Last night on Twitter someone linked to a National Review Online editorial about Nelson Mandela. I know better than to scroll down to reader comments on right-wing sites, but I did. I wanted to burn my eyes out afterward.
Mandela was a saboteur and a terrorist. He was a violent revolutionary. Agreed. So too were the founding fathers of my country, who would have been hunted down, dragged through the streets, and hung by the neck until dead had they failed in their revolution.
These teabaggers in their tri-corner hats, waving assault rifles and Don’t Tread on Me flags … what side would they have chosen in 1776? I think the answer to that is clear: they’d have high-tailed it to Halifax, British loyalists to a man.
Nelson Mandela embraced the cause of equality and fought for it with everything he had. It was a dirty, arduous fight. He was everything those right-wing commenters on NRO said he was. And he won. Now he sits in the Hall of Greats, alongside Ghandi and Lincoln. He, with them, helped bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.
What hall will the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and Bill O’Reilly sit in when they’re dead and gone? What hall will you and I sit in?
Too many big questions to deal with on a Friday morning.