I’m old, but not so old that I don’t remember the fight against apartheid. I recall Ronald Reagan and the Republicans refusing to condemn the racist policies of South Africa, and how the US officially considered Mandela “a terrorist” until Clinton got into office. 
And I see where Dick Cheney still stands by that designation. Bill O’Reilly yesterday called Mandela “a Communist.”
But maybe I am being too harsh. After all, many of today’s Republicans weren’t in office back then, and we don’t know how they would have voted.
Still, I can’t help but be amused by Rick Santorum (yeah, I know, that’s a constant), who today likened the fight against Obamacare to the fight against apartheid.
Clearly! Logically! Why, the two are so identical, it’s easy to confuse them.
But even Rick can’t forgive Mandela for taking the radical view that black people and white people should live together in harmony. “Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he’s mourned today,” Santorum said. “But … what he was advocating for wasn’t necessarily the right answer.”
I suggest that Rick prove the comparison by spending 27 years in prison.
ventrellaquest.com 
There is an unfortunate segment of the American populace (predominantly in today’s Republican party, but not exclusively so) who remember that Mandela once said that he’d prefer Communism to apartheid. Under Reagan’s anti-Communist monomania, this was misread to mean that Mandela was on the wrong side of the Cold War, when the plain fact of the matter was that the Cold War meant almost nothing to someone jailed for 27 years by the apartheid regime.
On the Republican side which wasn’t so blinkered, Walter Williams wrote “South Africa’s War on Capitalism”, which showed that the apartheid regime’s tight controls required such a huge central control of the South African economy, nothing resembling a capitalist economy existed there. South Africa may have been anti-Soviet, but they were not “on our side”.
I still wish Williams’s point had penetrated Reagan’s inner circle; much suffering could have been alleviated.
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Reblogged this on Liberalism is Trust Fucked with Prudence. Conservatism is Distrust Tainted with Fear and commented:
O’Reilly Moment of Shame: “Mandela is communist” how far that can dance. Bill O’Reilly must be sacked if the Deranged Republican Preppers still hanker to smell the brick if 1600-Pennsylvania-Avenue in 2016.
If Bill O’Reilly offends you then you need an undertaker simply because you let him win. The dumbass hosted failed presidential candidate as failing as Rick Santorum alas Kochsucker Loooser to tame O’Reilly to dumbdown. Mandela was in Robin Island for 26 years reading King Lear of Shakespeare to become Goneril. He’s ain’t too stooopid to be a communist whilst Dr. Niel Barnard knelt down to fix Mandela’s clumsily tied shoes ? Bill! I was looking the other day to “Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World”FOXNEWS tops ‘em all. Now I need to pee. Here its. I will do it right here.. 1211 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10036.
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O’Reilly Moment of Shame: “Mandela is communist” how far that can dance. Bill O’Reilly must be sacked if the Deranged Republican Preppers still hanker to smell the brick if 1600-Pennsylvania-Avenue in 2016.
If Bill O’Reilly offends you then you need an undertaker simply because you let him win. The dumbass hosted failed presidential candidate as failing as Rick Santorum alas Kochsucker Loooser to tame O’Reilly to dumbdown. Mandela was in Robin Island for 26 years reading King Lear of Shakespeare to become Goneril. He’s ain’t too stooopid to be a communist whilst Dr. Niel Barnard knelt down to fix Mandela’s clumsily tied shoes ? Bill! I was looking the other day to “Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World”FOXNEWS tops ‘em all. Now I need to pee. Here its. I will do it right here.. 1211 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10036.
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As much as I hate to agree with Billy Boy on anything, he’s right. Mandela WAS a Communist. http://www.rhodesia.nl/goodcom.html
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