MARINA DEL REY, CA -- Is communism physically harmful to human life? That should be the fundamental question in the Elian Gonzalez case, said the chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute.
     "A parent has no right to inflict physical harm upon his child," said Peter Schwartz. "A parent in prison has no right to demand that his child live with him in his cell. That would be a violation of the child's individual rights. But a totalitarian nation like Cuba is simply one huge jail, where every aspect of the citizen's life is under the physical control of the state."
     Sending Elian to Cuba, said Schwartz, is just as immoral as returning a black child of 1850 to the Southern plantation from which he fled -- or shipping a Jewish child back to his father in 1940's Nazi Germany.
     "The standard for deciding Elian's fate should be the principle of individual rights," Schwartz maintained. "And that principle prohibits anyone from consigning a six-year-old to a life of slavery."
 
     Ayn Rand Institute chairman of the board Peter Schwartz is available for interviews.