Who is more admirable than people under dictatorship who stick their necks out for freedom and decency? Not many, you will agree. I have taken special note, over the years, of people in Cuba who stick their necks out, and who often suffer horrible consequences for their efforts. Not a few of these people are young. For example, there is a group called Jóvenes sin Censura, or Youth without Censorship. I wrote about them once, in a piece for National Review, paying special attention to Liannis Meriño Aguilera and Luis Esteban Espinosa. (To see that piece, go here.)

Another person to know — there are so many — is Yoani Sánchez. She is a blogger, and was going to an anti-violence march with some of her fellows. This was on Friday. On their way to the march, they met with violence, at the hands of the state. Yoani and another blogger were seized and beaten, but they resisted mightily, and the goons apparently considered them more trouble than they were worth that day. They dumped them on the sidewalk. And Yoani has written about the episode here. You may well be amazed.

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Some have observed that the Obama administration is trying a very soft approach to Cuba — they have softened up, even cozied up, in multiple ways. And what are we getting for it? Any relaxation of the chokehold that the dictatorship has over the people? If there is to be a payoff — when will it come? It would be pleasant to say that “The whole world is watching,” to borrow an old line, but, unfortunately, when it comes to Cuba, this is rarely true.

Still, many are optimistic — optimistic that the regime will breathe its last. Here is what Yoani Sánchez says at the end of her blog entry, linked to above: “I managed to see . . . the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.”

In a way, I should have been the last one to be surprised, because I have written, a zillion times, that race manages to find its way into everything — into places you would think race could never fit. Nevertheless, I was a bit surprised on Monday when President Obama spoke by video to the throng at the Berlin Wall. He said, “Few would have foreseen . . . that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.” Such an odd sentiment for the occasion: for a ceremony marking the defeat of Communism, and victory in the Cold War. Obama was said to be a “post-racial” president (in addition to a “post-partisan” one). That was always too much to ask. But still . . . 

On November 3, Chancellor Merkel gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. The Obama administration was not necessarily glitteringly represented. After the speech, the office of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) issued a statement. The statement decried “President Obama’s snub today of America’s great friend and ally.” It continued, “When the President’s cabinet was announced, as is customary before addresses by foreign dignitaries to joint sessions of Congress, only two of the President’s representatives (who do not hold cabinet-level positions) were present. The President’s two representatives were National Security Advisor General James L. Jones, and the General Counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Fulton.”

Diaz-Balart had the following to say: “Sending the National Security Advisor and the General Counsel of the EPA as his only representatives . . . constituted an unfortunate, unfriendly act by the President toward a valued friend and ally of the United States. In my 17 years in Congress, I have never seen another address by a foreign head of state or government where the President’s cabinet was so notably absent.”

Okay, I bring all this up because I’m reminded of something. I’m not saying it’s super-apposite. I’m saying I’m reminded. Way back, the Reagan administration was not particularly keen on this U.N. conference or other. (Sounds like the Reagan administration, doesn’t it?) Other countries were sending their big guys: their presidents, their prime ministers, their kings, their queens. Not us: We sent the deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations. His name was Dennis C. Goodman. And he referred to himself as “the traveling insult.” I have never forgotten that phrase: “the traveling insult.”

I don’t mean to disparage anybody, but really: the general counsel for the EPA? Couldn’t they have sent, like, the ag secretary?

Many commentators have noted that, while Major Hasan tried to kill everyone in sight, his fellow citizens are doing all they can to save his life. Might that be a lesson to others in the world — Islamofascist types, for instance? Bear with me while I call up a memory. Some years ago, I was talking to an Arab American who has intimate knowledge of the Middle East. We were talking about Saudi Arabia in particular. I said, “In the West, we have a mosque on almost every corner; in Saudi Arabia, churches are forbidden. In Saudi Arabia, it is a crime to possess the Bible. The penalty for a foreigner is expulsion; the penalty for a Saudi citizen is beheading. In the West, Korans are common as newspapers. Don’t Saudis — particularly the ones who travel — notice this incongruity, and aren’t they slightly abashed for it?” My informant’s answer rather chilled me. He said, “No. They consider it perfectly natural and right.”

I would like to know what Saudi radicals — just for instance — are thinking about American efforts to save Hasan: Do they think the Americans are saps or laudable? This is a hard thing to express, but I trust you know what I’m getting at.

The headline over an Associated Press article said, “China berates Dalai Lama visit to area near Tibet.” And this is a most interesting article. The Dalai Lama is in the Indian town of Tawang, in the Himalayas. He is “holding prayer meetings and teaching sessions,” as the article says. And the government in Beijing is all in a lather. The Dalai Lama’s visit “fully reveals his essential nature of splitting the motherland, but his plot is doomed to failure,” said a Chinese spokesman. We should ponder why this unassuming monk should cause the mighty government of China — with that mammoth military — to tremble. They cannot be feeling too secure, that regime.

And all honor to India for refusing to be intimidated by the PRC. The AP article tells us, “India has responded to China’s demands to call off the trip by saying the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing Tibet, was an honored guest and free to visit any part of the country.” Free to visit any part of the country: That is something a dictatorship would have a hard time understanding.

We are all familiar with the recent chant of Iran’s democratic protesters: “Obama! Obama! Either you’re with them or you’re with us.” I thought of this when reading this article, under the heading “China protesters plead for help from Obama.” The article begins, “A group of protesters pleaded for help Tuesday from President Barack Obama before his visit to China next week, saying anyone seen as a troublemaker is often treated harshly before major events in the capital.” An activist said, “We are here because Obama is the president of a free and democratic country, he is coming to China, therefore the Chinese government will put pressure on us.”

The article also informs us, “One woman flashed a ‘V for victory’ sign at an Associated Press Television News camera and opened her black jacket to reveal a white shirt with the handwritten phrase ‘I want human rights.’ Police quickly took her away.”

Yeah, I bet.