For my money, this guy gets it exactly right on the occasion of Fidel's retirement. As Brian Leiter says in his link, most of what Bertram says would be considered obvious enough to be uninteresting in a lot of the world.

Yes, Cuba is not a democracy, and yes, that's a bad thing. Betram and I support freedom of the press, multi-party elections and the rest.

(Not, incidentally, that the propaganda to the effect that Cuba's internal regime is equivalent to North Korea has much basis in reality--there are legal opposition groups in Cuba, and 99% of the time, the complaints are more along the lines of "I'm afraid I won't get that promotion at work if I criticize Castro" than "I'm afraid that I'll get a midnight knock and get sent off to the gulag if I criticize Castro"--but even so, it's still well short of having anything like a First Amendment, and First Amendment's are the sort of thing of which I am very fond. Similarly, they do have un-fixed multi-candidate elections on the local level, but restrictions on campaigning and using campaigns to start new political parties sap the meaningfulness of that process in obvious ways. If a Hungary-1956 or Czechoslovakia-1968 movement for democratic socialism ever arose there, I'd certainly support it.)

BUT let's live in the real world and acknowledge that the reason the mobs on 8th Street celebrate his failing health has nothing to do with a desire for democracy. These are the ruling caste of the Batista dictatorship, who got upset at the change of dictators because the new boss armed and organized a bunch of filthy proles to seize their factories and sugar plantations from them. (Oh, and abolished the segregation laws that kept the filthy darkies out of their clubs and restaurants before the revolution. Can't forget that.) These are the people who celebrated the removal of the democratically elected Aristide government in Haiti by U.S. Marines and local death squads, people who enthusiastically collaborated in the Contra's terrorist campaign against the democratically elected Sandanista government in Nicaragua in the 80s, and more recently in efforts by right-wing militarily officers and economic oligarchs to overthrow the democratically elected Chavez government in Venezuela.

On a more local scale, these are the people who demonstrate the depths of their commitment to free speech by chasing down and beating the shit out of counter-protestors at their rallies.

They, and their CIA backers, hate Cuba not because of what's wrong with it but because of what's right about it.

Bottom line, Cuba's not unique in its region because it doesn't have a free press and multi-party elections. It's unique because it redistributed the money held by aristocratic plantation-owners and mafioso to provide first world health care and education, producing some of the highest literacy and lowest infant mortality rates in the world. It's unique because it sent soldiers to lay down their lives in the fight to end apartheid in Angola and South Africa, and played a very real role in hastening the end of that vile system. It's unique because despite its strapped resources, it has one of the most doctor-to-patient ratios in the world and it sends doctors all over the world to help the people who need it most. It's unique because it's held out in defiance of the unremitting economic pressure of the most powerful super-power in world history, not to mention the very real threat from Miami-based terrorism--bombings, assassinations, hijackings--that has resulted in thousands of deaths on the island over the course of the last few decades.

And those aspects are, I think, worth celebrating.