What I saw in Cuba was not what I would call Communism, Bobert. It was more like what I would call social responsibility, community spirit, common sense, and sanity. I saw decisions being based on benefiting the common good rather than on who can secure a windfall profit out of that decision.

You can run a system on greed and selfishness. That`s the present North American system. Such systems eventually fall under the weight of their own corruption.

You can run a system on securing the common good. That`s the Cuban system.

The fact that it is supposedly Communism is beside the point. There have been numerous Communist systems that did anything BUT secure the common good, because they were run for the benefit only of a ruthless militaristic elite at the very top. That is not the case with the Cuban system. The Cuban system has a genuine sense of public responsibility built into its social institutions and applied right at the community level, and the people feel empowered by it to affect their own destiny directly through the ballot box.

That`s hardly the case here, and you can tell by the lacklustre turnout these days in Canadian and American elections.

The Cuban system IS the kind of real democracy that was envisioned a very long time ago by the original founders of the USA, in my opinion. It`s community town hall politics in action...power to the people!...unpolluted by political parties, corporate lobbyists, and the use of deliberate character assassination of one`s fellow candidates as a ladder to personal power.

What they are doing in Cuba puts our political process to shame.