10 Biggest Doozies From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

Who gets the prize for most deranged statement this week? Limbaugh? Palin? Santorum? Or maybe the RNC.

AlterNet / By Janet Allon

 

 

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock.com

December 7, 2013  |  

 

The week that began with talk of the socialist pope, ended with right-wing absurdities about Nelson Mandela. Is nothing sacred?
1. Rush Limbaugh: The pope rips America, causing Obama to orgasm! And then Mandela really showed those American blacks how to do civil rights!
The man who has continually raised the ante on outrageousness brought his A-game this week, starting with comments about Pope Francis and President Obama. “The pope is ripping capitalism, ripping trickledown economics, ripping America. And Obama is having an orgasm,” Limbaugh spewed. “The pope has co-opted Obama.” Because what really gets this president’s motor going is “ripping this country apart.” (Are you listening, Michelle?) Obama demonstrated his ejaculatory pleasure in criticizing America a few days later when he had the audacity to say that “increasing inequality is most pronounced in this country.” The nerve!
Nelson Mandela’s death provided fodder for the right-wing radio ranter to reach new paroxysms of offensiveness and denounce the civil rights movement in America, which of course helped bring about Obama’s presidency. Here’s his case:

“Nelson Mandela actually lived through the indignities, the punishment, the discrimination, the horrors of the South African apartheid system. Came out of it — you realize when he was inaugurated president, he invited as his special guests the white jailers from his Robben Island prison? He literally did forgive everybody.
“Nelson Mandela would not qualify as a civil rights leader in this country with that philosophy. They can’t let it go. It’s become too big a business. They will not let it go. Mandela let it go. It's just — amazing.”

Of course, Mandela went on to decry the ongoing “cancer of racism” in America and elsewhere. He did not think racism had ended (unlike the RNC, it seems: see item #3 below).
(h/t: mediamatters)
2. Sarah Palin: Thomas Jefferson and I agree. Those meanie atheists are trying to abort Christ from Christmas.
Sarah Palin managed to combine those dreaded atheists with abortion, Christ-killing and the dastardly war on Christmas all in one fell swoop in a speech at Liberty University. She was, of course, promoting her new book Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, and the former not full-term Alaska governor is nothing if not good at self-promotion.
She also revealed a new talent for channeling the founding fathers. She knows exactly what Thomas Jefferson would do if he were alive today: He’d go on Fox News to complain about the war on Christmas. In other words, he’d be Sarah Palin.
That’s because—and this might come as a surprise to those who have read the part of the constitution about separation of church and state—Jefferson and his buds wrote the constitution specifically for religious people. Nonreligious people, in other words, amoral people, are not capable of understanding the constitution, and they are therefore not able to follow its precepts.
Here’s an excerpt from this marvelous bit of oratory:

 “If you lose that foundation, John Adams was implicitly warning us, then we will not follow our constitution, there will be no reason to follow our constitution because it is a moral and religious people who understand that there is something greater than self, we are to live selflessly, and we are to be held accountable by our creator, so that is what our constitution is based on.”

There’s some more rambling after that, but you get the idea.

From there, she jumped back to her favorite topic and the one that promotes her book, saying Jefferson would agree with her that “angry atheists armed with an attorney” had set their sights on destroying the religious themes in Christmas celebrations.

“Why is it they get to claim some offense taken when they see a plastic Jewish family on somebody’s lawn—a nativity scene, that’s basically what it is, right?”
A plastic Jewish family. Is that in the scripture?
(h/t Raw Story)
3. Tin-eared RNC: Racism and sexism have ended.
The national Republicans deftly demonstrated how they can appeal to both women and blacks this week. They started offering lessons to candidates on how not to say offensive things about women, especially when you are running against one, as Todd “legitimate rape” Akin did. Clearly, a steep learning curve there. Emergency reinforcements may be needed.
Over the weekend, the RNC declared that racism has ended in a tweet marking the anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and celebrating Rosa Parks’ famous act of civil disobedience. “Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism,” they said. Hilarious tweets ensued under hashtag #racismendedwhen, with answers like “when Mr. Drummond adopted Arnold and Willis,” “when Bill Clinton played the sax on Arsenio Hall” and “when the Fresh Prince moved to Bel-Air.”
Realizing their mistake after, well, millions of people ridiculed them, the RNC amended the tweet, “clarified it,” by saying Parks fought to end racism. But, let’s face it, they really think racism has ended. We’ve got a black president and the Supreme Court itself ruled there is no need for a Voting Rights Act anymore. That ought to settle it.
Does anyone still wonder why more than 90 percent of black America votes for anyone but the GOP?
4. Rick Santorum: Obamacare is like apartheid. And I am like Mandela. O’Reilly: Oh, you mean that commie?
Wow. Flabbergasting things happen when you combine two idiots on Fox with the death of a great man.
Here’s Santorum on Mandela:

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives—and Obamacare is front and center in that.”

Apartheid and affordable healthcare. Yes, very similar. And that would, of course, make you Mandela-like in fighting this injustice. Amirite? We’ve seen some questionable analogies before, i.e. Obamacare and Katrina, Obamacare and the Fugitive Slave Act, Obamacare and the Nuremberg Laws, but this one might be the biggest doozy of them all. Points for creativity, Rick!
O’Reilly couldn’t top that, so he just kept repeating the one thing he did have to say about Mandela.

“He was a communist, this man. He was a communist, all right? But he was a great man! What he did for his people was stunning!...He was a great man! But he was a communist!”

So, uh, wait? Does that make Santorum a communist?
5. Fox News: Sharia law is here and the proof is that Muslim girls are taking swim classes at the Y.
Head for the hills. Sharia is here and it’s coming after your women. Fox continued its quest to stoke the fires of Islamaphobia when it targeted a seemingly harmless YMCA swim class in St. Paul Minnesota that offers hour-long swim practice once a week for Muslim Somali-American girls between the ages of 5 and 17. The YMCA (that’s “C” for Christian, hello) even makes considerations for the girls’ modesty and religious beliefs. On Fox & Friends, an outraged Heather Nauert said this is just one more piece of evidence that "Sharia law is now changing everything."
Modesty considerations have long kept observant Somali-American Muslim girls from learning even basic swimming skills, which, of course, is the problem that the program is designed to overcome. This pernicious tolerance trend is spreading all over the Midwest, Fox reports. Thankfully, Nauert promised viewers that Fox will keep an eye on it.
We are sure they will.
6. S.C. Sheriff refuses to fly flag at half staff for Mandela.
Another great American with a modicum of power and a desire to use it, Rick Clark, the sheriff of Pickens County, S.C., is taking a bold stand against... ummm... Obama’s tyranny? Sheriff Clark is refusing to lower the flag to half staff in honor of Mandela on December 9, 2013, as the president ordered.
Now, we know what you are thinking, but this has nothing to do with race, Clark swears. It has to do with Amurrica. "Nelson Mandela did great things for his country and was a brave man but he was not an AMERICAN!!!” Clark wrote on his Facebook page. “The flag should be lowered at our Embassy in S. Africa, but not here."
Clark knows full well when it is appropriate to lower that flag. He did it last Friday in honor of a deceased deputy, and on Saturday in honor of Pearl Harbor Day. But then it’s straight back up for Ole Glory. Unless another Amurrican dies.
7. Texas Republican Rep.: Minimum wage, schminimum wage.
Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. So, in a week when low-wage workers went on strike to demand an increase in the minimum wage, and President Obama finally acknowledged that inequality is the defining challenge of our time, Rep. Joe Barton decided to be deeply offensive.
Abolish minimum wage, he told the National Journal. “I think it’s outlived its usefulness,” he said. His view is that it was only useful during the Great Depression.
Raising the minimum wage is bound to be on the list of things not to do in the Republican obstructionist playbook, now that Obama has announced making structural inequality the focus of the rest of his presidency.
Think Progress reports:

“At least 67 Republicans who are still serving in Congress today supported an increase under President George W. Bush, including Alexander and Ryan. Yet House Republicans unanimously voted down an increase in March.”

But while many of them won’t raise it, Barton’s going one better.
Let them eat cake!
8. House Chair of Science Committee Lamar Smith: Climate change, no way; aliens, sure.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, has no use for climate change science, and less use for the efforts to regulate carbon emissions. Setting standards for polluting power plants is partisan politics, he recently argued, blasting the EPA for trying to do so, not science. And the petroleum industry favorite knows from science. He’s using one of the seven days left on the legislative calendar to talk about extraterrestrials in a hearing called, “Astrobiology: Search for Biosignatures in our Solar System and Beyond.”
Well, if there are aliens out there living on some other planet, that could help give people a hint about where to go when the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to global warming, which isn’t happening, of course, no matter what 97 percent of scientists say.
9. California GOP-er: It’s part of Middle Eastern culture to lie.
Rep. Duncan Hunter must have been a cultural anthropology major. He displayed his deep knowledge of Middle Eastern culture in an interview with CSPAN this week when he expressed his opposition to the recent treaty with Iran. They lie, he said, in essence. Not only do they lie, they revere lying. Here’s how he knows. He’s heard about how bargaining goes on over there. "In the Middle Eastern culture it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying," Hunter said.
His interlocutor gave him the chance to add some nuance to this keen geopolitical observation, and asked if he meant "all Middle Eastern countries are this way."
Yep, he said: "They like to barter there."
In damage control mode later, his communications director clarified that Hunter was talking about Middle Eastern political leaders, not all the people, especially Iranians.
Furthermore, Hunter, who also thinks U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants should be deported and opposes gays in the military, recommends using a nuclear bomb on Iran if necessary.
"I don’t think it’s inevitable but I think if you have to hit Iran, you don’t put boots on the ground, you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three."
Then you can go back to the bargaining table.
(h/t TPM)
10. GOP Rep: "I wake up every day not thinking about social issues."
Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell is up for re-election next year, and he just wants to clarify what does and what does not keep him up at night. He apparently told Politico: “I wake up every day not thinking about social issues.”
You have to admire his succinctness!

Ted Cruz, House Lawmakers To Attend Nelson Mandela Memorial Service

Catherine Thompson – December 9, 2013, 9:20 AM EST

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and a delegation of over 20 U.S. House members are slated to attend a Tuesday service in South Africa for the late Nelson Mandela, CNN reported.
House Speaker John Boehner tapped Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) to lead the House delegation, and Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Marcia Furdge (D-OH) is also expected to join the official delegation. Below is a list of other lawmakers expected to make the trip, as provided to CNN by a Democratic aide and subject to change:

Rep. John Conyers, (D-MI)
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA)
Rep. Melvin Watt (D-NC)
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Rep. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands)
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC)
Rep. Al Green (D-TX)
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL)
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL)

Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral

Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral

By: Jason Easley

The Westboro Baptist Church is trying to take their platform of hate and intolerance to a whole new level by planning to picket Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
Here is what they tweeted:

THANK GOD for Nelson Mandela being dropped into hell! Westboro Baptist Church booking flight to South Africa (not banned) to picket funeral!
— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSays) December 6, 2013

 WBC may not get very far with their picket because free speech is limited in South Africa. According to Article 16 of the South African Bill of Rights,

Section 16 states,
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes -
(a) freedom of the press and other media;
(b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas;
(c) freedom of artistic creativity; and
(d) academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.
(2) The right in subsection (1) does not extend to -
(a) propaganda for war;
(b) incitement of imminent violence; or
(c) advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.
Judging from their Twitter stream, Westboro Baptist Church looks to be in violation of both 2(b) and 2(c). Westboro Baptist Church thinks that Mandela is in hell, because he divorced and remarried. WBC is also promising to picket the late actor Paul Walker’s funeral. In fact, where ever there is a high profile death or natural disaster, WBC can be counted on to threaten to show up and spread their message of hate and intolerance.
People have stood up and done the right thing to stop WBC protests in the past. In 2011, 300 bikers foiled a planned WBC protest after tornadoes devastated Joplin, MO. Earlier this year, Teamsters formed a human shield to block a WBC picket of Boston Marathon bombing victim’s funeral.
I doubt that the Westboro Baptist Church gets entry into South Africa. If they get into the country and are foolish enough to protest Nelson Mandela’s funeral, the potential for violence would be higher than anything that the hate group has ever tried before.
What WBC is planning proves once again that they are one of the most vile hate groups in the world, and hopefully they will be stopped.

Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral was written by Jason Easley for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Sat, Dec 7th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

 

The Right Wing’s Campaign To Discredit And Undermine Mandela, In One Timeline

By Igor Volsky and Zack Beauchamp on December 6, 2013 at 11:04 am

"The Right Wing’s Campaign To Discredit And Undermine Mandela, In One Timeline"

The world is celebrating Nelson Mandela as a selfless visionary who led his country out of the grips of apartheid into democracy and freedom. But some of the very people lavishing praise on South Africa’s first black president worked tirelessly to undermine his cause and portray the African National Congress he lead as pawns of the Soviet Union.
In fact, American conservatives have long been willing to overlook South Africa’s racist apartheid government in service of fighting communism abroad. Below is a short history, and some explanation, of how conservatives approached Mandela with the hostility they did:

1960s

National Review predicts end of white rule would result in “the collapse of civilization.”

After Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, the magazine observed that “The South African courts have sentenced a batch of admitted terrorists to life in the penitentiary, and you would think the court had just finished barbecuing St. Joan, to hear the howls from the Liberal press.” By March of the following year, conservative Russell Kirk argued in the pages of the magazine that democracy in South Africa “would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization” and the government “would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues.”

1980s

Reagan described apartheid South Africa as a “good country.”

After President Jimmy Carter imposed sanctions on South Africa Reagan reversed course, labeling the African National Congress a terrorist organization. As he explained to CBS’ Walter Cronkite in 1981, the United States should support the South Africa regime because it is “a country that has stood by us in every war we’ve ever fought, a country that, strategically, is essential to the free world in its production of minerals.” In 1985, he told an interviewer: “They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country — the type of thing where hotels and restaurants and places of entertainment and so forth were segregated — that has all been eliminated.” He later walked back the comment. As late as 1988, Reagan called apartheid “a tribal policy more than…a racial policy.”
Jerry Falwell urges supporters to oppose sanctions.

The late Jerry Falwell urged “supporters to write their congressmen and senators to tell them to oppose sanctions against the apartheid regime.” “The liberal media has for too long suppressed the other side of the story in South Africa,” he said. “It is very important that we stay close enough to South Africa so that it does not fall prey to the clutches of Communism.”
180 House members opposed free Mandela resolution.

In 1986, 145 Republicans and 45 Democrats voted down a none-binding House resolution urging the Government of South Africa to indicate its willingness to negotiate with the black majority by granting unconditional freedom to Nelson Mandela, recognizing the African National Congress; and establishing a framework for political talks. This included Dick Cheney, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Dan Coats, Pat Roberts, Joe Barton. Asked in 2000 if he regretted the vote, Cheney said he did not adding, “The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization.”
20 Senators and 83 House members oppose sanctions.

The 1986 bill cut virtually “all U.S. economic ties with South Africa, requiring American companies to cease operating there within 180 days.” Lawmakers had to override Reagan’s veto. Sens. Thad Conrad, Orrin Hatch and Reps. Hal Rogers, Joe Barton, and Howard Coble all voted against imposing sanctions on the regime.
Jack Abramoff leads think tank dedicated to tearing down Mandela.

In 1986, the South African government helped fund and establish The International Freedom Foundation (IFF), a conservative think tank designed to “reverse the apartheid regime’s pariah status in Western political circles” and “portray the ANC as a tool of Soviet communism, thus undercutting the movement’s growing international acceptance as the government-in-waiting of a future multiracial South Africa.” The Washington branch of the IFF listed, among others, Senator Jesse Helms, James Inhofe as advisers. The lobbyist Jack Abramoff led the organization.
U.S. Senator testified in support of the apartheid government.

“In the late 1980s and early ’90s, after returning from his Mormon mission to South Africa,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) lobbied for South African interests and in 1987, “testified before the Utah State Senate in support of a resolution expressing support for the government of South Africa while racial segregation laws were enforced — largely to support U.S. mining interests in the region.”
Now, it would be unfair to say conservatism spoke univocally in condemnation of Mandela. A group of upstart Republicans in the mid-80s, led by Reps. Vin Weber, Robert Walker, and Newt Gingrich pushed hard for the United States to take a more critical stance on apartheid.
But this group was bucking the conservative mainstream at the time. “South Africa has been able to depend on conservatives in the United States . . . to treat them with benign neglect,” Weber said. That has a lot to do with the enduring conservative hostility towards rapid change. Conservatives see broad challenges, even to oppressive systems, as dangerous “revolutionary” change, whereas slower “evolutionary” tweaks in a better direction would be preferable.
Reagan’s South Africa point man, Chester A. Crocker, made this revolutionary/evolutionary binary into one of his three main principles for thinking about South Africa policy. “The circumstances in South Africa do not justify giving up on the hopes for evolutionary change (as distinguished from a revolutionary cataclysm),” he wrote in a famous Foreign Affairs essay. Many in the West, Crocker believed, held “a mistaken assumption that American and South African clocks are synchronized-that our impatience signifies the imminence of the revolution.”
It was Crocker, of course, who was mistaken, writing only about a decade before Mandela was freed from prison. But this skepticism about the possibility and desirability of radical change (Crocker seemed to think any dissolution of the apartheid government would necessarily be in part a violent one), together with the obvious cultural affinity that mainstream conservatives felt with Westernized Afrikaner elites, made conservatives distinctly inclined to view Mandela’s calls for political transformation with jaded eyes.

1990s

Heritage Foundation says Mandela is no “freedom fighter.” “Americans nevertheless have reasons to be skeptical of Mandela,” the foundation warned as he planned to visit the United States in 1990. “First, Nelson Mandela is not a freedom fighter. He repeatedly has supported terrorism. Since Mandela’s release from prison and his subsequent refusal to renounce violence, the Marxist-dominated ANC has launched terrorism and violence against civilians, claiming several hundred lives.”
Conservative think tank links Mandela to communists. “When Mandela made his first visit to the United States in 1990, following his release from prison, the IFF placed advertisements in local papers designed to dampen public enthusiasm for Mandela,” Newsday reported. “One ad in the Miami Herald portrayed Mandela as an ally and defender of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. The city’s large Cuban community was so agitated that a ceremony to present Mandela with keys to the city was scrapped.

2000s

National Review labels Mandela a “communist” for opposing the Iraq war.

“[Mandela's] vicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his long-standing dedication to Communism and praise for terrorists. The world finally saw that his wife Winnie, rather than being a saintly freedom-fighter, was a murderous thug.”
This positioning of Mandela as being on the wrong side of a divide between “friends” and “enemies” — once communism, in the 2000s Saddam and terrorism — is the most important ideological lesson to learn from this history of hostility to Mandela. Conservatives have a deep tendency to judge foreign conflicts principally by the proximity of each side to the enemy du jour.
The treatment of South Africa in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s famous “Dictatorships and Double Standards” essay, where she argued that authoritarian anti-Communist states were more amenable to transition to democracy than revolutionary socialist governments, exemplifies this point nicely. She listed Jimmy Carter’s more confrontational South Africa policy as an example of the Carter Administration taking “at face value the claim of revolutionary groups to represent ‘popular’ aspirations and ‘progressive’ forces–regardless of the ties of these revolutionaries to the Soviet Union.”
Modern conservatives explaining the movement’s Mandela position in the past 12 hours have repeatedly employed Kirkpatrick-style to argue that conservative positions were, at the time, reasonable. “In retrospect, it’s easy to think of Mandela as the grandfatherly statesman,” Matt Lewis writes, “but the Soviet Union posed an existential threat; it’s not like nuclear weapons weren’t aimed at us. Such a thing has a way of focusing your priorities. In that milieu, one can understand why the U.S. would have been very cautious about anyone who had even ‘dabbled’ in Communism.” Deroy Murdock describes the view at the time as “Nelson Mandela was just another Fidel Castro or a Pol Pot, itching to slip from behind bars, savage his country, and surf atop the bones of his victims.”
Now, both Lewis and Murdock readily admit that this view was in hindsight mistaken. But the overemphasis on the friend/enemy distinction that blinded conservative’s to the justness of the ANC’s cause has hardly gone away.

Rick Santorum: Nelson Mandela Fought 'Great Injustice,' Just Like Republicans Are Battling Obamacare

The Huffington Post  |  By Paige Lavender
Posted: 12/06/2013 9:53 am EST

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) discussed the death of Nelson Mandela, saying the former South African president fought "great injustice" just like Republicans who are battling Obamacare.
"Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that. That's the reason he's mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed," Santorum said. "But you're right, I mean, what he was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer, but he was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that."
The statement, pointed out by Slate's Dave Weigel in a tweet Friday morning, came after Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed Mandela "was a great man, but he was a communist."
"I would never attack Nelson Mandela," O'Reilly said next.
Watch a clip of Santorum's remarks above.

Remembering The Religious Right's Attacks On Nelson Mandela

Remembering The Religious Right's Attacks On Nelson Mandela

 

Submitted by Brian Tashman 
Thursday, 12/5/2013 5:45 pm

The news today of Nelson Mandela’s passing is also time to reflect on the complicated relationship between Mandela and his anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) with the US, which did not always support the anti-apartheid struggle. In fact, American conservatives lobbied the federal government in the 1980s to withhold support from the anti-apartheid movement.

President Reagan added the ANC to the US terrorism watch list, a designation not removed until 2008, and unsuccessfully vetoed sanctions against the apartheid regime. Many Republican lawmakers did break with the Reagan administration’s stance, but “all 21 [Senate] votes to sustain the veto were cast by Republicans.”

Mandela faced criticism from Republican leaders including Dick Cheney, who described Mandela’s ANC as a “terrorist organization,” and Jesse Helms, who “turned his back during Mandela’s visit to the U.S. Capitol.” Even in 1998, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly lumped Mandela together with notorious dictators.

The late Jerry Falwell urged [PDF] his supporters to write their congressmen and senators to tell them to oppose sanctions against the apartheid regime. “The liberal media has for too long suppressed the other side of the story in South Africa,” he said. “It is very important that we stay close enough to South Africa so that it does not fall prey to the clutches of Communism.”

“South Africa is torn by civil unrest, instigated primarily by Communist-sponsored people who are capitalizing on the many legitimate grievances created by apartheid, unemployment and policy confrontations,” Falwell continued.

    Finally, we should, if possible, invest in South Africa, because this inevitably improves the standard of living for nonwhites there.

    Now is not the time to turn our backs on South Africa. The world has witnessed the Soviets capture nation after nation. They have been particularly aggressive in Africa. South Africa must not be the next victim!

David John Marley notes in Pat Robertson: An American Life that Robertson criticized the ANC because it was “led by communists and was hostile to Israel” and “far too radical an element to ever work with,” while “his campaign literature made similar claims for the need to support the white government.”

The televangelist regularly spoke ill of Mandela’s group and his Christian Broadcasting Network ran segments critical of sanctions against the apartheid government as Congress debated sanctions.

    In 1986 The 700 Club did a series of reports on South Africa and the white government’s struggle against the African National Congress. While many socially liberal religious leaders decried the apartheid regime, Robertson openly supported it because he felt that it was a bastion against communism. For Robertson, everything else was secondary to defeating what he saw as the enemies of God. Robertson sent a copy of The 700 Club program to Freedom Council’s Dick Thompson to have it forwarded to Pat Buchanan, who in turn promised to show it to the president. Reagan’s attitude toward South Africa was one of his most controversial foreign policy stands, and Robertson was one of Reagan’s few allies on the policy.

Sam Kleiner mentions that now-Sen. Jeff Flake, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff were also active in lobbying against the anti-apartheid movement:

    Jack Abramoff, now a disgraced former lobbyist convicted of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion, got much of his start from his work with South Africa. Abramoff visited the country following his term as National Chair of the College Republicans in 1983 and met with pro-apartheid student groups linked to the South Africa’s Bureau of Security Services. In 1986, he opened the International Freedom Foundation. Ostensibly a think tank, it was later revealed as a front group for the South African Army as part of “Operation Babushka” meant to undermine Nelson Mandela’s international approval. The group had over “30 young ideologues in offices on G Street in Washington, Johannesburg, London and Brussels” working on propaganda in support of the South African government.

    …

    Like Abramoff, GOP tax guru Grover Norquist became enamored with the conflict in South Africa and went there to extend his support. Norquist ran College Republicans from 1981 to 1983 and went to South Africa in 1985 for a “Youth for Freedom Conference” sponsored by South African businesses. While other college students, such as Barack Obama, had been active in anti-apartheid work, this conference was seeking to bring American and South African conservatives together to end that movement. In his speech there, Norquist said, “The left has no other issue [but apartheid] on campus. Economic issues are losers for them. There are no sexy Soviet colonies anymore.” A few months after the conference, Norquist went to Angola to work with Jonas Savimbi, the rebel leader that Abramoff valorized in his film. Norquist became a ghost-writer for Savimbi’s essay in Policy Review. When he returned to Washington, he was greeted in conservative circles as a “freedom fighter,” and he proudly placed an “I’d rather be killing commies” bumper sticker on his brief case.

    A few years later and much further along in the anti-apartheid movement, a young Jeff Flake (now a senator from Arizona) became active in lobbying for South African mining interests in the late 1980s and early ’90s, after returning from his Mormon mission to South Africa. As a graduate student at Brigham Young University, he testified against an anti-apartheid resolution in the Utah State Senate and then became a lobbyist in Washington for Smoak, Shipley and Henry, a lobbying firm specializing in representing the South African mining industry. Flake went on to personally represent the Rossing Uranium plant in Namibia, which had been a major target of anti-apartheid activists for its discriminatory and unsafe practices.

    Decades later, these Republican leaders would prefer not to have their adventures in South Africa mentioned. While Abramoff went down in a corruption scandal, Norquist went on to remake himself into a libertarian anti-tax activist, and Flake moved back to Arizona. The anti-communism that motivated the Republican allegiance to South Africa fizzled with the end of the Cold War, but the history of the Republican entanglement with South Africa remains one of the party’s darker episodes.

    President Obama can proudly talk about how his first political act was in response to apartheid. While a few Republicans stood against apartheid, much of the Republican Party has nothing to offer about its position at the time but silence. I wouldn’t expect any reflections on apartheid from Abramoff, Flake or Norquist anytime soon.

How Nelson Mandela Survived His Years in Isolated South African Jail

How Nelson Mandela Survived His Years in Isolated South African Jail

By: Larisa Epatko

 

View photos of Nelson Mandela's prison years and release.
Former South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela turns 95 on Thursday. He spent many of his years in jail while still fighting for a democratic and free society.
In all, Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of those on Robben Island, a rock quarry off the coast of Cape Town. He and eight other African National Congress leaders were convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and were sentenced to life in jail in 1964.
Mandela and the other prisoners were completely isolated, got little to eat and had to undertake the grueling work of pounding rocks into gravel.
What kept him and the others sane was the community they formed for themselves, according to Gay McDougall. During apartheid, McDougall was director of the Southern African Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, assisting in the defense of thousands of political prisoners in South Africa.
"One of the things that was extraordinary about [Mandela] is his sense that being in a group -- a collective -- of people committed to the same principles, along with making collective decisions about the way forward, is an essential element in movement-building and survival in circumstances that are harsh and oppressive," she said.
Mandela's cell on Robben Island. Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images.
"People refer to 'Robben Island University' because they began to study" everything from politics to their individual areas of expertise, said McDougall.
Mandela also knew he was serving a larger purpose in jail and didn't hold it against the guards, she said. "That lack of personal animosity toward those in charge of his confinement was important to his survival."
Times were tough, though. It was in prison that he learned about the death of one of his children from his first wife Evelyn Mase.
His health also took a toll. In 1982, he was moved to the maximum security Pollsmoor Prison on the main land, where he was believed to have contracted tuberculosis. He has fought respiratory ailments ever since.
An international movement helped secure Mandela's release in 1990 at age 71. When he emerged from jail, no one knew what he would look like -- that's how closely the apartheid government had shielded him from the world, said McDougall.
"I thought he looked remarkably fit and handsome, upright and dignified," she said. And the speech he gave in Cape Town upon his release was remarkable in that he "didn't give an inch" from his original demands going into jail, she added.

"The need to unite the people of our country is as important a task now as it always has been. No individual leader is able to take on this enormous task on his own. It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organization and to allow the democratic structures to decide," Mandela said on Feb. 11, 1990.

(Read his full speech on the ANC website.)
Mandela helped negotiate the end of apartheid under then-President F.W. de Klerk. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and his ANC party won multi-racial democratic elections a year later. Mandela became president of South Africa, serving one term.
On the June 28 PBS NewsHour, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, special correspondent for NBC News, discussed Mandela's legacy and how democracy helped shape South Africa:

Nelson Mandela, revered statesman and anti-apartheid leader, dies at 95

By Yahoo News 

Former South African President Nelson Mandela has died at age 95 of complications from a recurring lung infection.

The anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was a beloved figure around the world, a symbol of reconciliation from a country with a brutal history of racism.
Mandela was released from prison in 1990 after nearly 30 years for plotting to overthrow South Africa's apartheid government. In 1994, in a historic election, he became the nation's first black leader. Mandela stepped down in 1999 after a single term and retired from political and public life.
History
Born Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918, he was one of the world's most revered statesmen and revolutionaries who led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
A qualified lawyer from the University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand, Mandela served as the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
His political career started in 1944 when he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and participated in the resistance against the then government¹s apartheid policy in 1948. In June 1961, the ANC executive approved his idea of using violent tactics and encouraged members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign. Shortly after, he founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC and was named its leader.
In 1962, he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment. In 1963, Mandela was brought to stand trial along with many fellow members of Umkhonto we Sizwe for conspiring against the government and plotting to overthrow it by the use of violence.
Jailed for life
On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
His statement from the dock at the opening of the defense trial became extremely popular. He closed his statement with: "During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
Mandela served 27 years in prison from 1964 to 1982, spending many of those years at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town. While in jail, his reputation grew and he became widely known across the world as the most significant black leader in South Africa.
He became a prominent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gained momentum in South Africa and across the world. On the island, he and other prisoners were subjected to hard labor in a lime quarry. Racial discrimination was rampant and prisoners were segregated by race with the black prisoners receiving the fewest rations. Mandela has written about how he was allowed one visitor and one letter every six months.
Free and fair
In February 1985 President PW Botha offered Mandela his freedom on condition that he unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon but he rejected the proposal. He made his sentiment known through a letter he released via his daughter.
"What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts," he wrote. In 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison and would remain there until his release.
Throughout his imprisonment, pressure mounted on the South African government to release him. The slogan 'Free Nelson Mandela' became the new battle-cry of the anti-apartheid campaigners. Finally, Mandela was released on February 11, 1990 in an event streamed live across the world. After his release, Mandela returned to his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, the first national conference of the ANC was held inside South Africa after the organisation had been banned in 1960.
President Mandela
Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his friend Oliver Tambo became the organisation's National Chairperson. Mandela's leadership and his work, as well as his relationship with the then President FW de Klerk, were recognised when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. South Africa's first multi-racial elections, held on 27 April 1994, saw the ANC storm in with a majority of 62 per cent of the votes and Mandela was inaugurated in May 1994 as the country's first black President.
As president from May 1994 until June 1999, Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.

Honors and personal life
Mandela has received many national international honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush.
In July 2004, the city of Johannesburg bestowed its highest honour by granting Mandela the freedom of the city at a ceremony in Orlando, Soweto.
In 1990, he received the Bharat Ratna Award from the government of India and also received the last ever Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.
In 1992, he was awarded the Atatürk Peace Award by Turkey. He refused the award citing human rights violations committed by Turkey at the time, but later accepted the award in 1999. Also in 1992, he received of Nishan-e-Pakistan, the highest civil service award of Pakistan. Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," was published in 1994. He had begun work on it secretly while in prison.
Mandela and his wives
Nelson Mandela's love life has seemingly run parallel to his political one — and can be divided up into three key eras. The young activist married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944. The couple, who had four children, divorced in 1958 — shortly before Mandela became an outlaw with the banning of the ANC.

Mandela's second marriage — and probably his most famous — largely coincided with the time he spent locked up at the hands of the apartheid regime. In 1958 he walked down the aisle with Winnie Madikizela, who stood by his side and actively campaigned to free him from prison. Winnie became a powerful figure in her own right while Mandela was imprisoned but a series of scandals involving her led to the couple's estrangement in 1992, her dismissal from his cabinet in 1995, and their official divorce in 1996. The couple had two children. Winnie was also later convicted of kidnapping.

His third marriage, to Graca Machel — the widow of former Mozambique President — came on his 80th birthday as entered his role of world statesman.
Yahoo! Australia contributed to this report.