Commies...an excerpt

I'm reading a memoir, Commies, by Ronald Radosh - yet another old Jewish lefty who became disillusioned with the left. There's one story, I just had to put in my blog:

In the 70s, Radosh and a group of lefties go to Cuba for one-month long visit, and they go visit a mental hospital:

"When we toured the arts center, I saw an obviously energetic and totally sane young man teaching patients how to paint. He seemed to know English, so I asked him how he was able to deal with those patients who were clearly mentally unbalanced. He laughed nervously and replied, "I'm a patient myself." I didn't understand. Then he said, "I'm a homosexual, and that is why I'm confined here." An artist, he passed the time by using his skills to help others in the arts and crafts unit. When we confronted the doctor during the question and answer perioid, he argued that homosexuality was a disease justifying commitment to a mental hospital.

As the tour progressed, we couldn't help but notice the obvious glazed and drugged-out expression on the faces of most of the patients. Clearly they had been given massive does of tranquilizers, but when we asked the doctor in charge about it, we heard an even more shocking answer. "We are proud," he told us, "that in our institution, we have a larger proportion of hospital inmates who have been lobotomized than any other mental hospital in the world." Lobotomy, he assured us, did wonders for their behavior and state of well-being. Indeed, he told us that a huge percentage of those incarcerated were in fact recipients of these lobotomies. We were flabbergasted, particularly a young man named Larry, a radical therapist who taught at a New Jersey college. "This stinks!" Larry screamed to our group as we got back on our bus. "Lobotomy is a horror. We must do something to stop this. It's exactly what we're working against at home." Castro loyalist Suzanne Ross glared at Larry, shot us all a contemptuous look, and said harshly, "We have to understand that there are differences between capitalist lobotomies and socialist lobotomies."

Go buy this book - it's a quick read and offers very good insights into the left.