As our readers no doubt noticed, the Rubio - Menendez amendment intended to curb U.S. travel to Cuba (via restricting the flights that may go there) went nowhere.  And as one Cuban blogger and recent immigrant to the United States, Ernesto Morales Licea, writes at the Huffington Post via Yoani Sanchez: " . . . fortunately, when there is great nonsense there will always be great common sense to contain it. . . . "

I'm not so confident as Morales that good sense always contains the nonsense, but I am heartened to hear what Morales has to say in defense of our great democracy:

"When governments or state officials forget their limits and begin to decide what kind of religion its people should practice, or what television they should watch (in Cuba today they broadcast a nightly program called "The Best of Telesur," where they select, with tweezers, what Cubans should see even within this "friendly" channel), when the government begins to regulate, for example, where its citizens can or cannot travel, the foundations of democracy, by definition, are cracking."

Morales isn't interested in whether Rubio and Menendez's oft-repeated justifications for curtailing the rights of Americans and Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba -  to avoid enriching the Cuban government - actually hold water (they don't, he says).  He argues that what makes our democracy pure is that we protect the civil liberties of our citizenry above whatever interests might possibly (or even definitely) be served in exchange.

Moreover, Morales is not so convinced that the loudest advocates of isolating Cuba have the best intentions:

"The truth is that in the vast majority of cases, those who argue vehemently against financial aid for Cuban families, and against family visits, meet one of two conditions: (1) They have no one on the Island, or (2) They are terrible children, terrible parents, terrible siblings; and in that case their opinion means nothing to me."

I do hope readers will read the entire post here.  But if you take away nothing else, consider this admonition from a man who has lived on both sides of the line of which he writes:

"But it's important never to forget that the narrow line that separates democracy from authoritarianism is always crossed by a single first step--believing in the power to decide, for example, how often people can travel to a certain country, or who can travel there and who cannot--and it is the responsibility of those who grow up in fully free societies to never jeopardize their foundations."