With the end of Fidel Castro's nasty life Friday night, we can hope, if not reasonably expect, to have seen the last of charismatic totalitarians worshiped by political pilgrims from open societies. Experience suggests there will always be tyranny tourists in flight from what they consider the boring banality of bourgeois society and eager for the excitement of sojourns in "progressive" despotisms that they are free to admire and then leave.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who seized power in 1959, took over U.S. property on the island, embraced the Soviet Union and forced thousands of Cubans into exile, has died at the age of 90.

One of the more salutary outcomes of the recent election is that Democrats are finally beginning to question the wisdom of basing their fortunes on identity politics. Having counted on the allegiance of African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, unmarried women and the young -- and winning the popular vote all but once since 1992 -- they were seduced into believing that they could ride this "coalition of the ascendant" into permanent command of the presidency.