“Nelson Mandela was an unrelenting voice for democracy and his ‘long walk to freedom’ showed an enduring faith in God and respect for human dignity.” ~ Republican House Speaker John Boehner
“Mandela’s patience through imprisonment and insistence on unity over vengeance in the delicate period in which he served stand as a permanent reminder to the world of the value of perseverance and the positive influence one good man or woman can have over the course of human affairs.” ~ Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
“One of Nelson Mandela’s most important legacies is how he handled injustice. He experienced great injustice in his life yet when his time came to lead, he did so with a great sense of justice, compassion, and grace for all.” ~ Republican Senator Lindsey Graham
Give me a break.
Nelson Mandela was 44 years old when the governing white minority of South Africa sent him to prison for life for being a black, community-organizing lawyer, leading the struggle to empower the black majority, securing for them the right to free and fair elections and true democracy.
He was 71 years old when international pressure and protests and economic-divestiture in the oppressive white-run government by American corporations who were being protested and boycotted by liberals in America, finally led to his release.
But if it had been left up to conservatives, he would have remained in prison for the past 25 additional years. While we liberals called for American companies to cut ties with the oppressive white minority which ran the government, Ronald Reagan put Mandela on a terrorist list and vetoed the sanctions passed by our Democrat-controlled congress. Jerry Falwell implored his supporters to write their congressmen to oppose the sanctions and INvest in the oppressive regime rather than DIvest. Pat Robertson labeled Mandela as a “communist” and a “radical.”
For conservatives, all black community organizers are communists or Kenyan socialists. Today’s outpouring of lofty condolences by Republicans for Nelson Mandela has the same motivations as their misappropriation of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. In life, they denigrate and despise the black community organizer who is fighting for justice; but, in death, they applaud and herald him – at a time when he is no longer a threat and they can use their new-found admiration of his legacy as proof that their vehement and vile denigration of a current black community organizer is not racially motivated.
I wonder, fifty years from now, will conservatives laud and applaud the legacy of President Obama, in an attempt to mask the true motivations for their vile hatred of whomever the black community organizer will be at the time?