From Ted Cruz site on Facebook::
Nelson Mandela will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, ‘Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.’ Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free.
We mourn his loss and offer our condolences to his family and the people of South Africa.
That sounds perfectly appropriate and something along the lines that any U.S. Senator ought to be saying about an international, respected leader such as Nelson Mandela. Apparently a whole lot of people took issue with Senator Cruz’s statement on the passing of Mandela.
Check out some of the comments on the Cruz FB page:
- I’m disappointed in your expression of admiration for this Marxist. You need to study your history. Amazing how people are so blind and swallow everything the media feeds them about how great a man he was. You need to go to South Africa and see the fruits of Mandela’s work. Mandela was a Communist revolutionary and terrorist with blood on his hands.
- Good grief, Ted! He was a frigging Communist. He and his wife and their henchmen hung tires full of gasoline around the necks of their opponents and lit them on fire. What’s so heroic about that? Before you praise Mandela you need to find out the truth about him. He was not the man that the media wants you to think he was.
- Mandela was a Marxist.
- He was a Marxist. He was a Communist plain and simple.
- Ted, I’m a supporter of your agenda, however you’re on the wrong side of history on this one.
- Wake up, Ted.
- If you put this man on a pedestal like all the other uninformed people, you’ve lost my vote for anything.
This is just a small sampling of the hate now being directed towards Ted Cruz. Don’t get me wrong. I am no fan of Ted Cruz but I think fair is fair. The Senator issued a public statement following someone’s death and he gets this kind of tripe in return? Even I will defend Cruz this one time.
Bill XXXXX summed things up pretty well:
Bill XXXXXX This is the reason you sir, will never be elected President. Your base is made up of a bunch of racist, uninformed idiots who know nothing about basic history. Reading these comments make me shocked at how many people in this country are so hateful and just outright stupid
From Bill the Dog Catcher
http://bill4dogcatcher.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/nelson-mandela-the-terrorist/
http://bill4dogcatcher.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/nelson-mandela-and-flying-the-u-s-flag-at-half-staff/
In that Mandela gave his heart, body and soul to fight injustice, inequality and racism, and that Ted’s people label him a Communist and Socialist…. I guess that speaks well for being a Communist and Socialist.
Oh the irony. I guess Ted isn’t allowed to be a human being?
I thought the gasoline-filled tire thing was pretty brilliant, for what it’s worth.
How could Mandela have been a terrorist when he spent his adult life in jail? Idiots.
Beyond anything about Ted Cruz and the type of people who post on his board … it is interesting to me to reflect, during all the praise for Mandela, on how America’s religious right was reacting to his issue (democracy in South Africa) in the late 80’s. These were the FOX News viewers of yesteryear, before they had a FOX News to sit and watch or a Rush Limbaugh to tell them how to think.
Reagan wanted “constrctive engagement” with the South African government. Some on the right, like Jerry Falwell, went further. Falwell was at one point exhorting his followers to consider investing in Krugerrands, to help prop up the white minority government.
I watched him on his TV show making the pitch. Do you know what had offended him so? He ran a clip of Bishop Tutu, who was being lauded at the time, saying “The West, for my part, can go to hell”. Falwell seemed offended in a literal way, as if Tutu were attempting to damn America to hell. And told us that Tutu was not a man of God, and that we should all invest in Krugerrands – presumably the white minority were closer to God.
The young me was watching this on TV. I did not imagine it. The main thrust of his pro-investment argument seemed to be that Tutu was not a man of God.
(Another time, I witnessed Jimmy Swaggart on TV weeping and wailing in prayer to God, tortured that the space shuttle had blown up because he had forgotten to pray for it or not prayed hard enough. [Or been out cruising for sex]. The guy was wailing as if his nads had been crushed, tears rolling down hard. I did have the sense to roll the VCR on that one. Someday I’ll convert that and get it up onto youtube for posterity).
Meanwhile Billy Graham was preempting football games with his crusades, and telling anyone who asked that AIDS was sent from God as a message that men needed to stop having sex with each other. For my part, these guys can go to hell.
Its good to know that you were also a young upstart, Rick.
I love Desmond Tutu. I was actually surprised to learn he was still alive.
I agree with you about the Hell part, in the figurative sense, of course.
When you see South Africa back then, a racially-based system of government and oppression, and then you see a guy like Falwell who has galvanized Christians in America – the “Moral Majority” – and wants to exert this influence to prop up apartheid, I can’t help but think that Jesus must be rolling over … well, you know.
I have always had a sense of moral bankruptcy when it comes to Jerry Falwell. I watched the Sarah Palin thing she did at Liberty last night. I had read how it was one of the dumbest presentations she has ever given.
Well….I think something is wrong with her. In the first place, she is skeletal. I would guess she was anoerexic, if I had to diagnose her. As for sounding dumb…her words were too disjointed to even slap them with the dumb stroke. She really doesn’t understand Thomas Jefferson or his contributions to the country. (drinking water near Lynchburg made him Christian and determined to outline the Constitution—best I could tell.)
For the benefit of those bloggers who habitually refer to others as idiots, I seem to recall that Mandela, as a leader of the ANC, was accused of acts of terrorism and found guilty in a South African court. It was those charges, inter alia, that sent him to prison for a long time.
How much of an opportunity he had to continue to direct the ANC while in prison, I don’t know. Nor, given the accusers, can I remark on the veracity of the original charges made against him. However, despite a claim by the ANC that they had rejected the use of necklacing in particular, it was real, it was terrible, and it was used mostly informally….by ANC supporters and other “freedom seekers” against fellow Blacks thought to have been complicit with the Apartheid regime as informers, against Black policemen and other Blacks working for the regime, sometimes against those not in the ANC movement, and from time to time just against common criminals. In the later years of Mandela’s imprisonment, his wife and long-time companion in the anti-Apartheid struggle, Winnie Mandela, got caught up in big scandal involving the use of necklacing against Black rivals. Mandela later divorced her and remarried.
Winnie Mandela was convicted of kidnapping. She served no prison time so it must not have been “bad” kidnapping.
History is often ironic. The white South Africans against whom Mandela struggled were descended from the Protestant Dutch Boers (farmers of the Reformed persuasion) who first settled the Cape and then treked north to expand what would eventually became South Africa. The Apartheid SA government included the cruelty of necklacing as proof that the Blacks of Mandela’s movement could not be trusted with political power.
However, when the Dutch Protestants rose in rebellion in 1572 against the authority of the Catholic King Phillip of Spain, they were opposed by the Duke of Alva, one of the foremost military commanders of his time, who swore to the king that he would defeat and then cut the throats of all the rebels. Alva proceeded to level the Dutch town of Haarlem and then moved on to the heavily fortressed city of Alkmaar in North Holland. Alkmaar was defended mostly by urban dwellers, farmers, and fisher folk, along with a small number of soldiers. The defenders knew that defeat would mean death.
The Spanish army and its paid mercenaries raised the seige ladders to surmount the crenelated walls of Alkmaar. They found a determined band of defenders atop the walls. Each time a Spanish soldier reached the top of the wall, a Dutchman would slap around his head and shoulders a circular object, woven or wooden, soaked in tar. The object would be lit afire. In effect, many of Alva’s troops were “necklaced” and then pushed from the top of the wall into the moat below.
So, who won? The Dutch. While Alva contemplated yet another seige effort, his troops captured a Dutch messenger trying to get into the city with a message from the outlying towns and authorities. The message said that they had agreed to open the sluices and dams of North Holland (which is below sea level) and flood out Alva and his Spanish army, even if it meant destroying their own crops and herds of livestock. Alva didn’t believe it at first, until the army noticed that water was beginning to slosh around their feet. They left in a hurry, and Alkmaar survived.
The ANC did not invent “necklacing.”
Those who attacked Cruz over his remarks didn’t seem to be great historians…just biggots.
Suffice to say that the world will remember Mandela long after these simple-minded idiots calling him a terrorist are dead and rotting.
@Moon-howler
Winnie got into more legal trouble later on. But her reputation began a downward slide in 1986, when she gave a speech endorsing the use of necklacing. Most of the rest of her troubles seemed to involve criminal activities on the side, rather than her anti-Apartheid activities.