[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[Jim Noble]

Mandela's personality and the values he held are irrelevant, and, the both fall under de mortuis nil nidi bonum.

R.I.P.

HOWEVER

The OUTCOME of Mandela's activism is highly relevant to past, current, and future events. There is much to learn about the downstream effects of racial "liberation", and none of it is good.

Here, as well as there, admiration for the supposed personal characteristics of leaders blinds us to the consequences in the real world of what they propose to do.

[ek_hornbeck]

What bothers me most about Mandela hagiography is that not only the Left, but many so-called "conservatives" have bought into it.

The best that can be said about Mandela is that he didn't turn out nearly as bad as what I expected. His ex-wife Winnie wanted to follow the Mugabe model of killing and expelling all whites in South Africa, as had been done in Zimbabwe. Nelson Mandela was at least practical enough to recognize that if he did this, his country would collapse just as Zimbabwe did. So he deserves some grudging respect for that.

Otherwise, Mandela was just another neo-Marxist leading a terrorist Third World "liberation" movement responsible for thousands of murders. He and the ANC were "peacemakers" in the same way as Yasser Arafat and the PLO were peacemakers at Camp David. Yet people seem to have the sense not the elevate Yasser Arafat to secular sainthood.

[MarvinStinson]

Mandela was a commie.