused by drowning and the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” There is another rumor spread by private investigator Paul Huebl that Whitney was murdered by two men who were trying to collect a debt for drugs. Regardless of the rumors, what matters is that Whitney is gone forever.

Looking at Whitney’s triumphs and downfalls, I’m reminded of our own mortality.  Many are lucky to handle fame with poise and self-control.  Andrea Bocelli comes to mind.  But the majority who reach the pinnacle of their professions are lousy managers of their success and personal lives.  Elvis Presley, Elis Regina, Michael Jackson, Natalie Cole, and Amy Winehouse are but a few of the great who succumbed because of their drug use.

Regardless of the cause of death, their talents and contributions that molded the music scene of the time immortalized them in the pantheon of champions, kings, and queens. 

By her accruing six Grammy Awards, selling over 170 million records, and setting a record-breaking of seven consecutive #1 hit songs (the Beatles and the Bee Gees share the previous record of six consecutive #1 hits each), Whitney Houston will be remembered as one of the best female vocalists of all times.  

If you are person who values the arts and humanities, who gives free rein to the emotions when exposed to greatness, and who lets music move you, then go see the film “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” You won’t be disappointed!

Western civilization is undergoing an existential crisis that had its origins several decades ago and that threatens its own survival.  The trigger for this crisis is a war between the secularist and Christian values of the Judeo-Christian culture.  The former treats religion as the “opium of the masses” and its teachings as “bourgeois values” — while the latter looks to God as the Creator of all ethical principles and moral values. 

Some may question the presence of this crisis given the high number of Jews, Protestants, and Catholics in Western societies.  But the malaise is not caused by the faithful, but by the guiding principles of a society that has left no room for God. 

The good attributes of Western civilization are under serious attack lately – the inalienable rights, the sanctity of human life, representative government, freedom of speech and religion, and equal opportunities for its citizens.  We should fight to keep these by all means necessary. 

But the attack is coming from a society that has divorced the spiritual values and placed the material world in a pedestal.

The late Russian human-rights dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explained the rise of communism in his country as follow: “The subtle poisons of secularism permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles.”

To preserve the traditions of the United States for current and future generations, we have to identify first the multiple ideologies that have robbed the Nation’s of its democratic health.

a) The “progress” ideology argues that men and women are innately good, and evolution by itself will free them of evil.  No religion, no God is necessary for this transformative process because it’s automatic. Death is the ultimate goal for the majority of its citizens in their struggle to bring about the perfect human being in the future.

This delusional ideology is what the communist regime in Cuba embraced by demanding the sacrifices of present generations to develop the perfect man and the perfect woman in the long run.  The failure of this goal is evident in the fact that after sixty-three years of empty slogans like “patria o muerte” (“fatherland or death”), the majority of young Cubans voted with their feet by emigrating to the United States because they got fed up with the rising inflation, severe food and drug shortages, and frequent power outages in Cuba.  

This idea of progress by a future generation is unachievable because it offers no hope for present and past generations.  And it is bogus as well as a goal for future generations because perfection is unattainable for any human being because of its sinful nature. Only the Creator holds a monopoly on perfection.

Leaving progress in the hands of laws of nature is dangerous because it ignores humans’ responsibility for their actions.  Doing good or bad deeds are triggered by the will and the heart.  And good deeds will only be made possible when the will is synchronized with the moral laws of the Judeo-Christian culture.

Followers of this ideology advocate that wars are an anomaly of the evolutionary process of nature.  But the fact that we’ve had two world wars in the last century and multiple confrontations in the 21st century proves that the world is moving from civilization to savagery – and not the other way around!

b) The second ideology is the “one that makes science supreme.”  According to its practitioners, to know is to measure.  Therefore, there is no room for values, for religion, for God, for tradition, for authority because these are unmeasurable.

The British naturalist Charles Darwin’s evolution theory that humans evolved as a species from monkeys became more popular than the theory that men and women were created in the image of God.  But if humans have no more value than anything else in nature, then they can be treated as a “thing” in the service of the Communist Party or the government.   Looking at the governments in North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, and China, this is exactly what has happened – citizens are but a mere cog to make the Communist Party immortal!   

Science’s true purpose is to lift humanity towards God by providing a means to its betterment.  But by denying science of any morality, how will we be able to tell what’s good from what’s evil? By using science as his ally, Putin used sophisticated weapons to subjugate vast parts of Ukraine.  Without a morality standard at our disposal, it’s impossible to differentiate Putin’s bad deeds from heads of state who are trying to defend freedom and human rights elsewhere in the world. 

c) Next comes the “relativism” ideology.  This is the “it depends” ideology – the one that tells its followers that there is no distinction between right and wrong, and everything goes back to one’s point of view. Thus, all values are relative – if they are convenient, they are embraced; if they are a hindrance, they are ignored. Tolerance becomes the preferred word since it is translated into indifference to truth and error. Belief in God as an absolute is forbidden and substituted by a utility standard. Since it could not deal with religion and morality, this ideology took the easy way out by making them irrelevant.

But here is the conundrum: if there is no right or wrong with this ideology – how could anyone judge democracy vis a vis totalitarianism?

Similarly, this ideology is where you find the a-la-carte Catholics agreeing to give the holy sacrament of Communion to politicians who while bragging of their Catholic faith endorse abortion legislation.  Their credo is “let’s go along, to get along” – while willingly ignoring the God-given’s commandment of “Thou shall not kill.”

This ideology is an affront to all those Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in battlefields for defending absolute rights like freedom, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

d) Next in line is the “materialism” ideology.  This group asserts that humankind lacks a soul and that there is no life after death.  In other words, there is but one life to live, and you might as well enjoy it to the fullest while you can.  This cohort excels in buying as many goods and properties as their wallets allow, doing as many fun activities as possible, and not sacrificing  for anything or anybody.  They have not learned from the Beatles’s song that money can’t buy you love.

These are the Americans who relocate their factories from the United States and move them to Communist China because there are no labor unions and the employees’ salaries are much lower.  They remain insensitive to the havoc that they cause American families by taking away their livelihoods in order to maximize their profits by tapping a $1.4B Chinese marketplace.  They only care about themselves, and their egotism reigns supreme over their patriotism.

It is wrong to assume that an education will lead one to always do the right thing without any restraints from religion.  It always helps to remind ourselves that men and women do not sin because they are ignorant, but because they are perverse.  The elites from Ivy League universities do not hold the keys to sainthood.  Far from it! Education tied together with a perverse will leads to hell on earth.

Humans by their very nature have the capacity to commit evil when they don’t uphold the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian traditions.  Let’s not fool ourselves! Evil has always prevailed in the world. While slavery was a stain on the world civilization, so is the killing of unborn babies a crime against humanity.  The latter is still the same old evil but with a modern label.  To save the Western civilization and to restore the sense of balance and happiness to modern men and women, what is needed is a return to the proper meaning of freedom: to do what we ought to do rather than what we want to do with no restraints.  And this freedom is grounded in the moral code derived from the Judeo-Christian traditions that call for moral restraint, spiritual discipline, and denial of evil. To win this war, we must push aside all the secular nonsense that the elites have propagated in the fake-news media outlets and in the schools and universities. 

A very devout Catholic acquaintance from a Northeastern state asked me recently to refrain from e-mailing her my articles because she had taken a hiatus from politics and my articles dwelled in politics. 

Is she right or not with her decision?

I’d like to address first an issue that has been in my mind since my childhood about religion.  With the advent of so many scientific breakthroughs, I’ve wondered whether science or religion is better suited to answer the questions about the origins of mankind.

And here is where common sense comes in handy.  Scientists are in the business of discovering and studying the laws of nature and the universe; they don’t create them.  Therefore, there has to be a creator of these laws.  And that Creator is God. 

Our Founding Fathers recognized that human got their inalienable rights from their Creator, and they stated so in the Declaration of Independence.  Therefore, to safeguard these rights, it was incumbent on men and women to follow the moral law.  And this law entails the adoption of the eternal reason of God in all his/her actions and decisions.  While God gave humans a conscience by which they could decide to follow the right or the wrong path, ignoring the moral laws would only hurt them. 

Several centuries ago, religion played a unifying power in the lives of men and women.  Subsequently, the state began to encroach its influence on religion by replacing it with the divine rights of kings and queens.  And now, much of humanity has made the government and politics their gods.

With placing government and politics at the center of their lives, today’s liberals have dehumanized the nature of men and women by treating them as mere objects or “things” that exist solely for the wellbeing of the secular institutions.  It is this mindset that justified Mao Zedong for killing 45 million of his countrymen(women) between 1958 and 1962, and 20 million during the Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union.  To these henchmen, failure to abide by the dictates of the Communist Party was the equivalent of treason that deserved to be punished by the death penalty.

In the United States, the Left has been working overtime to replace the Judeo-Christian traditions with a secular-based religion of its own.  This religion even has a devil figure: the White males, while its god has become the government.

An August 2022 article in The Atlantic Magazine claimed that the Catholic rosary was a “symbol” of religious radicalism for “radical-traditional Catholics.”  According to a 2021 report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, there have been at least 95 incidents where Catholic churches have been vandalized in the United States since May 2020.  These acts of vandalism include destruction of statues and the defacement of churches with swastikas and anti-Catholic messages.  Then, there is the push by many businesses in the United States to replace the “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” messages on their products. 

They are going after the foundation of the Judeo-Christian doctrines – the nuclear family.  They demand the availability of abortion-on-demand for women – a frontal attack on the religious precept on the sanctity of human life.  And many Catholic bishops, priests, and even Pope Francis favor allowing the  giving of the holy sacrament of Communion to public figures like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — who while bragging about their Catholic faith fully endorse pro-choice legislation.  These a-la-carte Catholics are providing the Left with the rope with which to hang them. 

Knowing that they cannot erase the Judeo-Christian traditions from the majority of the baby-boomer generation, the Left has turned its attention to the young.  They have turned their wrath on our Founding Fathers and founding documents by using a Marx-Engels model based on race discrimination.  By introducing their Critical Race Theory into school curricula, they intend to mold the minds of our youth by rejecting the foundations of our Nation and weaponizing their anger by replacing them with a socialist government. 

In a socialist state, Christianity is the opium of society.  The Communist Party becomes the Immortal Deity. 

The Left is interested in abiding by the laws and policies in the books only when they serve their needs and agendas.  Per predictions by the Princeton Policy Advisors, the Biden administration is expected to reach 2.1 million illegal border crossings at the Southern Border in 2022 – which represents the largest record since this statistic started to get collected in 1960.  This monstrosity and danger to our national security is made possible by the Biden administration’s willingness to cancel the get-tough policies enacted by President Trump.  Similarly, the U.S. Department of Justice has been unwilling to enforce federal law under 18 USC 1503 that prohibit demonstrations in front of the house of a judge to influence his/her decision.  And this is precisely what happened in front of the residence of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the eve of the abortion decision.   

So, here is the question to ask. If the Left ignores the laws of the land when they are inconvenient to their agendas, what makes you think that they would respect the Biblical doctrines? Not at all!!!

I think that my very devout Catholic acquaintance from a Northeastern state is making a serious mistake in trying to compartmentalize her Catholic faith from politics.  To the Leftist forces at work in the United States, their secular principles are their new “religion.”

It’ll be foolish to fight a radical movement with Christian beliefs of compromise and tolerance.  I hope my devout Catholic acquaintance and others who think like she does learn this important lesson for the survival of Western civilization!

The concept of the “Golden Rule” does not appear anywhere in the Bible.  But many extrapolate its meaning from Christ’s Sermon on the Mountain when he said: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” (Matthew 7:12)

It’s with this rule in mind that I’d like to address an issue that I’ve given a lot of thought over my life journey.  And this issue deals with my questioning what is the best economic system for a country. 

My family fled Cuba and emigrated to the United States to flee a country whose government had imposed a communist economic system that has impoverished the population for over sixty years. 

But living in the United States for most of my life, I’ve come to question the merit of unfettered capitalism.  The pursuit of profits without regard to the wellbeing of employees and the willingness to eradicate the manufacturing base of the country to pursue a $1.4 billion market in Communist China makes me angry. 

I ask you whether it is moral for some employers to favor the prolongation of a war so that they can make a couple more millions – regardless of how many of our young men and women would die in vain?

I also ask you at what point do employees tell their employers that their salaries are high enough and their work-shift hours are short enough to allow employers to invest in more income-producing assets that benefit both?

And I think that the challenge is that there is a huge disconnect in America’s owning class between two moral principles: the right to property and the right to use property for the common good.  Those who own stock in companies generally do not work or manage them, while those who work and manage them do not own any stock at all.  There is Berlin Wall between the two sides that prevents a fruitful partnership between the two. Consequently, the owners of stock demand keeping all profits for themselves, and the employees get a pittance in return for their labor that generated those profits.

How do we fix this disconnect? The late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen posits that through a new co-partnership work contract that would encompass the equitable distribution of profits to owners and employees.  This new contract would contain the following concepts: 1) allocate at least one seat in the Board of Directors to employees so that they can participate in the management decisions of the company; 2) give employees a set of “permanent” shares to give them an opportunity to vote on the distribution of dividends; and, 3) allow the employees to share the profits earned equitably.

It is terribly unfair for the owners of stock in a company to earn profits ranging in the millions of dollars and to pay minimum-wage salaries to employees.  Similarly, it just as unfair for a federal employee to make a recommendation that saves the Federal Government millions of dollars and invoke a regulation that caps the award given to that employee to a couple thousands of dollars.  This is what brings about revolutions and riots!

Embracing this new co-partnership work contract will afford much needed self-respect to employees, which will encourage them to do more rather than do less for the companies.

Nevertheless, many of you would think that this suggestion is too logical for its implementation.  And you would be right. 

It’s been opposed by both employers and labor unions.  And the opposition has been triggered by one thing only: greed.  While both sides are engaged in this polemic, government usually steps in and takes all profits for itself.

Communism and socialism could be the result of this stalemate.  It would replace individual selfishness with collective selfishness, and corporate monopoly with monopoly by the Communist Party.  Every communist is a frustrated capitalist with no money in his/her pocket.  The resulting outcome is the elevation of members of the Communist Party to the elites and the relegation of everyone else to the lower classes. 

Another unwelcomed possible outcome would be the immeasurable growth of a government that will impose unreasonable taxes on business owners, process them through innumerable bureaucratic layers to feed the Deep State, and give the remaining crumbs to employees.

Going back to the Golden Rule, the best way out of this dilemma is to set up an economic system of co-partnership between employers and employees – rather than one in which profits are controlled entirely by employers or the government.

To implement this improved economic system in the midst of the myopic selfishness of employers and employees, the government will have to step in to protect the common good of both sides.  But this entry will have to be limited in scope – as governments have a tendency to increase their size and responsibilities in perpetuity.

To bring up a poignant example pertaining to Hispanics, are selecting officials in the Federal Government willing to hire qualified Hispanics into the Senior Executive Service primarily when they are applying for jobs where they are chasing other Hispanics? This much is certain, if Hispanics are qualified for these jobs, there are other jobs in the Senior Executive Service that they would excel in!!!  When selecting officials base their selections solely on qualifications, that will be the time when the Federal Government will achieve its goal of being an equal-opportunity employer.

Employers will not like this co-partnership model because it means less profits for them.  Labor unions will not like also because it means less union dues for them.

Men of goodwill will embrace it because it’s a model that finds the ideal balance between the right to property and the right to use property for the common good.  It is the right model because no American will claim a right without acknowledging a duty.  It the right model because it follows the moral code of the Golden Rule!

I was moved by a Facebook post from a friend this week where she reached out to her friends’ better angels and asked them to look after each other in today’s environment, instead of tearing each other down.   I’m sure that her motives were well-intentioned, but her aspiration is unrealistic.

And here is the reason why.  It is today’s Democrats who have divided the country like never before.  When you have a group that talks from both sides of their mouths, it loses credibility with the masses.

Following are several examples to illustrate the point above.

Joe Biden mirrored my friend’s dream when he gave his inauguration speech on January 20, 2021.  In fact, he signed a proclamation designating January 20^th as “National Day of Unity.”   On this momentous day, Biden told the Nation that “today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together … For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.  No Progress, only exhausting outrage.”

After a very contentious 2020 election, Biden had the right goal in mind by trying to bring the country together.  He was on the right track.  The problem is that he did not mean what his mouth enunciated.

Just a few hours after his inauguration at the steps of the Capitol, Biden signed fifteen executive orders by announcing his intent to undo the policies of his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump.  Key among these executive orders was one to stop the construction of The Wall along the southern border, which in fact gave the green light to the drug cartel to launch an invasion of illegal immigrants to our country.   Obviously, Biden had a very different definition of the word “unity,” just like he had a different definition of the word “recession.” 

Moreover, Democratic Senators Obama, Biden, Schumer, and Clinton voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 to build a wall across certain sections of the U.S.-Mexico border.  Biden’s 2021 executive order to defund the building of the wall shows that he put politics ahead of the good of the country.

Then, you have Democrats who believe that they hold a monopoly on righteousness, and Republicans are the anti-Christ. 

Peter Navarro, a former adviser to President Trump, was put in leg irons by FBI agents on contempt of Congress charges in June of 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6 incident.  But, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder under former President Obama was never arrested after he was held in contempt of Congress in June of 2012 related to the Operation Fast and Furious – an investigation launched after two guns related to the operation were found at the scene of a Border Patrol agent’s fatal shooting. 

Michelle Obama tried to motivate her fellow Democrats to uphold their moral character by saying at the 2016 Democratic National Convention: “When they go low, we go high” – in reference to detractors of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.  But her husband’s former attorney general, Eric Holder, told a crowd in October 2018 that he disagreed with Michelle’s good intentional plea.  Instead, he rephrased her quote by saying: “When they go low, we kick ‘em.  That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”  When the Democratic Party issues two conflicting messages by such high-profile individuals, the masses are right to question their motivation.

Another example of the Democrats’ modus operandi of “Do as I say, not as I do” pertains to California Governor Gavin Newson.  After lecturing his constituents about wearing face masks and not gathering in large crowds to curtail the spread of COVID, Newson was seen at the high-end French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley without wearing a face mask.

Democrats have been quite vocal recently about the implementation of policies to defund the police.  But Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO) allocated nearly $400,000 of campaign funds into private security services while maintaining her “defund the police” calls.

Despite holding a congressional hearing in the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives for the January 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol, no hearing has been ordered to look into the property damage associated with the summer 2020 riots in Democrat-run cities in Democrat-governed states.  While four people died on January 6 (all were Trump supporters – three of natural causes and one shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer), the 2020 riots resulted in at least 19 deaths – most of them African Americans – and over $1 billion in property damage.  Do you see a double-standard?!!!

One of the main differences between Democrats and Republicans nowadays is that the former believe that a person’s purpose in life is to serve the government, while the latter believe that the government’s role is to serve its citizens. 

The Republican’s view of government is enshrined in our founding documents and the Judeo-Christian traditions.  Our Declaration of Independence stipulates that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  In other words, these rights were God-given before the creation of the government.  The only reason for creating governments was to safeguard these God-given rights.  “Self-evident” was an acknowledgement that these rights were a matter of faith and Judeo-Christian traditions.

On the other hand, Democrats insist on doing away of with God from the public square and replacing Him with total allegiance to the government – and not just any government, but one controlled by them. 

This is a view that all totalitarian governments share in common.  For example, the late Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro said in a 1961 speech to the writers and intellectuals: “Within the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, nothing.” This subjugation of men and women’s destinies to the government was also shared by the Nazis who subordinated them to a race and the Communists in Russia and China who demanded complete loyalty to the Communist Party.

The immediate effect of these policies was the dehumanization of the human race.  Men and women were no longer free — the government controlled by Democrats became their god. 

A nation cannot survive if its moral foundations are rejected. If the voters cannot exercise their right to vote based on their own perception of right and wrong and instead are forced to vote for what Democratic politicians demand of them and the propaganda spread by the fake-news media outlets, they can vote themselves out of democracy and their own freedoms in no time at all. 

The only way that unity can be restored in the United States and the democracy preserved is for Americans to place God in a prominent place in their lives and in their government.  The other way leads to the enslavement of our Nation.

The main reason for my parents deciding to emigrate to the United States was when the Communist Cuban authorities passed an edict requiring parents to send their children to public schools — with prison time authorized for noncompliance. 

The government authorities had closed all private and religious schools with the goal of having a monopoly on the molding of the children’s minds with a Marxist ideology.  To them, there could not be any challenges from any deities to the supremacy of the Cuban Communist Party.

This edict ran counter to my parents’ moral and religious values, and they did not vacillate in their decision to fight back by deciding that it was time to make the United States their home.

According to the Bible (Gen. 1:28), in the beginning of the world creation, He blessed Adam and Eve and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  Before getting married, I was foolish enough to tell my future wife that I did not want to have any children after getting married.  I did not think that I had the training to be a good father – as if there ever was a training manual for such a purpose!  The priest who married us (Father Yiyo Maderal) offered me one those “come to Jesus moments” by reminding me of the Biblical obligations for marriage and gave me an ultimatum: no children = no Catholic marriage.  Given my religious upbringing, I complied.

But with procreation comes another requirement: the main responsibility for the education of the children falls on the parents – not on the State.  This right to educate is an inalienable right that comes from the Creator.  The State can’t take it away! By trying to do so, the State behaves as a god – and no man nor woman is equipped to play such role.

Parents may delegate the right to educate their children to teachers – but the teachers can only supplement, not replace the responsibility of the parents.  With this in mind, the teachers always act on the parents’ behalf, never on the State’s behalf.  The State’s role is the improve the efficiency of the teachers to protect that Nation’s traditions and to impart knowledge objectively. To make the teachers the servants of the State, as the Communist Government officials did in Cuba, is to make them the enemies of tradition, culture, and the nuclear family.

When dealing with parents who insist on delegating the responsibility for educating their children entirely to the teachers, they are conveniently forgetting their duty to start the education process before the children’s first day in school.  And even when they are in school, they ignore the basic fact that children spend the majority of their time in a home environment. 

One of the main challenges that society faces today is that the majority of schools think that education is limited to imparting knowledge.  They fail to understand that this is only half of the equation.  Training the mind has to be supplemented with molding the character into recognizing right from wrong.  This failure has led to classrooms where misbehaved students have the upper hand, and teachers are relegated to victims.  In this environment, learning becomes impossible — as survival of the fittest becomes the modus operandi.  Failure to respect authority figures in school makes them ill-equipped to deal later in life with law-enforcement figures.

The progressives, those in the woke crowd, have preached that crime is the result of ignorance, and that by increasing school budgets to dispel ignorance via education, we could abolish crime.   This falls into another one of those delusional ideas from this gang. 

With all the massive funds that local, state, and federal agencies spend on education, crime remains a problem in the United States.  According to the 2021 World Prison Population List, the U.S. had the highest prisoner rate in the world, with 639 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population.  Moreover, there were more than 2M prisoners in the U.S. in 2021. 

Never before in the history of mankind has there been so much information available in different social-media portals.  Never before in the history has there been so much ignorance of right and wrong.  Never before has there been so much scientific information available.  Never before has science been used for the destruction of human life!

One of the conclusions that one can draw from this challenge is that reason without a moral compass can serve both good and evil purposes. 

The schools and teachers cannot bear the blame for this malfunction of the education process.  Parents bear the bulk of the blame.

More nurseries, better playgrounds, healthier diets, improved baby formulas lessen the effect but not the root cause of this challenge. Make no mistake about it, behind every delinquent child, there is always a delinquent parent. 

Parents have to choose about the wisdom of having two incomes in their households or spend more quality time educating their children – especially during their formative years.  Delegating this task to others will generate a void that will be filled by unscrupulous teachers or by undesirable members of society.  A few extra dollars earned now could turn into super expensive bills later in rehabilitation centers for treating children who, by not recognizing right from wrong, took the road that turned them into enemies of society!

The choice is yours, parents and country: educate properly now or suffer the consequences later!

The United States is suffering a grave illness lately – not one caused by COVID-19.  It is a self-made virus that entails our reliance on the opinions of the elites. 

These elites are the ones who refuse to accept absolute standards of right and wrong.  To them, good and evil becomes an exercise in relativism.  God and religions are related to myths and fantasies and replaced by scientific knowledge.

Therefore, the hope for the survival of Western civilization lies with the masses, with average Americans who can differentiate good from evil, fair from unfair, and secular from the godly.

If the prophet Isaiah were alive today, he would say: “Woe to those that call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20).

Something is wrong when university professors are more interested in inciting their students to obliterate the traditions and history of our country than in teaching them the good, the bad, and the ugly of our ancestors in an objective manner. 

I’ve had my share of experiences with these elites, and I was not impressed by them or their logic. 

They were the ones who denied me promotions to the Senior Executive Service because they thought that my speaking the English language with a slight accent translated into my thinking with the same accent. 

They are the same ones who told Asian Americans that they spoke English so well after finding out that they were U.S. born.  The comment shows there was an expectation of the way someone spoke based on how that person looked!

They were the ones who selected applicants for directors of civil rights offices with law degrees over those with no law degrees but with tons of real- life experience in civil rights.

They were the ones who asked me whether I had returned to visit Communist Cuba upon finding out that I was Cuban American without stopping to think why my family had left Cuba as political refugees.

They are the ones who think that a graduate from any Ivy League university is better qualified than a graduate from less prestigious universities.

They are the ones who think that if you are a Hispanic or an African American who managed to graduate from any Ivy League university, you did so because of an affirmative action program.

These elites have played their foolish delusional games for so long that another minority group wants to join their private club.  The Students for Fair Admissions has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) alleging the unfair admission practices against Asian Americans by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (a public Ivy school), and which the SCOTUS will hear in 2023.  Asian Americans in this lawsuit think that an Ivy League degree offers them the golden keys to enter the pantheon of America’s power brokers.

Nothing is further from the truth.  The elites are not the ones who will keep the United States safe for democracy. They are not the ones who will Take America Back from the socialist polices of today’s Democrats.

Almighty God has always chosen simple people to carry out his plans and prophesies.  And there is a reason for this.  The simple people have much better judgment about complex matters than the elites with all their fancy titles.

He picked a humble young Jewish woman to bring his Son to redeem the world. 

At least seven of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen.

And what about when Jesus went back to Jerusalem during the Feast of the Tabernacles and preached at the temple.  The Jews who heard him were amazed at his erudition and asked: “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” (John 7:15).

Similarly, the Virgin Mary did not select the elites to carry her messages.  She picked three shepherds children near the town of Fatima, Portugal in 1917 and a 14 year-old daughter of a miller from the town of Lourdes, France in 1853.

The judgements made by the masses are superior because they base them on the moral teachings of the Bible rather than in Einstein’s theory of relativity or Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Even worse, they rely at times on their own pseudo-science – like they claim that Math is racist because it’s a “white thing.” They know wrong when they see it, and there is no scientific theory that could masquerade evil.

It is precisely the “it depends” ideology to assess evil that shows its unreliability.  Because the elites refuse to engage in absolutes, they treat some dictators as pariahs and others as partners.  For example, it doesn’t make any sense for the U.S. Government to criticize former Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista and former dictator of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza and engage as partners current dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Communist China’s Xi Jinping. 

To the masses, dictators should be treated as the world’s pariahs.  To the elites, there is a difference between right-wing dictators and left-wing dictators – the latter being much better than the former. 

To the masses, evil is real.  It’s in our hearts – not just in dictatorships.  And they recognize that the only way to vanquish the evil forces in the world is by turning towards our Creator, God. 

It is useless, as the elites preach, to find redemption in the secular world because its laws are man-made and no man is infallible.

In the secular world, there is never peace and stability.  In it, the capitalist is at war with the proletariat, the proletariat with the capitalist, the rich with the poor, the poor with the rich, the Whites with the minorities, the minorities with the White, the disabled with the able-bodied, the able-bodied with the disabled, the Republicans with the Democrats, and the Democrats with the Republicans. 

It is the fear of God that emanates wisdom, and love of your fellow men and women that replaces fear. It is only by turning to God that the human race will find peace and stability.

But when pointing our sights to God, we must start the process of atonement by fearing justice for our injustices and consequences for our moral depravities.  We must repent for our sins.

Sometimes, wars are a consequence of our sins.  The Old Testament has several passages describing multiple invasions of Israel because of the sin of idolatry.  The killing of the unborn is a heinous crime that goes against God’s plans.  No human can play God and remain unpunished.

Finally, by recognizing the evil in the world, we are more adept at valuing the goodness in it. 

To save our nation from the forces of evil, we must rely more on the wisdom of the masses and less on the ignorance of the elites!  

When I look at the crisis emanating from illegal aliens trying to cross our southern border, I wonder whether the Biden-Harris Administration is guilty of sheer incompetence or of having a hidden agenda.   

The number of illegal encounters handled by border security agents has reached over 2 million since Biden reached the Oval Office, and the seizure of deadly fentanyl has increased by 134 percent from FY 2020 to FY 2021.  These disasters were triggered partly by stopping the construction of the wall that President Trump had authorized, and that had proved so successful in stemming the flow of these caravans.   

You would think that Biden would uphold the oath of office to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But he’s done the complete opposite and, thus, placed Americans at great risks.   

Rather than beefing up the regulations to send back illegals quickly to their countries of origin, deportations have fallen by 68% from FY 2020 to FY 2021.  Moreover, Biden and his team have refused to test illegals for COVID-19 at the southern border, while approving strict test requirements for Americans.  He embraces an “Illegals First/Americans Last” policy.  

Naming Kamala Harris as border czar to handle the border crisis has been a disaster – which accounts for her dismal 37.1% approval rating as of July 15, 2022 (even worse than Biden’s 39% approval rating).  

So, what gives?  

To answer this question, I’ll do a quick review of Marxist theories – which are much in vogue with progressive Democrats and “Woke” Americans.  

When Karl Marx developed his Marxist vision of the world, he saw a battle between the rich, the bourgeoise, and the poor.  But looked from the perspective of the early 20th century, his vision was not catching on.  Other than in Russia, capitalism was stronger than ever in most advanced nations.  

This is when Italian Marxist Philosopher Antonio Gramsci updated Marx’s theories by introducing the “cultural Marxism” principles that divided the world between the oppressor and the culturally oppressed.   

The Left in the United States embraced Gramsci’s theory of victimhood and pointed their guns at “white males.”  Hegel and Marx’s political slogan of “workers of the world unite!” was transformed into “victims of the world, unite!”  

While the Left in the United States is concentrating its efforts in our country, this is a worldwide movement to bring down the Western, Judeo-Christian civilization.   

So, to answer the question at the beginning of this article, I’ve decided to turn our attention to statistics – and not just any statistics, but those compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.  

Considering that the Left considers “white males” as the “Great Satans” of American society, I wanted to find out how many of these were in the U.S. population.  Since I could only find the aggregate number of “whites” in the U.S. population in the Census statistics, I turned to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Annual Report on the Federal Workforce for Fiscal Year 2019” — the latest available. The catch is that I had to use Civilian Labor Force data rather than data from the U.S. Population.   

Following is what I found.  

Males: 51.86%           Females: 48.14% 

White Males: 38.33%           White Females: 34.03% 

Non-White Males: 13.53%   Non-White Females: 14.11% 

Non-white males and non-white females needed to fill a 10.69% gap to equal the white-male percentage in the Civilian Labor Force.  Representation in the labor force can be equated with power that can be wielded to make the white males into the victims of society – considering that the Left opines that most vote for Republicans whom they view as the party that favors the oppressors rather than minorities and women.   

They conveniently ignore the fact that it was a Republican President (Lincoln) who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and another one, President George H. W. Bush, who signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act.  

So where are the Democrats going to get 10.69% voters that they need?  

The first thought that comes to mind is from Hispanics – who already make up 18.9% of the U.S. population and represent the largest minority group.  But according to a Quinnipiac University poll released in June 2022, only 24% of Hispanics support the job that Biden is doing.   

Hispanics who came to the U.S. as political refugees from communist regimes like the Cuban-Americans and those who came as legal immigrants do so to get a job to support their families, to make a better life for themselves than the ones that they left behind.  Their values are conservative.  They venerate the nuclear family and their Catholic upbringing.  They come to the United States to build it up; not to tear it down.  And they are firm believers in capitalism, freedom, and democracy.  The majority of these Hispanics vote for Republicans and take umbrage when Democrats like Jill Biden demeans their identities by calling them “tacos.”   

And regarding improving the lot of Hispanics, Biden has relied on symbols rather than on deliverables.  For example, he has a bust of Hispanic civil rights and labor rights leader Cesar Chavez in the Oval Office.  But Biden ignores the fact that Chavez was an ardent critic of illegal immigration because of the damage that it did to the wages and jobs of union workers in the U.S. Biden may fool those who are unfamiliar with the story of this iconic Hispanic leader, but Hispanics know the real deal! If he were alive, rather than chanting “Si Se Puede!” or “Yes We Can!” — Chavez would be chanting “No Se Debe!” or “No We Shouldn’t” to illegal immigration.

Out of desperation, Democrats have to come up with a Plan B.  And it entails turning a blind eye to illegals crossing our southern border and enacting laws to grant them U.S. citizenship in the near future.  But even if they succeeded, they ignore the fact that after they become U.S. citizens, Hispanics would recognize that illegals trigger high unemployment and lower wages in the labor market.  These Hispanics would eventually vote for Republicans after they got the most from the Democrats.  

Democrats would next turn their attention to white women.  They will peddle abortion as a bait to get them on board.  But let’s get real! How many of these white women do you think are going to vote for a party that insists on turning their white-male husbands into the enemy of society? Moreover, how many white women do you think are going to vote for a party that wants to indoctrinate their children with the nefarious “critical race theory” curriculum that makes all white people into oppressors?  

Look no further than the election of Glenn Youngkin to the governorship of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2021 as a Republican.  He ran against a Democratic incumbent, Terry McAuliffe, who brought the power team of the Democratic Party to campaign for him – Obama, Kamala, Stacey Abrams, Joe and Jill Biden.  And he still fell short! 

And to disprove the false narrative that Republicans are insensitive to the needs of minorities and women, Governor Youngkin brought along a Lieutenant Governor and an Attorney General who made history in Virginia – Winsome Sears as the firm woman of color to serve in a statewide office and Jason Miyares as the first Cuban-American to serve as attorney general.  

Similarly, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis selected Jeanette M. Nuñez as Florida’s First Cuban-American lieutenant governor in 2018.   

And to move forward to 2022, who can forget the election of Republican Mayra Flores to the House seat for Texas’ 34th Congressional District.  She made history as the first Mexican-born woman elected to the U.S. Congress.  

Minorities are finding out that Republicans don’t just preach the civil-rights gospel.  They embrace it by bringing them into an American Big Tent that welcomes them!”  

While there is plenty of incompetence in the way that Biden and Kamala are handling the crisis at the southern border, it is obvious that they have a hidden agenda by embracing open-border policies.  But just like this hidden agenda failed to deliver the goods for them in Virginia, it is bound to fail again in 2022 and 2024.

No es raro que las personas que llegan a los Estados Unidos de diferentes países pasen por un doloroso proceso de aculturación.  El tiempo que toma se basa en las experiencias individuales y, por supuesto, en el tipo de personalidad de cada uno: lleva más tiempo para los introvertidos.  Teniendo en cuenta que viví este proceso, lo describiré desde mi propio origen cubano. 

Llegué al área de Washington, DC en 1966 con grandes expectativas, pero lo que encontré fue totalmente diferente.  Había dejado un país comunista donde todas las necesidades básicas estaban racionadas.  Esperaba que los estadounidenses se vistieran a la moda y defendieran la libertad en todo el mundo.  En cambio, tuve que interactuar con jóvenes que se enorgullecían de su ropa andrajosa y falta de higiene, y que participaron en manifestaciones masivas contra la guerra de Vietnam, una confrontación contra un régimen comunista.  Teniendo en cuenta que mi familia tomó la difícil decisión de abandonar su país y huir de un régimen comunista, mis instintos me convirtieron en un firme partidario de las fuerzas que luchaban por la libertad y la democracia en Vietnam.

Mi primera cita con una chica estadounidense me dejó totalmente desencantado.  Mientras que yo creía que las parejas debían permanecer juntas cuando tenían citas, ella no creía que hubiera nada de malo en fraternizar con otros hombres en la pista de baile.  Para ella, el príncipe azul ideal era aquel que medía más de seis pies.  En consecuencia, el hispano promedio no cumpliría con sus calificaciones mínimas y no avanzaría a la etapa de entrevista para logra una segunda oportunidad.  Encontré extraño que las apariencias importaran más que la sustancia, y ahora entiendo la razón de la alta tasa de divorcios. 

Además, mientras hacía un esfuerzo monumental por aprender el idioma inglés, mis amigos se burlaban de mi acento.  Considerando que la mayoría de los estadounidenses no tenían problema en aceptar un acento británico o francés, llegué a la conclusión de que su animosidad estaba reservada para el acento hispano porque muchos lo asociaban con el tercer mundo.  El resultado final de todo este trauma fue congregarme con los cubanos y abrazar la cultura cubana más de lo que lo había hecho cuando vivía en Cuba. 

Pero congregarse con los cubanoamericanos solo provocó un duro despertar.  La mayoría de este grupo había salido de Cuba cinco o seis años antes que yo.  Sus habilidades en inglés eran mejores y la mayoría había tratado de asimilarse completamente a la cultura estadounidense.  En lugar de acercarse a mí como uno de los suyos, menospreciaron mis habilidades lingüísticas y los patrones de comportamiento cubanos.  Aún más pernicioso y dañino para mi estado emocional fue la degradación del valor de mi familia porque no coincidía con las carteras financieras de sus familias en ese momento.  No importa que fuera imposible subir la escalera promocional de la América corporativa en tan poco tiempo.  Mi desencanto con este grupo llegó a su punto máximo cuando no me invitaron a una fiesta patrocinada por una organización católica porque sus organizadores pertenecían a la ola de cubanoamericanos de 1960/61.  Me sorprendió que las decisiones se tomaran sobre la membresía del clan y las fechas de salida, en lugar de la fe religiosa, la amistad o la mera autoestima de uno.  También aprendí una lección importante que se me había escapado por completo cuando vivía en Cuba: que una de las razones por las que la Revolución de Castro llegó al poder fue por las tontas y sin sentido distinciones de clase que se basaron principalmente en el nepotismo y que impidieron el establecimiento de una meritocracia.  Para construir las bases de una Cuba mejor tendríamos que dar cabida a los ideales de tolerancia, empatía, mérito e igualdad de oportunidades para todos.  Llegué a la conclusión de que la mayoría en este grupo no estaba lista para abrazar mis ideales para una Cuba inclusiva en el futuro. 

Mirando el comportamiento anormal de algunos cubanoamericanos desde el punto de vista de hoy, puedo entenderlos mejor.  Sin darse cuenta de que ser bicultural y bilingüe eran atributos positivos en el mercado laboral, la mayoría optó por borrar cualquier rastro de la herencia cubana que habían heredado de su patria o de sus familias.  Después de invertir cinco o seis años en esta trayectoria, se negaron a darle una oportunidad a los refugiados cubanos recién llegados.  Para ellos, estos cubanos eran parte del pasado que habían reprimido.  Muchos de estos cubanoamericanos se convirtieron en seguidores en lugar de líderes en sus últimos años, en detrimento de sus carreras.  Estos son los mismos hispanos engreídos que alcanzan los niveles más altos en la jerarquía federal y niegan asistencia a otros hispanos que están tratando de lograr el mismo hito.  Su respuesta típica es: “Lo hice por mi cuenta, tú deberías hacer lo mismo”. 

Y, sin embargo, otra posible explicación del comportamiento aberrante de este grupo de cubanoamericanos era que esperaban que yo me convirtiera en un duplicado exacto de ellos y que parara de quejarme. Naturalmente, esto mostró una enorme falta de empatía, ya que era imposible para un recién llegado dominar el idioma inglés en tan poco tiempo o abrazar una cultura tan diferente.  La ayuda que necesitaba era que ellos bajaran a mi nivel, a los sentimientos de desesperanza que estaba sintiendo en ese momento, y que me animaran a encontrar formas de como alcanzar el sueño americano. 

Pronto aprendí que había un mundo más diverso afuera.  Conocí bolivianos, ecuatorianos, puertorriqueños, mexicanos, argentinos, etc. Todos compartiamos nuestra herencia hispana y nuestro idioma español.  Estuve expuesto a diferentes bailes, una multitud de expresiones idiomáticas y comida fantástica.  Para mi gran sorpresa, algunos de mis amigos hispanos no compartían mis mismos puntos de vista anticomunistas.  De hecho, algunos pensaron que Fidel, El Che y Ho Chi Minh eran visionarios que habían mejorado las condiciones de vida de los proletarios de sus países.  Algunos incluso usaban camisetas del Che como una declaración de moda o como una señal de protesta contra el “Imperio Estadounidense”.  Me di cuenta de que era hora de expandir mi red de amigos y seguir adelante. 

Si bien mi inglés había mejorado significativamente, todavía tenía un largo camino por recorrer.  Me acerqué a personas nacidas en el extranjero porque me di cuenta de que también estaban experimentando las mismas dificultades en este país.  Esto creó un gran vínculo de comprensión entre nosotros, pero amplió la división con los estadounidenses.  Celebramos y honramos las diferencias culturales de los demás: cuanto más étnicas, mejor.  Esta luna de miel duró mucho tiempo, hasta que me di cuenta de que había diferencias cruciales entre nosotros.  Por ejemplo, todo el concepto de matrimonios arreglados de antemano me resultaba incomprensible.  Descubrir que los musulmanes no comían lechón ni consumían bebidas alcohólicas me hizo darme cuenta de lo incómodos que se sentirían con la cocina cubana o las veladas cubanas, donde celebrar con Cuba Libres hechos con auténtico Ron Bacardí cubano-americano y con lechón asado, arroz y frijoles negros eran la norma. 

Y es precisamente en este momento cuando sentí una experiencia religiosa al darme cuenta del poder que ejercían el grupo mayoritario de la población. Para lograr mis metas y aspiraciones en la escuela, el trabajo y la política, tenía que acercarme a la cultura dominante.  Siendo mayoría, controlaban las estructuras de poder en el país.  Si quería salir adelante, tenía que bailar mambo con ellos. 

Además, ocurrió un cambio importante en mi vida.  Mi hijo Stephen nació en Fairfax, Virginia, y me di cuenta de que pasaría el resto de mi vida en los Estados Unidos.  Si alguna vez volviera a vivir en una Cuba Libre, tendría que pasar por el mismo doloroso proceso de aculturación que pasé cuando llegué a los Estados Unidos.  Yo no estaba dispuesto a hacerlo, lo que me dejaba con la única opción de vacacionar en una Habana que volviera a ser libre. 

Abracé la cultura estadounidense, manteniendo mis raíces cubanas.  Me di cuenta del valor de formar coaliciones para efectuar el cambio.  La única forma de evitar una tiranía de la mayoría era actuando a través de coaliciones.  Me convertí en miembro de coaliciones hispano/afroamericanas e hispano/caucásicas (blancas).  Los problemas que merecían soluciones se volvieron más importantes que el estatus de ser minoría.  Si bien todavía hablo con un ligero acento, predico que no pienso con uno.  Les digo a los reclutadores que es más importante en una meritocracia observar las habilidades de los solicitantes que sus acentos.  Tomando en cuenta que los Estados Unidos opera en una economía global, ser bilingüe y bicultural son activos muy buscados. 

De la misma manera, me siento más seguro de mí mismo y soy capaz de reconocer que hay gente buena y gente mala en cada grupo.  Ahora depende de mí ser más selectivo con aquellos con quienes quiero asociarme. 

Compartir ideologías similares, valores, normas culturales judeocristianas son las fuerzas impulsoras que utilizo cuando selecciono amigos.  Por ejemplo, estaría traicionando mis ideales de democracia si apoyara organizaciones marxistas como Black Lives Matter — después de que Patrisse Cullors, una de sus fundadoras, reconoció abiertamente que ella y sus compañeros organizadores eran “marxistas capacitados”.  Estoy en contra de todo lo que huela a socialismo, comunismo y marxismo.  Prefiero apoyar “Black Beans Matter” – para mostrar mi solidaridad con el CEO de Goya Foods, Robert Unanue – después de que la izquierda radical llamara por un boicot a su empresa debido a su apoyo público al Presidente Trump.  De manera similar, mi fuerte creencia en la ley y el orden y Blue Lives Matter me llevó a estar en contra de ANTIFA, una organización terrorista que abraza la anarquía. 

Y, sin embargo, si bien reconozco que soy un híbrido de dos culturas, la cubana y la estadounidense, y soy mejor persona por eso, tengo que ser fiel a mí mismo y reconocer que he sobrevivido a esta trayectoria debido a mi fundamento moral de mi juventud.  Cuando yo vivía de niño en La Habana, fueron mis padres, mis abuelos, mi niñera, mis instructores religiosos y sacerdotes, mis maestros de escuela privada quienes me enseñaron a vivir una vida virtuosa.  Fueron ellos quienes me inculcaron la importancia de los valores fundamentales y el desarrollo del carácter. 

Cuando mis padres temían por sus vidas después de que los comunistas tomaron el poder en 1959, nos mantuvimos unidos como una sola familia.  Todo lo que nos rodeaba dejó de ser importante excepto el uno al otro.  Cuando salimos de Cuba sin nada más que la ropa que llevábamos puesta, enfrentamos la adversidad con valentía porque no había nadie que nos cubriera las espaldas.  Aprendí el idioma inglés por inmersión completa.  No había programas de inglés como segundo idioma en ese entonces, solo un diccionario de español-inglés y quemar el aceite de medianoche.  Cuando mis padres necesitaron que mi hermana y yo los ayudáramos a traducir documentos del inglés al español, los ayudamos con mucho gusto.  Toda nuestra existencia giraba en torno a nuestra familia. 

Cuando se trataba de ganarme la vida, comencé a trabajar poco después de llegar al área metropolitana de Washington, DC.  Yo era repartidor de periódicos, lavaplatos, mesero, burócrata del gobierno.  Ningún trabajo, siempre que fuera honesto, era demasiado degradante para mí.  Pagué mi propio automóvil y las matrículas universitarias y de escuela de posgrado, y, cuando la vida se volvió demasiado difícil de soportar, fue mi familia inmediata quien me brindó esa empatía adicional y la fuerza para continuar. 

Lo logré, y todos los inmigrantes “legales” y refugiados políticos en este país tienen las mismas oportunidades de forjarse un futuro mejor.  Estoy agradecido por todas las bendiciones que este país me ha brindado, y uso mi pluma prolíficamente para decirles a otros que no hay otro país en el mundo que brinde mejores oportunidades para lograr sus sueños. 

Y, sin embargo, me preocupa lo desconectados que están la mayoría de nuestros jóvenes hoy en día por conocer la historia de su país.  Están más apegados a los aparatos electrónicos que llevan consigo que a lo que hace grande a su país: una ciudad brillante sobre una colina.  Me pregunto sobre su voluntad de luchar para preservar lo que tienen, cuando no tienen idea de los sacrificios que sus antepasados ​​hicieron por ellos.  Me preocupo cuando me doy cuenta de que la mayoría de nuestras escuelas, colegios y universidades se han transformado en campos de adoctrinamiento antiestadounidense. 

Y cuando miro el estado disfuncional de la estructura familiar, entiendo por qué hay tanta violencia últimamente.  Cuando veo la gran cantidad de familias sin una figura paterna, me doy cuenta de por qué tantos de nuestros hijos tienen problemas para interactuar con las fuerzas del orden.  Y vuelvo a desear que hubiera más madres y padres que enseñaran a sus hijos cómo la supervivencia de la familia nuclear es la mejor manera de mantener a Estados Unidos grande. 

A lo largo de mi viaje de aculturación, he aprendido a abrazar la filosofía expuesta por una de las figuras principales del movimiento literario español conocido como la Generación del 98: Antonio Machado.

Él dijo célebremente “Caminante, tus pasos son el camino, y nada más. Caminante, no hay camino, el camino se hace al caminar, al caminar se hace el camino, y al mirar atrás se ve el camino que nunca se recorrerá de nuevo. Caminante, no hay camino, sólo estelas sobre el mar.”

Si bien el proceso de aculturación ha sido traumático, soy un mejor ciudadano de mi país adoptivo y un mejor ciudadano del mundo.

British statesman Sir Winston Churchill once declared that “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” 

I agree with that capitalism, unlike any other economic system in the world, has lifted billions of people out of poverty and provided much hope to the downtrodden.   

But I’m also familiar with Vladimir Lenin’s quotation that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Who’s right and who’s wrong?

They are both right!

Unfettered capitalism in the twenty-first century remains a threat to the nationalist sentiments of all nations – even for those socialist countries that have embraced an out-of-wedlock affair with capitalist forces.

What has changed the status quo for capitalism is the rise of the People’s Republic of China on the world stage. The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping has not been shy about announcing his goal of world domination. But this has not acted as a deterrent to U.S. businesses that are more concerned with tapping a 1.4 billion consumer market than protecting the well-being of their own country.  It is time that U.S. politicians stop fooling themselves with calling China our competitor in the global market.  China is the enemy and has to be treated as such!

U.S. politicians, presidents, and businessmen attempted to justify their economic engagement with China by arguing that China would thrive by exposing itself to the market economies of the world, which would generate a powerful middle class and a civil society that would bring about democracy.  All of these men and women proved to be wrong by drinking the tranquilizing drug of deluding themselves.

Communist governments throughout history have put in place effective propaganda bureaus to masquerade the atrocities they carry out. They paint a false picture to the world community of having a workers’ paradise where the government takes cares of all its citizens according to their needs. This image is destroyed immediately when you ask the following question: if communist countries were such heaven, why are so many citizens from these countries anxious to emigrate to Western countries? Ah, now they realize the big lie! Moreover, all you have to do to get a grip on the lies is to see what these communist countries call themselves: People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (for North Korea), German Democratic Republic (for the former East Germany), and Republic of Cuba. All of these countries are not republics by any stretch of the imagination, and their people are certainly not in charge of their destinies! The Communist Party in these nations reigns supreme over their people!

Under all communist regimes – whether in China, Russia, North Korea, or Cuba – the Communist Party is omnipotent.  It follows that citizens serve as raw material for the survival of the state government, and all religions and their gods are banned.  Therefore, communism aims to eliminate all class distinctions by making almost all of its citizens poor – except the elites who are the members of the communist parties. 

The lack of concern for human life was evident when the Chinese authorities rolled out its tanks in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and massacred at least 10,000 people – mainly students who were calling for democracy, free speech, and a free press in China. 

And the human rights violations have not subsided in China.  2020 was an appalling year for China that revealed massive crackdowns on dissent in Hong Kong and Tibet, repression of Muslim Uighurs, and attempts to cover up the COVID-19 outbreak.

After all the war crimes that Putin has committed against the Ukrainian people and that the world audiences have watched on TV and social media platforms, the United Nations General Assembly voted on April 7, 2022, to suspend Russia from its membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council. Among the countries who voted against this resolution were China, Cuba, and Iran — all countries with similar human-rights violations.

During the first week of April of 2022, Shanghai – a city with approximately 26 million people – has reported more than 20,000 COVID cases every day.  The immediate and harsh response by members of the Chinese Communist Party has been to impose a strict lockdown of the city, and all residents have been ordered to stay at home.  Considering the lack of supplies, residents of the city have been looting emergency supply centers due to shortages of food and drinks.  There are videos available where Shanghai residents can be heard screaming from their apartments.  Once again, the Chinese officials are more concerned with containment of the virus than supplying the basic necessities to its citizens. Do you think that these Chinese officials treat the citizens from other countries better than its own? I don’t think so!

While China has a socialist market economy, make no mistake about it – the Communist Party rules supreme.  While the Chinese government authorities do allow a handful of billionaires, these “selected few” cannot forget who’s their daddy. This became quite obvious to Jack Ma – a Chinese billionaire and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate.  After he gave a speech in 2020 in Shanghai where he criticized Chinese regulators for stifling innovation, the valuation of his companies declined by nearly 50%, and he was forced to sell South China Morning Post (a Hong Kong-based daily).  As punishment, Chinese regulators issued a $2.8 billion fine on Alibaba for abusing its “dominant market position.” Ma has been seen in public only twice since October 2020 – fueling speculation as to his whereabouts.  Obviously, Ma got too big for his britches, and the Chinese Communist Party members lowered the hammer on him.

After reaping record profits, most U.S. businesses have decided to manufacture almost everything in China because the labor cost is much lower.  This was not the brightest ideas as evinced by the supply-chain breakdowns triggered by the COVID-19 virus. An economic model that relied on multiple suppliers, perhaps more expensive, would have worked better.  It’s time to bring the manufacturing capacity back to the U.S.

Everyone remembers the stress felt by most Americans during the COVID epidemic when 90% of pharmaceutical products — including antibiotics — were made in China.  An article in Xinhua, one of the mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party, suggested that China could have imposed pharmaceutical export controls — which would have caused a spike of COVID cases and deaths in the U.S.  If Americans were oblivious to the danger that China represented to the survival of the United States, this should have provided a wake-up call.

Tech giant Microsoft announced the withdrawal of its LinkedIn social media service in 2021 from China — that previously included a social feed and the ability to share posts and articles.  LinkedIn had launched its operation in China in 2014, which at one point reached 54 million users. But the Chinese government started pursuing recently a policy of pushing tech firms out of the news business.  This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the communist practice of always controlling the message disseminated to its citizens.  In China, there can only be one fake-news media outlet – one controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Many of us view what happened to LinkedIn as poetic justice for their past delusions.  To ingratiate itself with Chinese government officials in the past, LinkedIn employees censored posts and accounts that they thought might have offended Beijing.  For example, my LinkedIn account – with over 7,000 followers – was permanently cancelled because I referred to the COVID-19 as the “Chinese” virus.  I would have gladly switched the designation to the “Chinese Communist Party” virus – if I had been given a prior warning.

I want to be clear that when discussing the top enemy of the United States, I’m referring to the members of the Chinese Communist Party, its General Secretary Xi Jinping, and all the Chinese people who support them. I have nothing against those Chinese people who are against the oppression that the Chinese Communist Party subjects them to on a daily basis. They are the victims, and I express my total solidarity with them.

The top leaders of BlackRock – the biggest asset management company in the world – required American businesses to focus not just on the bottom line, but also on environmental and social concerns.  But when it came to China, Larry Fink (BlackRock’s CEO) did not want to alienate the Chinese officials.  In a recent interview, Fink said the following: “I would qualify the Chinese leadership as one of the best leadership teams in the world.” Obviously, Fink was sending a hidden message to Chinese officials not to expect any criticism on human rights or social issues from him.  Profits came ahead of repression.

All Americans must recognize and treat China as an adversary.  China has launched a campaign of economic espionage and infiltration of American institutions. It has undertaken a rapid buildup of nuclear and conventional forces that pose a threat to Taiwan.  And it maintains a disinformation machine that seeks aims to undermine the U.S. all over the world – like its willingness to shift the blame for the spread of the COVID-19 virus to a U.S. military laboratory.  This flies in the face of Chinese officials not allowing American scientists to visit the central Chinese city of Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus. If there was nothing to hide, why did the Chinese government officials behave in this way?!!!

So, what’s America to do?

U.S. consumers must purchase “made in the U.S.” products rather than those with the “made in China” label – even when the U.S. products have a higher price tag.  It is not only the patriotic duty for Americans, but we all know the challenges faced when purchasing products with the lowest price tags.

The U.S. Government must bolster alliances in Asia – as this is a fertile region for countries that fear China’s encroachment on their sovereignty – especially countries like the Philippines and Vietnam that have sparred in the past with China over contested claims in the South China Sea. 

Rather than taking a reactive posture, the U.S. Government should approve massive arms sales to Taiwan.  And these arm sales must be carried NOW — not when China has launched an invasion of this island. China has not hidden its plans to bring Taiwan to its fold.  A lot more lives could have been saved if the U.S. had sold more military hardware to Ukraine before “war criminal” Putin launched his invasion.

The U.S. Government should hit China with sanctions for its human rights abuses and trade practices. 

The U.S. Government must continue to demand the World Trade Organization to switch the “developing country” designation of China with a “developed country” one.  China is a “developed country,” and it should not receive the special and differential treatment on trade that are reserved for “developing countries.”

Most importantly, the U.S. Government must demand reparations from China for the COVID-19 outbreak.  As of March 31, 2022, there were 80,019,128 confirmed cases of COVID in the U.S., and 978,648 deaths.  Keep mind that we have lost more Americans due to COVID than the approximately 58,220 military casualties in the Vietnam War.

The U.S. Government must complete building of The Wall and require Chinese President Xi Jinping from exporting fentanyl across the Southern border. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 107,000 Americans died as a result of drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in November 2021, and 66% of overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl. China manufactures fentanyl, while banks and the Mexican drug cartels get rich by selling these synthetic opioids at the expense of Americans. These deaths are meaningless to members of the Chinese Communist Party who consider communist ideology supreme over the sanctity of human life.

U.S. consumers must punish with their pocketbooks those U.S. companies and sport teams and athletes who overlook the unfair trade policies and human rights abuses of the Chinese authorities. 

The U.S. Government must enforce evenly across party lines the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) – which requires Americans acting on behalf of foreign governments or entities to register and describe their work to the U.S. Department of Justice. Over the span of fourteen months, the CEFC China Energy paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden. Neither of them had registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as required by FARA. Americans expect U.S. Attorney General Garland to name a special counsel to investigate this matter.

The U.S. Government must ban lobbying on behalf of Chinese military and intelligence-linked companies.  Far too many former U.S. politicians and ambassadors are making a fortune by lobbying the Washington powerbrokers on behalf of Chinese companies.  This must stop!

Similarly, ban Chinese military- and intelligence-linked companies from trading in American stock exchanges.

Put a stop to research by American universities, investors, and corporations with Chinese military and intelligence projects. According to the College Foreign Gift and Contract Report database indicates that China awarded $120 million in contracts to U.S. universities in 2021 – something that most American parents are unaware of.  Make no mistake about it – China enters into these agreements to spread its propaganda and to keep an eye on its dissenters.

Media outlets need to ask questions about links to China when interviewing Wall Street heads and Silicon Valley giants rather than holding adoring interviews with them and ignoring their past anti-American and pro-China statements.

Engagement with China should be replaced with a reciprocity policy.  If the Washington Times newspaper is banned in China, the Chinese Communist Party should be prohibited from owning newspapers in the U.S.  If Amazon is restricted in the Chinese markets, Alibaba should also be restricted in the U.S. If U.S. universities, nonprofits, and religious organizations are closely monitored in China, Confucius Institutes and Chinese Student and Scholars Associations must be closely monitored or banned in the U.S.

Elect U.S. congressmen(women) who would enact or support legislation to stop China from buying U.S. farmlands.

Never allow Communist China Party members to dictate to U.S. politicians whether they can visit Taiwan or not.

In conclusion, bullies consistently demand the unequal application of rules.  Bullies are well aware that others back down in the face of aggression, so they capitalize on these fears to their advantage. The worst mistake that one can make when facing a bully is to reach an unhealthy compromise to prevent a confrontation.  The only way to stop bullies and get their attention is to stand up to them. 

The time is now to remove the wool over our eyes and treat China as the enemy!