What Do We Know About Nelson Mandela?

First, he was an old guy.

Second, he was from, like, South Africa.

Third, he went to prison because apartheid was bad.

Fourth—and this should have been first—he was black.

Oh, and Clint Eastwood made a movie about him and a rugby player, starring the RG’s old buddy and bottomless well Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman.

That is probably about it, right?

Me too.

Well, I know a little more because I stole a book about him once. Hey, I was a liberal back then, and that book should have been mine anyway. Because income equality.

Anyway, there has been a lot in the news about Mandela this week. And not everyone is unanimous on his legacy. The folks at The Daily Caller, without taking much of a stand of their own, drew attention to one story at BuzzFeed that seems to take issue with all of the Mandela praise.

(By the way, does Barack Obama have even an original thought in his head? “He belongs to the ages“? Dude really? Let’s be clear, when Edwin Stanton said that about Lincoln in 1865, it pretty much stuck to the Great Emancipator. Don’t you think? Nelson Mandela more aptly can be said to belongs to the, er, twentieth century.)

However, BuzzFeed’s quotes are historically accurate. So to the credit of the lefties over there, they simply reprinted the truth without further comment.

At any rate, the lines seem to have been drawn over Mandela; one either loved him or hated him. Ted Cruz found that out, as did Rick Santorum, neither of whom most likely know any more about the man than you or I.

Full Caf Americano

Truth: Was Mandela a communist and a terrorist? Yes. No question about either. But lest we forget, the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism… and all communists are not necessarily bad people.

Okay, forget I said that last part; they all stink on ice, every last one of them.

Here is what we can say about Mandela, without any deep study of his history. He was smart. He had 27 years to think, and it would appear he thought a lot about how to stake out his place in history, once apartheid was ended.

Mandela broke the mold for left wing radicals, and unlike those he so closely aligned himself with (Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi being three of the worst), he surprised us all by extending an olive branch to his enemies.

Smart, but not altruistic. And he had a lot of help from stupid liberal celebrities and lefty media acolytes once he got started.

He was not a friend to the United States. He backed practically every left wing cause on the planet, he was an enemy of our only true friend in the Middle East, Israel, and he remained on the U.S. terrorist list until 2008.

So he spent almost every minute of his remaining years after prison reshaping his image. Again, smart, but hardly the selfless act one would attach to any kind of greatness.

Mandela was not great.

But I’ll tell you what sways my opinion against Mandela more that anything else. It is that Barack Obama will attend his memorial service. After snubbing the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, one of Great Britain’s best prime ministers and America’s greatest friends.

That says about as much as I need to know.

HT Memeorandum, The Other McCain

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