Dictators Are Cool...Unless You Live Under Them

As Andrew pointed out, there are--and always will be--a certain set of people who love to trumpet the purportedly egalitarian societies headed by tin-pot dictators. And then we have those who've lost family members to them. Like Mike Lowell, of the Boston Red Sox:

�My dad had to pack up his suitcase at 10 years old with his three brothers, who had nothing. And my mother was 11 years old and my grandfather, who�d been a dentist for 15 or 20 years, had to go back to school to be (politically) re-educated,� Lowell said.

�My cousins were political prisoners. My father-in-law was a political prisoner for 15 years because, at 19, they asked him if he agreed with communism and he said, �No,� so they sentenced him to death. That�s not the way to live. I know it�s terrible to say, but I think of all of that and I hope he (Castro) passes away.

�I don�t care if he dies,� Lowell said. �There are so many people who have died because of him and there�s been so much wrongdoing and so many human rights violations that I hope he does die. That sounds bad, but it�s the truth.�

(via Kathryn Jean Lopez)