Enduring Elian’s tragedy

By Jerry Falwell

Elian Gonzalez, the little boy who was brutally stripped from his home by storm troopers representing our federal government, continues to reside in seclusion with his father — under the close watch of federal monitors.

His young cousin and former kindergarten teacher arrived from Cuba earlier in the week on what Cuban dictator Fidel Castro called a mission to “save” the six-year-old boy.

Mr. Castro is now irate over the fact that schoolmates from Elian’s hometown have not yet received visas to join the boy for two weeks. In addition, he wants Cuban “medics” to take over the operation in the U.S. “The essential thing is to save the boy, both mentally and physically,” Castro told reporters on Wednesday. He wants, of course, to “save” the boy from the lessons of freedom he learned here in the U.S. Elian may already be experiencing communist-styled deprogramming.

Conservative columnist Bob Novak said it is “Castro’s clear desire” to have Cuban psychiatrists work on Elian prior to the May 8 federal court hearing to determine the boy’s fate. Novak reported that Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida had expressed dire fear that Elian would be “brainwashed on U.S. soil.”

“Two things are certain: Desirability of life in Cuba will be drummed home to him the next two weeks, and Communist psychiatrists will join in the mind-adjustment once he arrives there, if not before,” said Mr. Novak.

Thomas Sowell, writing in Jewish World Review, agreed, saying that Elian “will undergo reorientation toward the views that the Communist government wants him to express.”

The evidence suggests that Novak and Sowell are dead-on accurate in their portrayals of what appears to be in the works for this boy. Fidel Castro has said it is “not appropriate” for the Miami family to visit Elian now. Of course not — the family’s appearance would do nothing but deter the programming Elian is undoubtedly enduring.

Rush Limbaugh reported on Thursday that Elian had actually said, in recent days, that he wanted to return to his Miami relatives. No wonder we only see photos of him.

While this innocent child is being condemned to a life of communist servitude, a majority of our fellow Americans continues to stand by in inexplicable support of this debacle.

Sowell, one of our nation’s most eloquent conservatives, stated, “Painful as it is to think about Elian’s future, we need also to think of our own futures as free Americans. They say a fool and his money are soon parted. People who can be so easily fooled may well end-up parted from their freedom, when it survives only on the good luck that a sufficiently clever and ruthless demagogue has not come along — yet.”

As I watch this situation unfold, I cannot help but wonder how long we can continue to hold on to our once cherished freedoms.

Reno Justice: An Oxymoron

The highest federal court to hear the Elian Gonzalez case had bluntly rejected Attorney General Janet Reno’s arguments that the boy must be seized.

So what did Reno do? She seized him in the now-notorious Miami invasion.

The extraordinary opinion by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not only enjoined her from removing the boy from the U.S. until the scheduled hearing, it turned down her demand to have Elian directly handed over to his father.

While the court did not prohibit an abduction of Elian, Reno (under the president’s stealth supervision) terminated negotiations with the Miami family and launched the astonishing seizure of the boy.

Most reasonable observers agree that Elian, on May 8, would have appeared at the court hearing and expressed — in childlike sincerity — a desire to remain in Florida.

But the Clinton administration couldn’t have that.

“Thus, considering the Clinton administration’s overriding desire for better relations with Castro, it was necessary to seize the boy,” noted Novak.

And seize the boy they did — without a legitimate search warrant. The administration utilized boldfaced lies to obtain a late-night warrant from a federal magistrate before their pre-dawn foray.

“It is clear that the ‘search’ warrant was just a pretext to get into Lazaro Gonzalez’s house,” said Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and current constitutional law professor at Seton Hall Law School. “No legitimate federal purpose was served by the raid.”

Elian was not — as the Justice Department alleged — being “involuntarily restrained” by his Miami relatives.

“In a free society,” Mr. Napolitano stated, “the moral legitimacy of government depends on its fidelity to the truth and to established law. Mr. Clinton and Ms. Reno, after more than seven years, have shown once again that they don’t know — or don’t care — how much they weaken the fabric of our culture.”

The fabric of our culture is indeed waning before our very eyes. And nobody seems to care.

BREAKING NEWS: As I was completing a luncheon with veteran ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson — this week’s special guest on my television talk show, Listen America — I received news that Becki Falwell, wife of my son Jerry Jr., was in labor with their third child. She gave birth to a beautiful little girl — Caroline Grace. She is our eighth grandchild. I’m happy to report that mother and daughter are doing very well.

By the way, during the Listen America taping, I asked Sam Donaldson how he would have voted in the Senate trial of Bill Clinton and I think his answer might surprise you! You can visit the station log for Listen America at my

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to discover how you can view the show in your area.

Jerry Falwell

Rev. Jerry Falwell, a nationally recognized Christian minister and television show host, was the founder of Jerry Falwell Ministries and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Read more of Jerry Falwell's articles here.