According to the Associated Press — a critic of free markets everywhere else — Raul Castro’s pro-freedom reforms in Cuba will “strengthen communism,” by which the AP — long close to the CIA, as the late Sen. Frank Church showed — means a government not under the thumb of the US.

Now, Raul’s reforms, while a good start, don’t begin to approach the private property and economic freedom that Cuba needs. But are we really suppose to worry if a government makes life freer and more prosperous for its people by shrinking, and therefore is disliked less? This is heroic. China did it. May Cuba — and the US — follow that path as well.