Obama Says World Must Stop Persecuting People for 'Who They Love'

In a speech at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama found an opportunity to support LGBT equality and to challenge the world - especially African nations to which America Christofascists are exporting homophobia and hatred - that stop persecuting gays.  No doubt Obama's remarks will only intensify the hatred he faces from white Christofascist/white supremacists in America.  Here are excerpts from his speech:

For the people of South Africa, for those he inspired around the globe - Madiba’s passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate his heroic life. But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection. With honesty, regardless of our station or circumstance, we must ask: how well have I applied his lessons in my own life?

It is a question I ask myself - as a man and as a President. We know that like South Africa, the United States had to overcome centuries of racial subjugation. As was true here, it took the sacrifice of countless people - known and unknown - to see the dawn of a new day. Michelle and I are the beneficiaries of that struggle. But in America and South Africa, and countries around the globe, we cannot allow our progress to cloud the fact that our work is not done. The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality and universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important. For around the world today, we still see children suffering from hunger, and disease; run-down schools, and few prospects for the future. Around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs; and are still persecuted for what they look like, or how they worship, or who they love.

We, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace. There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. And there are too many of us who stand on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard. 

The full transcript of Obama's speech can be found here.

GOP/Conservatives on the Wrong Side

With world leaders and dignitaries gathering in South Africa to remember Nelson Mandela, it is timely to remember the wrongheadedness and bigotry of many conservatives and Republicans towards Mandela.  That knack at being on the wrong side of history, however, extends to many other things that rang from opposition to the civil rights movement to recent efforts to disenfranchise voters and efforts to stigmatize and harm LGBT individuals.  Bigotry and opposition to equality have become the hallmarks of today's conservatism and, of course the GOP.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this history which is certainly not something to be proud of if one is a decent and moral person.  Here are excerpts:

The Beast’s estimable Peter Beinart already laid bare the rancid hypocrisy of today’s Republicans honoring Nelson Mandela. Joan Walsh delivered a similarly biting critique of the “right-washing” of Mandela going on right now. American conservatives loathed the man when it mattered. This leads us to a broader question that Beinart and Walsh didn’t have the space to get into, so I’ll pick it up from here: When has the American right ever—ever—been on the right side of history?

The answer is almost never. Indeed, history is an unfolding, and more or less constant, vindication of the people who were thinking ahead, who weren’t happy with things the way they were and saw they had to change, and who have been on the side of personal liberation and de-concentration of political power. Those people are virtually by definition liberals and reformers and radicals.

Consider the great political earthquakes throughout history and imagine the contemporaneous—not retrospective, as we are seeing in these phony paeans to Mandela, but in-the-moment—conservative posture. The conservative position was wrong nearly every time—not just wrong, but often morally shocking from our later perspective.

Do you support the American Revolution? I should hope so. You would not have, however, had you been a conservative in 1785.

How about the abolition of slavery? I reckon you’re on board with that. Well, Lord knows you wouldn’t have been if you’d been among the 1860 conservatives who started a war over it (and whose apologists today insist the Civil War was not about slavery).

In terms of domestic politics, few polemical tasks are easier than demonstrating how wrong conservatism has been about pretty much everything in all of American history. Eradication of child labor? Why, an imposition on business owners to run their factories as they saw fit, you socialist! Giving women the right to vote? Women?! They simply don’t possess the logical faculties to be entrusted with such a responsibility, and anyway where will it end—I suppose you’ll be suggesting that black people get the franchise next? Segregation. Miscegenation laws. Immigration. Civil rights. The environmental movement. Conservatism’s record: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.

It’s amazing how one hears the same hideous arguments, always swaddled in alleged morality and always—always—totally immoral. A hundred years ago, biblical thunderers screamed that their pact between their conscience and their God couldn’t possibly allow them to consider the marriage of a white person to a “colored” one to be valid. Today, our thunderers say exactly the same thing about gay people. We should no more tolerate a “religious exemption” for those who oppose same-sex marriage than on race. It is bigotry, period and end of story. History one day will determine as much, and our anti-gay thunderers will look every bit as hateful as the racial ones of yesteryear do now.

So let’s turn to foreign policy. Here, I admit things get a little more complicated, but only a little. There have been two great questions on foreign policy in the last century, the questions of fascism and communism. On the former, the American right’s record is one of deep shame. Most of American conservatism actively attacked Roosevelt for getting us into war. If America First had had its way, in Amsterdam, Oslo, and Paris they’d be speaking German today, or at least would have for a long time.

Mandela is another case in point. There is no question that some, maybe many, in the African National Congress were communists. But does anyone think for a second that the ANC would have said no to American help had it been forthcoming?

The conservative record is one of tragedy and moral nullity. Even so I would say we do need a conservative tendency in ours or any society as a check against reformist over-zeal. So conservatives should certainly be involved in our arguments. It’s just that they should also lose most of them, as history shows they’ve done a good job of doing.

Wingnuts Go Berserk Over Positive GOP Comments on Mandela

The toxicity of the fetid swamp that is now the base of the Republican Party has been highlighted by the GOP base's reaction to positive comments made by Republican elected officials in response to the death of Nelson Mandela.  As noted many times on this blog, a key element of what motivates today's GOP base is blatant racism and a yearning for white supremacy.  Blue Virginia has compiled some of the blow back against Republicans - even the ever despicable Eric Cantor chose not to speak ill of Mandela - who had anything decent to say about Mandela.  Here's a sampling:

It's amazing, it truly is: as far right wing as many elected Republican are these days, it never seems to be far right wing enough for their most rabid, teahadist supporters. For instance, a number of elected Republicans have shown class in their responses to the death of Nelson Mandela. That, in spite of the fact that Mandela was proudly a man of the left . . .

Virginia Republican politicians - including Bob McDonnell, Eric Cantor, and even E.W. Jackson - had nice things to say about Mandela upon the news of his death yesterday. For instance, Jackson wrote that Mandela was "courageous," a "great man," and "exactly the leader South Africa needed - even if he didn't start out that way." For his part, Gov. McDonnell wrote that Mandela was "one of the true giants of history," a man who "lived a life that broke down barriers, tore down walls, and lifted up a nation, a people, and a world." McDonnell added, "This is a better world for the long and uplifting life of Nelson Mandela." Finally, Eric Cantor commented, "The world has lost an exceptional leader who made the world a better place." 

Many of the responses to these comments, to put it mildly, didn't match the class of E.W. Jackson, McDonnell and Cantor in this case. For instance, Cantor has now received 400+ responses, the overwhelming majority of which are negative - even viciously so. For instance: "Mandela was a communist and a terrorist!;" "he and his animal of a wife were mass murderers and torturers;" "You've got to be kidding...he was responsible for the murder of over 20,000 people;" and "The world has lost a Marxist/Communist dictator! Mr. Cantor, are you falling in line with Obama's minions??"; and  "I'm saddened and disappointed to see such a post."

A few examples: "This man was a straight up communist;" "And he gave all South Africans the right to abortion on demand;" "Hope he knew Christ as his savior;" and "You, Mr. Jackson, have bought into the communist/Marxist/liberal ideology of rewriting history and eliminating history by making Mandela into a saint."

Bob McDonnell appears to have deleted the entire thread, as there are now no comments at all. I can just imagine how bad it must have been for them to do that... 

I'd also point out that many leading Republicans - Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Jack Kemp - opposed sanctions against the white, apartheid regime in South Africa.

[A] great man just died, and THIS is what spews out from right wingers on their "leaders'" Facebook pages, just for saying a few appropriate words at the death of a major 20th century historical figure . . . 

P.S. Ken Cuccinelli hasn't said a word about Mandela's death on his Facebook page. Nor has Mark Obenshain.

 Between positive statements about Mandela and the National Republican Congressional Committee's plan to fund openly gay Republican candidates, things are not sweetness and light in Christofacists circles and Teabagistan.

 

Dick Cheney: Nelson Mandela Was a Terrorist

Many around the globe are morning the passing of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who suffered 27 years in prison because of his struggle to end Apartheid and then went on to be South Africa's first black president, preaching a message of forgiveness as he tried to move his country forward.  But not all hold Mandela or his memory in high regard.  Take Dick Cheney - a man guilty of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and usually referred to as Emperor Palpatine on this blog - who didn't regret his 1986 vote against freeing Mandela from prison.  Cheney, the war criminal in all but formal charges, maintained that Mandela was a terrorist and deserved to remain in prison.   Sadly, I suspect that many in the increasingly white supremacist dominated Republican Party share Cheney's revolting views.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post: 

In 1986, Nelson Mandela -- the former president of South Africa who died Thursday at the age of 95 -- was serving the 23rd year of what would ultimately be a 27-year prison sentence. The Western world was finally acknowledging the true horrors of Apartheid, a system of racial segregation that denied basic rights to blacks -- including citizenship and the right to vote -- and brutally oppressed a generation of South Africans fighting for equality.

In the U.S. Congress, lawmakers were ready to show their opposition to the South African regime with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, a bill that called for tough sanctions and travel restrictions on the nation and its leaders, and for the repeal of apartheid laws and release of political prisoners like Mandela, then leader of the African National Congress (ANC).

The measure passed with bipartisan support, despite strong and largely Republican opposition. President Ronald Reagan was among those most opposed to the bill, and when he finally vetoed the measure over its support of the ANC, which he maintained was a "terrorist organization," it took another vote by Congress to override it. Among the Republicans who repeatedly voted against the measure was future Vice President Dick Cheney, then a Republican congressman from Wyoming.

[T]he Wyoming Republican has never said he regretted voting the way he did. In fact, in 2000, he maintained that he'd made the right decision.  “The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization," Cheney said on ABC's "This Week." "I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.''

Try as  I might, I cannot avoid the conclusion that Cheney is a despicable human being.  As are many of his racist cohorts in today's GOP.  R.I.P. Nelson Mandela.

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