I want to make clear at the outset that I find the Elian Gonzalez case deeply troubling. On the one hand, in determining what is in the best interest of a child I firmly believe there should be a strong presumption that the child's best interest is to be with his natural parent or parents. Instead the Attorney General seems to have substituted her own intuitive judgment, based solely on an interview by an INS official in Cuba with the father. Sending a child, or anybody else for that matter, back to Cuba is not the same as sending him to Mexico or France. The State has assumed the right to interfere in the lives of citizens, even those who do not actively oppose the Government and its practices.
Education is grounded in Marxist ideology.
The authorities utilize a wide range of social controls. State control over the lives of children in Cuba is perhaps even more pervasive than over the lives of other citizens. Maybe I am wrong about what all this means for the future of Elian Gonzales. Maybe an impartial hearing would determine that Elian's father is acting out of his own free will and that the Cuban government will leave him in peace to raise his son. But we will never know until we have such a hearing.