Rest in Peace, Nelson Mandela

Posted by Non_mooching_artist 10 years, 6 months ago to News
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The world has lost a true humanitarian today, sadly. Thank you for showing what true dignity looks like, to an undignified world.


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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 10 years, 6 months ago
    The man was a Marxist terrorist. His legacy is being rewritten because he mellowed with age. Even so he is the equivalent of Yasser Arafat or Che Guavara and killed as many people. FYI - he used to burn live people in a stack of tires. This man, the murdering terrorist, is the same man everyone seems willing to canonize today.

    Consider: the ends justifies the means

    Isn't that the exact mantra of all that is happening to deconstruct this country today?
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  • Posted by Lucky 10 years, 6 months ago
    Supporting and allying with Communism and Islamism are not evidence of 'true dignity'.
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    • Posted by 10 years, 6 months ago
      I don't say that I think his philosophy is something I can condone. I don't. But there are certainly those who could have abused the position he held without remorse. But he did affect a necessary change in SA. Now his family will brawl over the leavings. :-(
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      • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 6 months ago
        That's like saying Lenin affected a necessary change in Russia. Mao affected a necessary change in China. Ho Chi Minh affected a necessary change in S. Vietnam.

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      • Posted by 10 years, 6 months ago
        The abolition of apartheid. That is all.
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        • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 6 months ago
          Here's Wikipedia's description of "Apartheid"; Merriam-Webster and About.com have limited descriptions dealing mostly with the condemnation and "illegalization" of it (how an international body make a national policy "illegal" is beyond me).

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Afri...

          Now, reading that, I don't read about black people being raped, murdered, forced into paramilitary organizations, or the like.

          What I read could describe America in the 1940s and 50s. To a certain, admittedly small extent, it describes Oklahoma. We have tribal lands here in OK, divided by tribe, and true, while nobody is forced to live there (although they were, originally), there are benefits and obligations held by those who can genetically or genealogically claim membership of those tribes ("genetically" is a euphemism for "by race").

          I'm not apologizing for Apartheid; while I favor voluntary segregation (the same way John Galt favored it), I oppose forced segregation, as I oppose forced integration. But, I'm failing to see it as onerous as black slavery.

          Suppose the white South Africans pulled into their own enclaves and left the rest to determine their own fates, form their own nations? Would that have been bad? Evil? And it would be different from Galt's strike... how?

          I'm going to do Maph a favor, here. I'm going to cite a line from the Wikipedia article, because I remember something everyone else seems to have conveniently forgotten about America:

          "The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence."

          There you go, Maph. Equate that with gay marriage, loudly and repeatedly, and you'll get your federal gay marriage law.

          While he was in Europe during WWII, my father once went on a "double-date" with a fellow G.I. and two (iirc) German girls. Things progressed, and he and his girl went one way in the woods to be alone, while the other soldier and girl went another way.
          He was making out, when they heard the other girl screaming. He and the girl he was with ran to where the screaming was coming from, and found the other soldier standing over the other girl, pistol whipping her. My dad pulled the guy off, and while his date tried to calm and clean up the other girl, my dad questioned the guy about wtf set him off.

          It seems the girl had offered him oral sex... like she gave the black soldiers.

          What nobody (but me) seems to remember, is that culturally, in the U.S., as recently as the mid-20th century, it was considered as perverted to have sex outside one's race as it was to be homosexual or bestial. South Africa merely codified into law what was de-facto culturally in the U.S.

          I point this out because I've seen way too often people pointing fingers in mock outrage and condemnation at the "evils" in other people's homes, as a means of deflecting from the evils in their own. Making scapegoats of others for their own guilty consciences.
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  • Posted by Zero 10 years, 6 months ago
    The world is a complicated place.

    I give the man his due while remembering the great and serious flaws in his world view.

    But I also know if I were a black man living in South Africa under apartheid I would have been writhing in anguish and lusting for blood. A man of conscious SHOULD become a warrior in that environment. Tyranny must be resisted.

    And while shaking with rage - and ignorant of the truth so brilliantly illuminated by Mrs. Rand's genius - I might well have struck out in some morally sideways manner.

    I do not absolve Mandela of his myriad sins. A good man would not have done many of the things he did. But a man pushed beyond his reason just might.

    And as for the obvious rejoinder that he was not ignotant of her truth but dismissive of it, I can only reply that many times I have been blind to the truth upon initial presentation, especially if I already had a dog in that fight.

    The world is a complicated place.
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    • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 6 months ago
      Examine Africa under the colonials, and examine Africa since.

      I rest my case.

      You're going to get your chance to writhe in anguish and lust for blood, because Ubuntu is growing in America, and you will be becoming a slave soon... and if you happen to be white (and in particular, male), you *will* be facing abuse and persecution... thanks to white males.

      He didn't have pictures of Ayn Rand, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or other freedom-fighter on his wall; he had pictures of Lenin and Stalin. Had he had a picture of Hitler on his wall he couldn't have been more evil.

      How "pushed beyond his reason" was he as an old man, promoting slavery?
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 6 months ago
    "Mandela’s Lesson 4, “Leading from the Back.” A big question during the healthcare debate was why Barack insisted on support from Republicans. Why sacrifice important healthcare reform principles in the name of bipartisanship? Stengel wrote, “Since boyhood Mandela understood that collective leadership was about two things: the greater wisdom of the group compared to the individual, and the greater investment of the group in any result achieved by consensus.”

    Barack’s detractors would probably call that communism!" - http://www.laprogressive.com/mandelas-ub...

    "The greater wisdom of the group compared to the individual"... repeat that a few times to see how it tastes in your mouth.
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