This picture has been everywhere today and I’d be remiss if I didn’t post it. I mean, if RedState had been around in 1989 we would have posted an image of the Berlin Wall coming down. It is only fitting that we have an image of the first American socialist president (okay, second if you count FDR) standing in front of an sculpture of a notorious mass murderer, casual rapist, and, need I say it, hard core racist:

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”

As Senator Ted Cruz said today:

Until Obama, siding with the oppressed had always been America’s aspiration. We have done so not just out of an abiding sense of justice, but also for hard-nosed reasons of national interest. In Cuba the Castros have been the implacable enemies of the United States for more than half a century. It is in our interests to make common cause with the brave souls who oppose them.

Former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky, for example, now a leading Israeli politician and a moral voice, was in the Gulag when President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “the evil empire” in 1983. Afterward he said, “It was the brightest, most glorious day … our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration.”

This is why it is so sad, and so injurious to our future as well as Cuba’s, that Obama has chosen to legitimize the corrupt and oppressive Castro regime with his presence on the island.

The White House keeps saying that this trip will chart a new course for people-to-people relations, but all that Obama’s appeasement of the Castro dictatorship has done so far is create a channel for inside deals between large corporations and the Cuban military, which holds all the keys to the island’s economy. The effect will not be liberalization but rather the institutionalization of the Communist dictatorship as the profits from this détente will line the pockets not only of Fidel and Raul Castro, but also of Raul’s son, Alejandro Castro Espin.

Corporate cronyism, meet communist totalitarianism.

This picture is being widely mocked, and rightfully so. For instance:

RT @deppisch: There, that’s better. pic.twitter.com/oAxuRLHrY3

— streiff RS (@streiffredstate) March 21, 2016

But while we are laughing let’s not forget the blow Obama has struck against the cause of liberty and freedom today.