Government is a kind of medicine. It exists to treat symptoms of flawed human nature — violence, fraud, theft, exploitation and so on.
Like any medicine, government ought to be prescribed according to what is needed to restore or maintain health.
Not enough, and society grows ever sicker. Too much, and we hinder normal social growth and progress and create new symptoms, including dependency.
In the 1950s, Cuba had a revolution, putting in place a new team of social physicians. The island nation's symptoms included severe inequality, poverty, illiteracy, oppression and foreign interference. The new doctors prescribed heavy injections of medicine and radical surgeries.
Last winter, I spent several weeks in Cuba. The signs of decades of government overdose were everywhere. Yet so were signs that irresistible influences of the modern world were bringing change and symptoms of withdrawal. Cuba is a nation in flux.
My visit revealed some of the ways a people and a country have responded to totalitarian government, how such a government clashes with the world of 2018 — and, by comparison, a better understanding of what ails and gives strength to my own country, the USA.
You wouldn't detect political malpractice through first impressions of the Cuban people. In none of the 15 or so countries I've explored, have I ever met such an expressive, upbeat population. Under sunny skies along narrow, cobblestone streets of the historic, southern coastal city of Trinidad, fedora-wearing Cubanos played salsa music while out-and-about locals mingled. It felt like a holiday. Nope. Just another Thursday.
In the capital, Havana, I escaped even livelier streets by moseying into a studio, whose wide-open double doors lured me with a glimpse of the artist's Picasso-like paintings hanging inside. Downtown, steps descended from a sidewalk into a club presenting perhaps the most impassioned jazz I've ever seen performed.