Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy whose mother died in an illegal attempt to enter the United States, has become the smiley-face of the New World Order. Not that Elian or his father or Fidel Castro (or, to go still lower, the Clinton administration) is to blame—far from it. This mischief is being made by conservative Republican politicians and family-values Christians.

The custody battle between Elian’s father and his mother’s family living in Florida is not about Cuba or communism, but it has everything to do with the destructive do-gooding forces that are never far beneath the surface of the American character.

This is not the complex case that cynical politicians and dishonest journalists would have you believe. It is a clear-cut case of right and wrong. By Cuban law, by Florida law, by the laws of all 50 states, and according to international agreements signed by the United States, Elian Gonzalez belongs to his next-of-kin, his father. No one else has standing in the case. No one. Not the INS, not his maternal uncle in Florida, not Senators Connie Mack and Jesse Helms, not Congressman Dan Burton. No one.

Cuban exiles and their conservative friends insist that Cuba is a living hell—an island “gulag”—that justifies any violation of law and common sense. Yes, Castro is an ugly thug, a communist who has ruined his country, but recent visitors to Cuba have not returned with stories of massive oppression and executions. Ordinary people who stay out of polities—which is most people in most places most of the time—run into few problems with the government. They are free to work hard and live on the margin.

Elian will probably not grow up to be a K-Mart shopper in Cuba, and he will not be able to afford designer jeans and Air Jordan sneakers. In fact, there is real want in Cuba, sometimes approaching famine. But the lack of food and medicine is not entirely the fault of the communist government. The American-imposed embargo on the island—an embargo that is immoral and illegal—keeps the Cuban economy on the ropes. You can’t have it both ways, arguing in favor of an embargo and then complaining that the Cubans are poor.

The other “arguments” in favor of keeping Elian in the United States are equally ludicrous. “How do we know he won’t face political reprisals?” I’ve been asked, and “How do we know his father is free to speak?” We don’t know in any custody battle if one or another claimant has been blackmailed or bullied, and any American who thinks the press is free in USA-land ought to pick up a copy of Time or subscribe to a Gannett paper. In this case, however, there is simply no evidence; even if there were, it would not alter the simple fact that no U.S. government agency has jurisdiction.

“But,” I have been told by conservative Christians, “a communist country is not a healthy place to grow up in.” Probably not, but how much pornography is on Cuban TV? That is virtually all there is to American pop culture. I don’t know what the abortion rate in Cuba is (or even if such a figure is available), but it is hard to believe it begins to approach the American level. In fact, one of the glories of American democracy is that we give our mothers the freedom to kill their babies with impunity, and—”ironically”—one of the first steps taken by post-communist countries like Rumania is to imitate the West by legalizing abortion. If Elian is forced to remain in the United States, he will live in Miami—one of the most violent and decadent parts of this violent and decadent nation. If the child’s safety is all that we are worried about, send him back. Besides—and this cannot be said too often^we the people and we the government have no standing, morally or legally.

Even Doris Meissner, the INS director, finally realized the truth in deciding not to put any obstacles in the way of Elian’s repatriation. The crude fact is that, by American law, the boy is simply an illegal alien who can either be returned to Cuba or stuck in a concentration camp.

The case is simple, but in an amazing act of judicial arrogance, Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Rosa Rodriguez issued an order delaying Elian’s repatriation on the grounds that he would face “imminent and irreparable harm.” She would have better grounds for ruling that the people of East Timor or Rwanda face irreparable harm if they are not all immediately transported to the United States. This amazing decision was only made intelligible on January 12, when it was revealed that the spokesman for Elian’s Florida relatives had worked as a paid consultant for Judge Rodriguez.

Money and ethnic ties—comparatively honorable motives—may explain Judge Rodriguez’s judicial activism. What explains Congressman Dan Burton’s decision to hold hearings, subpoena little Elian, and delay his return home? Or Jesse Helms’ offer to make Elian’s father a citizen? These two Solons, in passing the Helms-Burton act, have done almost as much to make Cubans miserable as their communist dictator. If they want to help Elian, they should end the embargo.

But neither Dan Burton nor Jesse Helms has the slightest interest in what happens to any Cuban, apart from the Cuban-Americans who give heavily to the Republican Party. At the same time they were trying to ruin the life of one Cuban family, GOP leaders were meeting in San Jose to concoct an Hispanic-based electoral strategy.

Dick Armey apparently thinks that, by offering up to $3,000 of free medical care, he and his colleagues can woo Hispanic voters. The Republicans even held focus groups with non-citizens, who apparently had a hard time understanding the plan. What poor minorities do understand very well is the fact that the Democrats will always up the ante, and when the legals and illegals vote, they are going to vote for Al Gore. Except, of course, for the Cubans, who are loyal to the party of the Cold War.

The Republican right lost its reason for living when the Berlin Wall came down, and by whipping up opposition to Castro, they hope that a little Reagan-dust will fall on their candidates. They are wrong. GOP intervention in a simple child-custody battle once again reveals the hollowness of their anti-government/pro-family rhetoric. Who would have believed that “conservatives,” of all people, would be defending the federal government’s right to take a child away from his father? The answer is simple: anyone who had looked at their voting records instead of listening to their speeches.

But this is more than a government versus the family issue. It is, as the dictator Castro has termed it, a case of Yanqui imperial arrogance. There is no spot on earth, no private business, no intimate relationship, that Americans are unwilling to interfere in.

This puritanical busybodying is the besetting American sin. Our own families are plagued by divorce and child abuse, but we think we have the right to settle custody cases for the Cubans. Our streets are nightmares of ethnic violence, but we are willing to bomb European cities in order to prevent wars between Christians and Muslims. And then we wonder why the world hates us.