JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

Two dear friends from France are visiting in our home, and the other

night we accompanied them to Pasadena to have dinner with their niece and

her boyfriend.

He turned out to be a native Cuban whose father and grandfather had both

been high in the Batista regime that was overthrown by Fidel Castro. His

family fled, and most of his upbringing took place in the United States.

He is currently working in some rarefied computer air I don’t understand

and speaks perfect and precise English.

The table talk got around to the plight of Elian Gonzalez, and our Cuban

dinner companion -- his name is Albert -- was perplexed. He had pretty

much bought into the U.S. government’s decision to send Elian home, but

then a discussion with his mother had left Albert confused and uncertain.

On this night, he was feeling the anger coming from the emigre Cuban

population in Miami that was firmly rooted in a profound hatred of Castro

and focused on keeping Elian in this country.

Albert’s mother had described rather graphically for him what Elian’s

life would be like back in Cuba. I have no idea whether this vision is

accurate or not, but Albert thinks it is and is thus troubled.

That’s understandable. What is considerably less understandable is that

U.S. foreign policy or enforcement of its domestic laws should be

influenced by emotional demonstrations against the application of those

laws when it seems to favor the regime from which the demonstrators fled.

The flap over Elian Gonzalez brings immediately to mind the many weeks of

near riots that took place in Orange County’s Little Saigon last year

when a shopkeeper displayed a Communist flag in his store window. These

demonstrations were sometimes violent and cost a good deal of taxpayers’

money to police and contain them.

The same principal issue was involved in both the Gonzalez and Little

Saigon demonstrations: hatred of a Communist regime that had forced the

demonstrators to leave their native lands.

But even though these people see themselves rightly as political

refugees, they are now citizen-residents of the United States, where the

issues and the laws may be quite different from those in the countries

they left.

In Little Saigon, the rights of the shopkeeper were protected by the

First Amendment to our Constitution. And in the Hernandez case, most

legal experts agree that our laws quite clearly require that Elian should

be returned to his father.

But fouling the air appreciably have been our own politicians, who have

never met an anti-communist cause they don’t mine for votes.

Both of our presidential aspirants are chasing Florida’s 25 electoral

votes by suggesting special legislation to protect Elian from his own

father while our courts at each new level support the parental position.

And in Orange County, a whole bevy of local politicians encouraged the

demonstrators rather than pointing out to them that the shopkeeper --

under our laws and regardless of his motives -- could fly any flag he

chose in his own store window.

Those who were offended were perfectly free to boycott the store and

encourage others to follow suit, but not to trample on the shopkeeper’s

rights by destroying his property, attacking him or preventing others who

felt differently from patronizing his store.

This, after all, is a nation that in the interests of protecting free

speech for everyone has allowed its citizens to call President Dwight

Eisenhower a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” advocate the

killing of homosexuals on radio talk shows alleged to be religious,

insist that the Holocaust never took place, publish manuals that describe

in detail how to make terrorist bombs and fly over a state capitol the

flag of a defeated rebellion rooted in human slavery.

Now these often absurd and sometimes dangerous excesses -- and we could

add many others -- may not be of much interest to the Cuban or Vietnamese

demonstrators. But like the millions of other Americans who came here

from other countries -- often as political refugees -- to contribute so

magnificently to this one, they must learn to understand and abide by the

laws of the country in which they have chosen to live.

And it doesn’t help matters when our own politicians are aiding and

abetting the demonstrators rather than trying to enlighten them on our

ground rules.

Many of us grew up on cowboy movies, and as a nation we’ve never quite

outgrown the white hat/black hat mentality. We also still have a strong

affinity for the underdog, the James Stewart character who takes on the

establishment and prevails against insuperable odds.

It’s easy in the examples noted above to put white hats on the

demonstrators and embrace them as underdogs. But real life doesn’t play

out quite that simply. Only for politicians looking for votes and

displaced people looking for revenge.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column appears

Thursdays.