Posted on 12/07/2013 2:16:29 PM PST by EveningStar
Yesterday I issued a heartfelt and personal statement about the passing of President Nelson Mandela. I said that his family and his country would be in my prayers and Callista’s prayers.
I was surprised by the hostility and vehemence of some of the people who reacted to me saying a kind word about a unique historic figure.
So let me say to those conservatives who don’t want to honor Nelson Mandela, what would you have done?
Mandela was faced with a vicious apartheid regime that eliminated all rights for blacks and gave them no hope for the future. This was a regime which used secret police, prisons and military force to crush all efforts at seeking freedom by blacks.
What would you have done faced with that crushing government?
What would you do here in America if you had that kind of oppression?
(Excerpt) Read more at gingrichproductions.com ...
One of our presidents, Abraham Lincoln, once said, "Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." I think the same can be said about apartheid. All these articles about Mandela all begin, "Apartheid was terrible/horrible but..." You yourself begin by saying how you were opposed to the practice and say you worked to change it, and then you proceed to describe just how great blacks had it under the white regime. Gee, free health care and free education; who wouldn't want that? Full voting rights in their made-up homelands; what could be better? Homes and jobs and the ability to work wherever the white government let them; how can you beat that? If it was such a paradise for them then my first question is what did you possibly see that needed change? And if it was such a great life then would you, yourself, be happy living under the conditions and restrictions blacks lived under when the regime ran things?
I'm no fan of Mandela. He was a communist and he was responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people through terrorist acts, and was pretty brutal to any blacks who didn't toe the line. But I can't condemn him for opposing the white regime because if I lived under those conditions, despite your attempts to pretty them up, I would have opposed them too. And I'm not sure I wouldn't resort to violence to make my change.
Some said Henry Ross Perot elected Clinton in 1992, but I never agreed. Some might say Newton Gingrich helped to nominate Romney in 2012, and think there is some evidence of that. But in either case the American people are nearly always wrong; so in Hillary’s phrase “What difference does it make?”
Maybe GWB is helping to write the Democrat scripts and is in fact himself a closeted Democrat Makes about as much sense as anything else
South Africa could have been fixed. It could have fixed itself. Instead, it and Rhodesia, fine outposts of Western Civilization, were destroyed to benefit the centuries old African savagery and to satisfy some utopian ideas of Western educated elites. It started with the French Revolution, didn’t it. The noble savages, right?
RE: “Newt Gingrich was elected to the U.S. House in 1978, served until 1995 ... served 17 years.”
Incorrect.
Newt resigned in January 1999 and served 20 years.
You, and Newt, said that blacks had no rights. You agreed with Newt that they were all “viciously” denied. It is nonsense, like I demonstrated.
I also said what was wrong, pointed out which rights they did not have, yet you choose to ignore that to keep your witch hunt alive, and now accuse me of trying to “pretty things up”. Where was I factually wrong? Did they or they not get free healthcare, education and homes? Are those not rights, or benefits? Those are the simple facts, despite your poor attempt at sarcasm.
The fact is that many blacks chose to live under apartheid, and supported the government in word and deed against the ANC, while working to bring about change, instead of fleeing to neighboring countries. Millions more chose to come to apartheid South Africa because it was better for them than their own countries. But maybe that is just because they believe that I was “prettying it up” for them too. You don’t know what it was really like, because you have never set foot there, spoken to anyone, white or black that has a contrary view, you are just judging from far away like low information liberals do.
Also:
“If it was such a paradise for them then my first question is what did you possibly see that needed change?”
Where did I say it was “paradise?” If we are just going to make up stuff, then I can do that too. I said several times that it was morally wrong, and I stand by that. I would not have been happy living like that, that is why I worked to help change it.
However, you, and others who see the opportunity to cast things in terms of the lowest denominator possible are not interested in the truth, because it will push you off of your little morally superior pedestal.
Believe what you will.
I sat through this tape, and it is well worth the time it takes to do so. Newton is a fraud, as I have believed since 1995.
I apologize for my tone and some of the words I used here. I’m emotional and passionate about the issue, and I let that get the better of me. Sorry.
Well, things were a bit more complicated than that.What prevented Africa from becoming a new, New World, was disease. If we had begun the main colonization effort of tropical Africa AFTER the development of modern medicine, which would have enabled white settlers come in large numbers to Africa—and survive and adapt themselves and their animals , to become a cultural critical mass, then Africa would be a different place. Algeria would certainly be a different place if the French and Italians and British had come a hundred years earlier and had been able to impose their culture on the natives and become numerous enough, in the case of North Africa, to prevent their dislodgement. But history is what it has been, and cannot be otherwise.
I think that's a pretty safe bet :-) Thanks again for sharing your insight and experience.
Are the blacks of South Africa any better off now than they were under Apartheid.
A few in the leadership are, the rest are starving.
I think Newt should take his wife on a shopping trip.
Awesome post. FR is at its best when we get fantastic first-hand reports and insights like yours. Thank you.
William Ayers was faced with a vicious, militaristic/murderous regime that punished fringe/independent groups and gave them no hope for the future. This was a regime which used military force to crush all efforts at seeking religious freedom by so-called 'militias'. What would you have done faced with that crushing government?... that kind of oppression?
So if Russia was to recognize the struggle Bill Ayers' wrought against the "repressive government" here, is it crazy to suggest that we might see a statue of Ayers in his passing?
I think you get my point. Means-to-an-end are easily justified if they meet certain criteria "to certain groups" in their 'struggle'.
It truly is amazing to me who are labeled murderers vs. 'freedom fighters' these days.
I'm not suggesting Mandela wasn't a force for freedom in his own right. But can I raise an obvious question?
What if Race were reversed? What if it weren't South Africa, but here in the US? Who are the 'freedom fighters'? Who are the 'murderers/oppressors'? Who decides that?
Sometimes I believe I truly have awoken to Idiocracy...
Okay, my eyes are crossing from fatigue as I use FR to stay awake until baby girl finally decides to call it a night: Was apartheid a way to keep tribes from killing each other, or in the least from causing minor skirmishes and violence?
Thank you.
It was one of the considerations, with probably selfish motives too. Certainly in the years just after WW2, it was thought that everybody would be happy in their own “country”, and the geographical separation would at least stop some tribal warfare.
I would venture it was rather an attempt to stabilize the cheap workforce for the mines, forcing the black men to work with fewer distractions, and taking the non-productive away from the big cities to lower the black population. Not a good thing..
The black townships tend to be divided along tribal or party lines too, and the moment the security forces stepped aside, the tribal conflicts, now exacerbated by the possibility of complete political and economic power, reignited, and that is where most people died in the years after 1990.
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