We have been reading some lovely things in the past few hours since we learned Nelson Mandela died. Here, you may have some!
PolicyMic delves deep into the fight for Apartheid sanctions in Congress -- and the 37 moderate Republican senators who joined with Dems to override Reagan's veto.
Back in the Senate, Edward Kennedy chastised Republicans for Reagan's actions:
"The Republican Party is at a crossroads. It must decide whether it wants to be the party of Lincoln or the party of apartheid."
Under considerable pressure, Republican moderates rallied. Thirty-seven (37) out of 53 Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over Reagan's veto. Conservatives fumed, but they were powerless to stop the law from passing. It was the first time in the 20th century that a presidential veto on a foreign policy issue had been overturned.
My God, can you imagine?
Richard Cohen -- !!! -- wrote a beautiful thing -- !!!1!!! -- back in June, when Twitter thought Mandela had died the first time.
I remember when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin met with Ronald Reagan in 1981. The contrast could not have been more vivid. Here was the amiable movie actor, a man who had had an easy, fortunate life. And here was a man who had been a terrorist, a guerrilla fighter, who had lost his family in the Holocaust and had been imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag. At night, “after twelve or fourteen or sixteen hours of work, we had to dig ourselves deep into the snow and go to sleep,” Begin wrote in “White Nights,” a memoir of those days. In the morning, he would awake to find some of his fellow prisoners frozen to death. Reagan probably told Begin some Hollywood story. Begin probably kept his mouth shut.
Most of us are like Ronald Reagan.
And that is the only time I will permit you to say that, Richard Cohen! But really, it's a lovely read, and we're as surprised as you are.
And Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel blogs about women's rights and equality under Mandela.
In 1993, as Mandela was rising in South African politics, South Africa signed on to the UN's Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), essentially a pact to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women (a Women's Bill of Rights), if you will. In 1995, a year after Mandela won the Presidential election, South Africa ratified it. Know what country hasn't ratified the CEDAW yet? The United States of America.
Tut tut, these godless feminists, always blaming Amercia first!
We agreed entirely with the first half or so of this, before our attention wandered, where Weigel explains that fuck yeah we should be politicizing Mandela, idiots, he was political, Jesus Christ.
And The Greatest, Muhammad Ali:
"I am deeply saddened by the passing of Mr. Mandela. His was a life filled with purpose and hope; hope for himself, his country and the world. He inspired others to reach for what appeared to be impossible and moved them to break through the barriers that held them hostage mentally, physically, socially and economically. He made us realize, we are our brother's keeper and that our brothers come in all colors. What I will remember most about Mr. Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge. He taught us forgiveness on a grand scale. His was a spirit born free, destined to soar above the rainbows. Today his spirit is soaring through the heavens. He is now forever free."
With votes. Right?
Mandela is free.