The WSJ found an ingenious way to reconcile the old party line on Mandela with the new party line: http://t.co/HvuX4XJrSw Worthy of Pravda.
— billmon (@billmon1) December 6, 2013
Imagine being young in the 1980s and supporting apartheid. Those people still run most of the conservative movement.
— alex pareene (@pareene) December 6, 2013
… To quote Jimmy Breslin (again), Class tells when there is no class.
Via commentor TS, Sagar Jethani, in PolicyMic :
[RINOs!] That CSpan clip is a nasty flashback — an old actor churning out a pudding of every rightwing cliche and scare story, cloaked with the thinnest skin of Reasonable Realpolitik. Reminds me of why the current GOP has such a hardon for the old thespian; he wouldn’t convince anyone with a historical memory going back further than last month, but he mouthed all those lies so earnestly. Like the Teabagger Wizard of Oz — a snakeoil salesman to the end. He inspired adulation in a limited (in every sense) circle, but he’ll only be remembered by future generations for the damage he did. Unlike Mandela…Ronald Reagan was angry. It was October 1986, and his veto against the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act had just been overridden — and by a Republican-controlled Senate, at that…
Conservatives believed the U.S. had no business hectoring the South African government over apartheid. Senator Jesse Helms (R–N.C.), the Senate’s leading race-baiter, took the Senate floor to filibuster on behalf of the apartheid government of South Africa. Helms was an old pro at using the filibuster: he had launched a similar one three years earlier against establishing a national holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. He was joined by like-minded conservatives including noted segregationist Strom Thurmond (R–S.C.) and future presidential hopeful Phil Gramm (R–Texas) in voting against the bill’s final passage. Over in the House, Representative Dick Cheney (R–Wyo.) joined the minority in opposing the Anti-Apartheid Act. In earlier battles over South Africa, Cheney had denounced Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and argued against his release…
Reagan took his case directly to the people on a live TV broadcast. He echoed Crocker in urging Americans to be patient with South Africa’s apartheid government. Reagan argued that sanctions would disproportionately hurt black South Africans without significantly undermining apartheid, and blamed black extremists for contributing to the violence. Change, if it were to come at all, would happen incrementally. He believed he had sold his case effectively, and considered the matter closed…
Under considerable pressure, Republican moderates rallied. Thirty-seven (37) out of 53 Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over Reagan’s veto. Conservatives fumed, but they were powerless to stop the law from passing. It was the first time in the 20th century that a presidential veto on a foreign policy issue had been overturned…
.
Spaghetti Lee
Those are some big names on the pro-Apartheid side. And they never really did pay any political price for openly praising a fascist state, now did they?
Petorado
Assholes then is assholes now.
Omnes Omnibus
Pareene’s tweet sums up the modern conservative movement. That is who they are. The people at Dartmouth who trashed the shantytown. They are the people who now lead the right.
Joseph Nobles
Slight aside: I now have a trump card whenever a RWNJ starts knocking Obama for teleprompters. And even then, Reagan calls the country “South America” right at the beginning. Jeez Louise.
scav
They really are clinging to the stage after their lines have been cut and dragging bright bright lights to spotlight their twisted souls. And the fact there is still an audience for these fetid clowns is shameful.
James E. Powell
@Spaghetti Lee:
No, they did not pay a price. On the contrary, it brought them to power. They’ve been running the country, with some limited interruptions, for more than 40 years. They will probably control all three branches of the federal government after the 2016 elections. Ain’t that America?
Chris
Once again, it’s really funny how they’re incapable of applying this same logic to Iraq, Iran or North Korea, or the crowning jewel of our sanctions policy, Cuba (over fifty fucking years of sanction and STILL there’s a Castro in Havana).
Petorado
@James E. Powell: It’s not what G. Washington, Th. Jefferson, nor J.C. Mellencamp intended
John
@Chris: And WRONG! Sanctions and the divestment movement ultimately led to the end of the Apartheid regime and enfranchisement of the black population of South Africa. Repubs have been wrong, demonstrably, over and over and over, on every subject. Their foreign policy has led to blowback in the form of the worst terrorist attack on US soil, their economic policy has led to recession, and their domestic policy has led to a plague of mass murders by gun. It’s stunning that they can be so wrong all the time and still manage to poll as well as they do. The power of racism in America is daunting.
Spaghetti Lee
@James E. Powell:
If the GOP couldn’t pull it off against an incumbent with a bad economy, why should I think they’ll do against a fresh face with a better one?
Suffern ACE
@Spaghetti Lee: never underestimate the power of moderately liberal Democrats who aren’t hurt by republican policies to decide that we need to go a new direction.
Villago Delenda Est
Noisemax, naturally, is following the lead of the WSJ in doublethinking away every last bit of “conservative” real time conventional wisdom on Mandela and not mentioning at all how they would have characterized him 30 years ago.
They are shameless, they are intellectual frauds, they are fascists. Period. End of discussion.
Epicurus
I am shocked, SHOCKED to learn that Richard Bruce Cheney is a bigoted asshole. Why this turd is not currently languishing in a jail cell is an unending mystery; he is the most shameless figure in our country’s history.* And yes, most of Reagan’s appeal as his “honesty.” Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.
*No, I haven’t forgotten Kissinger. Cheney has a larger body count and is a demonstrable traitor.
Villago Delenda Est
@Petorado:
It’s really reather amazing how unchanging they are.
To fall so far, and to learn nothing from it…that’s what “conservatives” are all about.
gene108
As pertinent to 2016 are the number of Republican foreign policy “wonks”, who will be advising would be Republican Presidential nominees, that were 100% in support and/or helped mastermind the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Plenty of the smaller cockroaches, from 10 years ago, will latch onto would be Republican nominees, because that’s all the Republicans have. People won’t know their names as readily as Rice, Bolton, Wolfowitz, et al, but they were just as deep into the bullshit that landed us in invading Iraq.
It’s amazing what a functioning media not hijacked by right-wing billionaires could do to move the American people to put pressure on their Congresscritters to do the right thing.
Unfortunately right-wingers realized this was a problem to implementing their agenda, especially after Robert Bork did not get confirmed, and became hell bent on hijacking the media narrative, which they have done.
@Chris:
I think the situation about sanctions or engagement isn’t as black-and-white as all that. When Clinton engaged North Korea, North Korea but their nuclear program on hold. Bush & Co. mocked Clinton’s engagement strategy, went towards trying to further isolate North Korea and labeled North Korea as part of the “Axis of Evil”. By 2006, North Korea had not only restarted their nuclear program, but detonated a nuclear device.*
From what I’ve read, international sanctions brought Iran to the bargaining table, with regards to making sure their nuclear program does not lead to nuclear bombs. The key to this is knowing when to take the foot off the “sanctions peddle” and engage, which the Obama Administration seems to have done with Iran.
As far as Cuba goes, Fidel Castro** is still alive and until he dies, there’s nothing we are going to do about dealing with Cuba like we do any other nation because some small corner of this country still wants to fight the Cold War somewhere.
*Funny right-wing talking point about the Iran deal that was just cut. Right-wingers were saying it doesn’t matter if Iran was not enriching weapons grade uranium, because Iran would just go to North Korea to get weapon’s grade uranium and no one in the media pointed out that the reason North Korea has nukes is the utter failure of Bush & Co foreign policy.
**Fidel seized power during the Eisenhower Administration or in other words before our current President was born, but we still cannot – for whatever reason – move beyond wanting to depose Fidel.
Baud
@gene108:
My prediction for 2014 is that Castro will die and Obama will start opening up our Cuba policy. Only caveat is that it may go into 2015 because of the midterms.
amk
@John:
Excellent summation.
Ben Cisco
Mr. Mandela passed in his 90s sound of mind, while Reagan, Helms, and Thatcher – not so much. Sometimes, the Prophets are just.
linda
@Ben Cisco: OTOH, Cheney is still chugging along with a borrowed heart. Sometimes, even Scratch is reluctant to harvest his own.
Schlemizel
@linda:
My guess would be he asked himself if wasn’t already bad enough & decided it was so darth cheney will have to wait. As for me, I hope both he and boy blunder live to a very old age, one in which the rest of the world returns to its senses and finally publicly call for their humiliation and condemnation, one in which there is no respite from being the target of the hate they themselves generated.
FOr those of you who have read “Shogun” it would be similar to the warlord who was promised he would die an old man with his feet firmly on the ground.
qwerty42
Weigel makes some of the same points. Interesting read.
Frankensteinbeck
Back then, a whole lot of Republicans were willing to buck the pressure from the top to make a small move towards racial harmony. That turned around real hard, real fast when a black man stopped being a sidekick worthy of pity and compassion and became their boss instead.
Elizabelle
BBC TV is covering Mandela’s death and meaning. Extended comments by Desmond Tutu, who said many in SA were wondering, now that our father is gone, what will happen to us?
Also interview with a SA journalist. Growing up during Mandela’s incarceration, her mother kept a picture of Mandela in their house, even though it was illegal to do so. Every dinnertime she reminded her children of why Mandela was jailed.
In recent years, journalist has been asking children what they know about Mandela. One young boy told her he must have done something very wrong, because only bad people are jailed.
Elizabelle
Props to the WaPost. Here’s text of Mandela’s speech from his 1964 Rivonia trial.
You can listen to it as well.
Elizabelle
Cool resource. From U Missouri- Kansas City Law School, a faculty project website devoted to famous trials of history.
Famous Trials: The Nelson Mandela (Rivonia) Trial, 1963-64
includes link to his speech, I am Prepared to Die, in full. (WaPost’s was excerpts) Was opening statement of defense portion of trial.
C.V. Danes
Imagine being young in the 1880s and supporting Jim Crow. Those people are still adulated by those who now run the conservative movement.
And Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Phil Gramm, while not moderates, would be considered centrists by today’s standards.
Southern Beale
I’m sorry but who the fuck goes jogging in Beghazi? This story just doesn’t smell right to me.
WereBear
Which has the germ of why they kick and scream so much. If a conservative is characterized by their dislike of change and love of power, the last half-century or so has compressed what used to take hundreds of years into a few decades as they lived through it.
Sure, they are making people miserable now. But to them, their fall has been swift and from a tremendous height.
MomSense
Ok they are spinning this big time on Morning Ho. You have to judge Reagan’s policy in the cold war context.
They never ever admit to being wrong about anything.
WereBear
If they did, where would it stop?
And once you have admitted you are wrong, you can’t keep doing the wrong thing!
And there’s every single one of them, in a very small nutshell.
Carlos Danger
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for posting that link. The moral weight behind his arguments is obvious, but setting that aside a second. I was marveling also at how organized was the mind that put that speech together. Great piece of oratory/speech-writing.
evodevo
@Southern Beale: A CHRISTIAN PASTOR jogging in Benghazi at that…. There is no cure for stupid.
scav
@MomSense: Well, clearly, we have to evaluate their beating of their wives in the context of how angry they were at her and their selling of their children into slavery in light of how badly they needed cash for the vacation. It’s all a question of context.
Elizabelle
@Carlos Danger:
Glad you liked it.
Here’s Glenn Frankel, WPost foreign correspondent, on the scene in courtroom as Mandela delivered his statement.
WaPost: Frankel is The Post’s former southern Africa bureau chief. This article is adapted from his book, “Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa.”
Elizabelle
@evodevo:
Seemed to me the problem was the chemistry teacher had a set path and routine for his jog. In Benghazi.
Very sad he was killed jogging. Not like a bunch of Americans weren’t killed at various pastimes yesterday, on our home soil. Who knows how many by gunshot? Doesn’t even make the national news here, unless particularly egregious or a celeb involved, even marginally.
Ben Cisco
@linda: That’s b/c he hates competition.
lou
Then you have people like this lovely person tweeting about Mandela’s death (sorry, I don’t know how to do a screen cap):
AlexandraLenin Swann @AlexandralSwann 14h
Mandela is dead. Sympathy for his family but let’s not deify one who condoned terrorism
Reply Retweet Favorite More from Wandsworth, London
Baud
@MomSense:
So judged, it was still wrong.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Pravada? heck that Wallstreet editorial is worth of The Onion for it’s absurdity.
debbie
I cannot stand people minimizing Mandela’s achievements. I still remember being outraged when Steve Biko “killed himself” by hurling himself headfirst into a cinder block wall in his jail cell. My guess is that conservatives still think he brought that on himself.
gene108
@MomSense:
In short, Reagan would support the vilest of actions, so long as those who perpetrated such terrible acts opposed the spread of communism.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, I am a bit disturbed, and worried, that our bloghost has not chimed in on this.
Steve got his fingers?
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Might they have FYWP issues?
Villago Delenda Est
@lou:
Let me give that some context.
“von Stauffenberg is dead. Sympathy for his family, but let’s not deify one who condoned and participated in attempted assassination and a coup d’etat in his country during wartime.”
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not too surprised. Wasn’t he on the wrong side of history during most of this time?
Keith G
I subscribe to the Audible version of The New York Times. That means I just had David Brooks column on suicide read to me. The violence I feel inspired to commit would not be upon me. I know he gets deserve it crap for his political musings, but never have I come across such a horribly thought out piece of shit.
I have no idea how a person can be so wrong.
Chyron HR
@Villago Delenda Est:
Aw, John Cole’s just maintaining a policy of “constructive engagement” with a certain virulently racist friend of his who sometimes posts here.
Elizabelle
@Keith G:
The only good thing about a NYTimes Bobo column is the readers comments.
Which I guess may not be on Audible.
It’s depressing enough to contemplate Brooks is back from “book leave” or whatever he was on.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Epicurus: *
Kissinger was at lest was able to do the occasional positive thing like China. No one has ever accused Cheny of that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
Look on the bright side.
A David Brooks book is an ideal supply of emergency toilet paper, fish wrap, or bird cage liner.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie:
Didn’t Pinochet officially die from self-inflicted automatic weapons fire to the back?
Elizabelle
@Keith G:
To cleanse David “Humility” Brooks’ words from your ears:
Paul Krugman today, Obama Gets Real:
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
And it’s flammable!
Mr Stagger Lee
I just Googled Havel and Mandela, the Dallas Morning News on Dec 19 2011, called Vaclav Havel the Nelson Mandela of Eastern Europe.
Mr Stagger Lee
I just Googled Havel and Mandela, the Dallas Morning News on Dec 19 2011, called Vaclav Havel the Nelson Mandela of Eastern Europe.
Mr Stagger Lee
I just Googled Havel and Mandela, the Dallas Morning News on Dec 19 2011, called Vaclav Havel the Nelson Mandela of Eastern Europe.
Mr Stagger Lee
I just Googled Havel and Mandela, the Dallas Morning News on Dec 19 2011, called Vaclav Havel the Nelson Mandela of Eastern Europe.
Mr Stagger Lee
I just Googled Havel and Mandela, the Dallas Morning News on Dec 19 2011, called Vaclav Havel the Nelson Mandela of Eastern Europe.
BGK
CNBC was on the gym’s locker room teevee this morning. The “Squawk Box” idiots were blathering about Mandela’s death. Best part was when they had Richard Branson on the phone. The Lady TeeVee Mouth (h/t Stephen Colbert) asked Branson if Mandela ever talked to him about his (Mandela’s) “conversion” from Marxism to “free market principles. ”
Branson’s long pause said more than a thousand words.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mr Stagger Lee:
FYWP liked that comment a great deal!
Baud
@BGK:
Mandela’s speech on credit default swaps will bring you to tears.
Lector Peregrinus
@Villago Delenda Est:
No, that was Allende – supposedly with a gold-plated machine gun that Fidel Castro had given him. Pinochet would be the person who led Chile after Allende’s convenient suicide under siege.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGK:
“I cannot believe that I just got asked a question so monumentally stupid. Oh, wait…this is US mass media. I should have expected a question so monumentally stupid.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Lector Peregrinus:
You’re right. It’s Pinochet who NEEDED to die of self-inflicted automatic weapons fire to the back.
My bad.
Lector Peregrinus
@Villago Delenda Est:
In college I once made the mistake of sitting next to a guy who said “I love Pinochet.” The guy was rather cut, so I didn’t feel like starting a fight, but . . . well, “Christ what an asshole” fits.
lol
Have any dudebros argued that Snowden is a modern day Nelson Mandela?
Baud
@lol:
Are you referring to the twitter war over Greenwald’s tweet?
Jeremy
@Frankensteinbeck: Well the republican party of today is not the same one 30 years ago. Today’s republican party doesn’t have any moderates or Rockefeller republicans willing to work across the aisle and run an effective government.
Elizabelle
@BGK:
“These people might make good food animals, if Virgin Galactic runs into any supply chain problems. Wonder how much load space they would displace. … Twofer; removes them from the media interface, and it’s just possible they’re nutritious. Think I’ll invite them on a contingency basis.”
Elizabelle
@Lector Peregrinus:
I wish you’d said, “Yes, and his escape from the belly of the whale was most exciting. What did you think of Jiminy Cricket?”
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Sanctions are tricky policy. Some times they help propel change as in South Africa and some times they crush the 99% as in Iraq causing 500,000 childhood deaths. I’m not sure Reagan’s concern about the cblack workers was genuine but it could have been part of the motivation.
Of course TransAfrica in this country was calling for boycotts and was in close communication with the black majority leadership in South Africa so I would defer to them.
MomSense
I watched about 5 minutes of the Reagan video and remembered why I couldn’t stand him then. I still do not see what people found so appealing about him. To me he seemed phony, arrogant, simplistic, and chauvinistic. I don’t think I was wrong in my assessment. So many of the problems we are dealing with even now can be traced right back to his doorstep.
The cold war was used as a justification for supporting some truly evil actions- ironic since it was done in the name of our existential battle with the “evil empire”. And I am certainly not defending the USSR as they were also engaging in some vile and despicable actions. The whole thing was insanity.
I was thinking about those of us who grew up at the tail end of the cold war. We were too far removed from WWII to really “buy in” to the premise behind it and we saw the consequences of Vietnam and didn’t find the “Domino Theory” to be adequate justification. So for many of us we saw the horror of Apartheid juxtaposed with the dignity of Mandela and it became a sort of “coming of age” moment. We participated in divestment organizing and realized there was power in our collective action. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Berlin Wall came down at the same time that Mandela was finally released. He represented and proved the lie that was the foundation for the cold war.
I should edit to clarify that Mandela wasn’t a lie–he seemed like the most truthful, authentic world leader at the time. He proved the lie that the cold war was in any way noble or just. It was fucking insanity–old white men willing to destroy the earth and every living thing on it to prove which economic and political theories were superior.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
I love that resource — they have the whole Oscar Wilde set of trials too. I used it this semester.
debbie
Glenn Beck’s very busy differentiating Obama from Mandela. Mandela brought his nation together, Obama’s torn this nation apart. Not a peep about his and his kind’s contributions to the divisiveness.
Cervantes
@Lector Peregrinus: Note also that it happened on 9/11. Of 1973, that is.
Cervantes
@Epicurus: No, I haven’t forgotten Kissinger. Cheney has a larger body count and is a demonstrable traitor.
How do you figure their respective body counts?
Also re Kissinger’s claim to traitorhood, see his role in the sabotaging of the 1968 Paris peace talks (thus prolonging the war in Vietnam).
Kay
They’re not going to be able to stop him from running in 2016. He actually got a lot of votes in the 2012 primary. He was competitive in this state. I will miss Michele Bachmann, though, who may actually be under indictment by then.
Cervantes
@gene108: Fidel seized power during the Eisenhower Administration
Sure — but just to clarify: he (or rather, M-26-7) “seized power” from an illegal US-backed military dictatorship after his effort to remove said dictatorship through constitutional means was rejected by the courts.
Cervantes
@gene108: Fidel seized power during the Eisenhower Administration
Sure — but just to clarify: he (or rather, M-26-7) “seized power” from an illegal US-backed military dictatorship after his effort to remove said dictatorship through constitutional means was rejected by the courts.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E. Powell: Nice pessimism. I don’t buy a bit of it.
Chris
@gene108:
I realize it’s more complex – heck, I’m wrapping up a 25-pager on Iran sanctions that’s cost me three nights of decent sleep this week :D I was just pointing out how ludicrous Reagan & co’s argument was in light of how much they love sanctions in every other context.
Also an addendum to your point on Iran, since that’s what I’m currently binging on – yes, as far as I can tell, international sanctions brought Iran to the table. Key word there: international. America has sanctions in place on Iran going all the way back to the revolution (and which have been escalating since that time), and for most of that time there was zero impact. Something changed in the mid-2000s that brought the rest of the international community (Europe, Russia, China) on board, led to a bunch of UN resolutions and the internationalization of the embargo. And, voila – just a few years later you have Iran accepting the Turkish/Brazilian deal that would’ve relieved them of most of their enriched uranium, and now apparently bowing to the UN in exchange for relief.
Amazing what multilateralism can do for you…
KXB
Compare Mandela to the men he modeled himself after. Gandhi saw his dreams of an independent India break apart with partition and the riots that followed. King’s assassination set off riots which scared white voters into fleeing cities, and the effects of that abandonment are still visible in parts of cities such as Chicago and Detroit.
Mandela not only was released from prison and elected president, he kept his promise that it would be an inclusive democracy. He set up a Truth & Reconciliation commission that is considered the gold standard when it comes to reviewing human rights violations of governments against their own people. The fear that the new government would seize private businesses never came to pass. When his term was up, he step aside – unlike so many other African leaders (Mugabe).
While president, he was quick to adjust his policies based on changing conditions. Israel was a good friend to the apartheid government, extending to nuclear cooperation between the two. But, upon becoming President, Israel tried to shift tack, and rather than walk away, Mandela threaded the needle. He did say that Palestinians deserved their own country, but that Israel also deserved recognition from its Arab neighbors.
Since I am not a religious man, I do not care for the trend to elevate to sainthood flesh & blood men like Mandela. I think he makes a fascinating man. For any student of politics, you can spend a lifetime studying his tactics, and still not cover everything.
Cervantes
@Chris:
Even funnier is the fact that only in the South African case did credible representatives of the populace ask repeatedly that sanctions be applied.
Chris
@MomSense:
Okay. Let me judge Reagan’s policy “in a Cold War context.” Where everything we did was For The Greater Good, because sure, the Apartheid regime is bad, but we have to support it because if it falls, then you get communism, and that’s even worse…
It is now 2013.
The Apartheid regime fell 20 years ago, give or take.
The people who have been running the country since are the same dangerous left wingers that they warned us would turn the country communist.
So when, exactly, might I expect to see South Africa go communist? You know, the thing we were supposedly all trying to stop that would inevitably happen if Apartheid ended and the ANC “terrorists” took over?
And what, exactly, were we fighting to stop when we supported the Apartheid crowd over the ANC?
geg6
My first really significant political actions (I’d worked for some local candidates only at that point) were in advocating disinvestment in South Africa during my college years in the early to mid-80s. Pitt, at that time, had a pretty active anti-apartheid movement going and we had an ongoing protest in a “shanty town” we staged for several academic terms on the William Pitt Union lawn against the University’s SA investments. I think the University finally divested a couple of years after I graduated.
Chris
@MomSense:
To me the sickening part is the amount of times “communism” was used as a bogeyman to demonize what were actually pretty basic advocates of liberal democracy.
I mean, where was the “communist threat” in Mohammed Mossadegh, a democratically elected leader with no beef against the United States, that justified replacing him with the Shah? What about Arbenz in Guatemala? Lumumba in Zaire? Allende in Chile? All democratic governments overthrown and replaced with military dictatorship or worse?
And conversely, how many regimes did we defend against “communism” that turned out to be… well… not that? Like I said earlier, the Apartheid regime in South Africa fell just like they’d been warning about – what came next? Not communism – just democracy. Ditto Nicaragua after the end of Somoza.
MomSense
@Chris:
And why the frick didn’t capitalism and democracy prevent the atrocities of apartheid in the first place??
Chris
@debbie:
If De Klerk had declared that his number one goal was to keep Mandela out of the presidency instead of embracing him, I suspect South Africa would also have been “torn apart.” (And naturally, they would’ve blamed Mandela for that).
geg6
@KXB:
Most especially in Mandela’s case because he, himself, never invoked religion in any of his speeches. He was, by all appearances, not at all a religious person. If he was, he kept it very well hidden.
Elizabelle
@Chris:
Proving the point that Republicans can only act like thugs and scum because the U.S. is rich enough (now) to survive such tactics.
For how long, is the question.
Elizabelle
@geg6:
Mandela seemed someone who could find happiness in the here and now. Who saw the wisdom of action in the here and now, even if change took a long time coming.
schrodinger's cat
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schrodinger's cat
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schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: For a long time, I don’t see a competitor to US military or economic might, not in the near future.
mds
@Kay:
“And have I mentioned what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is?”
–Charlie Pierce
Mike G
@Ben Cisco:
The brain atrophies when it isn’t exercised. Reagan, Thatcher et al were proponents of a cynical, simpleton ideology designed to con the greedy and lazy-minded, so they weren’t taxing their brain power much.
Ruckus
@John:
Spot on.
Ruckus
@linda:
Darth is not sound of mind. Never has been.
BruinKid
Gawker had a nice compilation of what prominent Republicans used to say about Mandela. (Though as some in the comments to that article pointed out, JFK and Carter didn’t exactly help Mandela out either.)
And most know about what Dick Cheney said about Mandela, and how he voted to keep Mandela in jail by siding with Reagan and trying to kill the sanctions that Congress passed. So when Congress overrode Reagan’s veto to impose sanctions on South Africa, who voted along with Cheney against it? Here are the House and Senate votes. The House overrode Reagan’s veto 313-83, and then the Senate overrode it 78-21. Here are the people who voted against it who are STILL in Congress today.
Sen. Thad Cochran, R-MS
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Rep. Joe Barton, R-TX
Rep. Howard Coble, R-NC
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-KY
Hurling Dervish
@Omnes Omnibus: good memory, Omnes. Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D’Souza. So concerned over the “aesthetics” that the protest was marring their beautiful campus.
Mnemosyne
@Hurling Dervish:
I have to admit, I missed the whole college kerfuffle over divestment — my school agreed to start divesting three years before I enrolled. Just that couple of years too young.
Full of Woe
The Reagan years were early in my political consciousness so although I’ve known the right venerates him, I’ve been fuzzy on why. Then recently Rachel Maddow played a clip of Reagan giving a speech in which he addressed the Iran-contra affair. He said, “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” I nearly fell out of my chair. There is no way those two sentences should have gotten past any sentient being, but it sounded totally natural in his mouth. It was amazing.
Robert Waldmann
Oceania has always been at war with Vaclav Havel