Of all the ludicrous aspects of the Cold War, among the most ridiculous was the notion that Cuba posed a threat to U.S. "national security." For some 30 years, the U.S. deep state (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) maintained that Cuba was a communist "dagger" pointed at America's neck and, therefore, was a grave threat to "national security."

Through it all, hardly anyone ever asked a very simple but important question: What did they mean when they said that Cuba was a threat to "national security"?

Did they mean that the Cuban army was about to invade Florida, conquer the state, move up the Eastern Seaboard, and end up forcibly taking over the reins of the federal government, thereby enabling it to control the IRS and HUD?

If so, that's absolutely ridiculous. Cuba has always been an impoverished Third World country, one with a very small military force. Even if it could have scrounged up a few transport boats to get a few dozen troops to Miami, they would have been quickly smashed by well-armed private American citizens. Anyone who really thinks that Cuba could have invaded and conquered the United States needs a serious dose of reality.

So, then what did they mean when they repeatedly told us that Cuba was a threat to "national security"?

Maybe they meant that Cuban leader Fidel Castro would export socialist ideas to the United States, where they would then infect the minds of the American people.

If so, that's ridiculous because socialism was already taking over the minds of the American people, and long before Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. That's what President Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security scheme was all about — bringing socialism to America. That was some 25 years before Castro came to power!

Let's not forget, after all, that Social Security did not originate with James Madison or Patrick Henry. It originated among German socialists near the end of the 1800s and then came to the United States in the 1930s. That's why the Social Security administration has a bust of Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, prominently displayed on its website. Bismarck introduced Social Security to Germany. He got the idea from German socialists.