Thus Spake Fidel Castro

There’s a beguiling quality to the style of Fidel Castro. Surely we have never known another Communist chieftain like him. Here is a leader in the Soviet Union’s “family” of nations, hailed in Moscow each May Day, who yet lashes out with equal acerbity at the Soviet Union and China, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the United States and the Communist parties of Latin America.

When charged with concealing the nature of the revolution he was planning, Castro asked in reply how he could possibly have said he was for socialism since the people whose support he was seeking were opposed to socialism. What other Communist leader could mock the Soviet assurances that they had in no way violated Czech sovereignty in August 1968, and who else could first call it a military invasion, without any legal basis whatsoever, and then defend it as wholly necessary?

The most unlikely emotion to be associated with Castro is embarrassment. He derides the 3 percent inc...