Before proceeding any farther down the crumbling path of national degradation and into the thickets of litigation regarding 6-year-old Elián Gonzalez, someone — perhaps one of our crack national intelligence agencies — should find out if Elián's father is a smoker. If he is, Elián will be in the land of the free and the home of the brave for a very long time.
Elián is something of a miracle worker: He has caused the Clinton administration, and particularly Janet Reno's Justice Department, to take an interest in the rule of law. That subject is something less than an obsession with this administration, judging by such matters as Chinese Communist campaign contributions, the president's perjuries, and other crimes.
The administration says that the law requires Elián to be packed off to the island prison from which he and his mother escaped, she at the cost of her life. Perhaps the law does require that. If so, Dickens was right — the law is an ass.
But suppose Elián's father is a smoker. It is inconceivable that the Clinton administration would allow the boy to be returned to a life threatened by secondhand smoke. Exposing Elián to a life of firsthand Communism does not seem to bother the administration at all. That only threatens minds, which are less important than lungs in the reckoning of the materialists in the administration.
While waiting for word on whether Elián's father does in fact light up, Elián's friends in America should inundate the Clinton White House and Reno Justice Department with "WWJD?" bracelets — What Would Jefferson Do? No need to ask, given Jefferson's starchy feelings about unalienable rights. He was so judgmental.
American courts have rendered some strong judgments limiting the rights of parents when they decide — sometimes for religious reasons — to deny their children urgently needed medical attention. Why then should American law become complicit in a parent's decision to deny a child something that is as important as medicine — liberty?
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