¡Pinche Vida! No Es Posible

Marc Cooper laments Cuba's expulsion of 3 foreign journalists who were too nosy or too critical. Marc is one of those leftists who favors both democracy and socialism. He perorates:

For the umpteenth time I will repeat that the most effective and constructive criticism of Cuba's authoritarianism and curtailment of freedom would be that which comes from the Left not the Right. Too bad there is virtually none. We'll see if anyone except CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists] hiccups over these expulsions. I doubt it.

Cooper combox regular Bunkerbuster says "There may well be a tiny handful of fringe leftists who support the Castro regime, but no mainstream liberals do."

Immediately thereafter a (not THE) Walter Lippman rushes in to explain away Cuba's dictatorship:

Cuba is the only country on the planet where military base belonging to a hostile foreign power which is publicly committed to the overthrow of Cuba’s government and the social system which it represents continues to illegally occupy national soil. This leads Cuba to sometimes have what I like to call a paranoid political style. But it is completely understandable under the circumstances.

This rationale is familiar. The Bolshevik Revolution was met with Western intervention, and therefore millions had to die. It doesn't matter that the intervention was brief and ineffectual, and the West then saved millions of Russians from famine.

The reality is that socialism and democracy aren't compatible. In fact, there's an inverse proportion--the more socialism, the less democracy. Friedrich von Hayek will explain it all for you.

Moreover, socialists (and liberals, who in their modern incarnation are socialists lite) think they are morally superior to and smarter than other people. Obviously they are entitled to deal harshly with their benighted inferiors.

So they do, while the Marc Coopers lament their cruelty and hope that the next socialist régime will be different. Combining democracy and socialism is to create a catdog or a pushmi-pullyu.

UPDATE: If you visit Walter Lippman's website you'll see the work of a classic Western apologist for socialist dictatorship. I don't think he'd deny that. See the happy faces of the children mir-and-druzhba-ing.