Tolerance and temperance

The day after the death of Nelson Mandela, I made the mistake of pointing out to my Left Coast former classmate that his Facebook rant on how dare people on the right and who supported people like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Dick Cheney, and maybe even opposed him back when he was the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress, mourn the passing of such a liberal icon that his position seemed rather juvenile to me. Nelson Mandela was a liberal and the conservatives couldn’t have him, he demanded.

He proceeded to threaten to block me and then chastised me for saying that at one time in his life, Mandela was indeed what one would consider a terrorist. He said that such posts were irritating to him while he was at work.

Well, I apologized … I am sorry that I am three hours ahead of him on the East Coast and despite his protestations that he is very well up on international affairs, etc., that I view his world view a bit differently.

You see, I don’t come foamingly unhinged at people like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. Nor do people like Rachel Maddow, or James Carville, or John Stewart or Bill Maher particularly upset me. I don’t see people like Dick Cheney or Karl Rove as being some evil people. I don’t think President Obama is a jerk and evil person (he might be a naïve incompetent one who can’t really lead or govern worth a hoot, but he is not evil).

I don’t agree with these people on most things, but I tend to keep my view that in the marketplace of ideas, maybe the proponents of the best solutions will rise to the top.

I also don’t claim that people not of my world view can’t admire or mourn the loss of someone who has affected the world profoundly in many ways. But that appears to be the difference between the Left Coast (progressive liberal) world view and mine.

Now, as I said in an earlier post, Mandela was a remarkable man, but to claim him as a liberal icon is making a stretch I think even he would disavow … at least not in the American liberal progressive sense.

You see, Mandela was a devout Christian. Just ask Bishop Desmond Tutu.

He adopted a free-market approach to change in his country’s economy, much to the dismay of his more left-leaning allies, including a former wife.

He sought reconciliation and through forgiveness to bind up the wounds that the ugly years of apartheid had left on South Africa.

He stepped away from power, when he very easily could have ruled for life.

Those are not necessarily “progressive” or “liberal” attributes, but more of a rather unique and honorable man.

He did not turn into a dictator like Stalin, or Kim Il Sung, or Fidel Castro, or Moamar Khaddfey or any number of other post-colonial African leaders who have led so much of the continent into so much misery.

His path has not been followed by stellar leaders of his mold but so far South Africa has remained a far more peaceful, prosperous and unified nation than it would have been if he chose a different course.

So, it matters not what political banner you travel under, you can bewail and bemoan the passing of a leader that we do not see many of on this planet.

Unfortunately, most leaders are of a lessor sort, who – rather than through compromise, dialogue and reconciliation – seek to force those who disagree with them to conform to their agenda, their world view. We need to look no further than our borders here in the United States.

It is easy to cast blame on the Republicans or the Democrats. Heck, from my point of view there is ample blame to go around, but my observation would be that for the last five or six years, it has been the left that has been trying to ram their vision of the world through and into acceptance. Our president made no bones about his goal was to “transform” the nation; unfortunately that leaves little room for dialogue, compromise and reconciliation.

My Left Coast friend makes no bones of his approval of such an agenda, as he should because it obviously is saving him thousands of dollars per year. But as I have said, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored. Obviously, my friend’s isn’t, so he can celebrate the fact that he is benefitting. I am glad he is being helped in a way that he wants.

Now, I probably would have approached the problem differently … in fact I have … but that is the wonder of this nation … or has been … that we are able to seek our own paths through life and not force others to conform to our vision, however much better we may think it may be.

So, I took his rant as a teaching moment … mostly to teach myself to understand that there are others out there who don’t view the world through a prism that even remotely resembles the one I see. That doesn’t mean they are evil or bad … they just don’t see things my way.

I may think that they are very wrong … but I am not going to force them to conform to my vision. I might encourage them to reexamine their prism and inspect some of the facets of how they view the world … because I would hope they would see that there may be some validity in my world view.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, the South African leader, is dead at age 95.

May he rest in peace.

I know millions of words will be written about the man, his times, his life, his death and what I say will add little to discussion. Still, I feel compelled to add something.

Mandela rightfully does stand for how one person can affect the course of history for countless millions. Whether you agree with his politics as a young man, or his methods then, or his actions in later life as the president of a reborn South Africa or not, his actions did change a lot of world and that is not to be sneezed at.

Yes, I suppose, you could point out he was a “communist” when being a communist in post-colonial Africa was the cool thing to do. Besides, it got you support you needed to carry on the political fight for the rights of black Africans who were, admittedly, being shortchanged by the white Africans. (Note bene: Both sides were Africans)

Still, he and the African National Congress did wage war against the Afrikaans regime that used apartheid to hold back the majority blacks from the fruits of their labors. Like all wars, it was a violent one.

In the early 1960s, he was caught, prosecuted and imprisoned for his actions. He would stay in prison for 27 years. During that time he became a symbol of the oppression of black Africans in South Africa. As a symbol he became larger than life, but he still was a human.

Probably the most incredible thing about Mandela is somehow during those years of hell in a hellhole, he grew to be the man we saw in the 1990s and early 2000s. A man of grace and considerable integrity.

It was his integrity that struck me as being the most incredible thing about him. He saw his mission as bringing a freedom, a role in their governance for the black Africans and he stuck by that mission despite the personal cost him.

Like people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, he grew to understand the power of non-violence and forgiveness, it seemed to me. That does not mean he was not a ruthless leader, just one who saw a different way to achieve his ends.

His handling of the transition from a “whites only” rule to “black majority” rule probably will be his lasting legacy. It is one I respect him for the most. Rather than seek vengeance, he  sought reconciliation. Rather than retribution, he sought justice through the admission that bad things had happened, and that through the recognition and admitting that these things had happened, both sides (hopefully) would find it possible to forgive those who transgressed against them.

By using the power of the market, rather than the state, he helped break down the social and economic barriers that had riven the old South Africa. He proved not to be such a “communist” after all.

South Africa also did something no other nation has done: They renounced nuclear weapons and gave up their capacity to build them AFTER they had developed one. That alone is mindboggling.

Is life better in South Africa today than it was 25 years ago? I don’t know, but I think South Africans – by and large and as a whole, rather than as individuals – think it is. Yes, I suppose there are white Afrikaans who feel that they have lost something, but I would question if it really was theirs to have exclusively. Just like there are those in the US who wish for the old days to return.

South Africa still is a work in progress, much like the United States. Fifty years ago, when I was a young man, the US was going through its own convulsions as it dealt with its own history of apartheid. Separate but equal was in its death throes.

The US, for the most part – at least de jure,  has been able to tear down most of those walls that divided it before (except we have erected new ones in an elusive quest for restitution). We may have a way to tear down the per se  barriers, but there, too, we have come a long, long way in my lifetime. Sometimes I wish we could recognize that fact, but it seems to be in the vested interest of some to deny that it has happened.

South Africa is a new nation now. It is a different nation. It is not a perfect nation, but then no nation is.

South Africa would not be the nation that it is, which is far more united then it was when Mandela became president and that is his doing. Like the United States’ George Washington, who is his own time was as revolutionary as Nelson Mandela, Mandela laid down a marker that will be difficult to emulate, but one it would benefit the world if more leaders tried to emulate.

Yes, Mandela will be remembered more for his mythology than for his reality, but then again, so is George Washington.

Somewhere, there is a saying that says something like “When the myth is more compelling and better for the nation, go with the myth.”

Americans have done that with their founding fathers and, in a sense, South Africa (and the world to some degree) has done the same with the founding father of the new South Africa.

Nelson Mandela

1918- 2013

May he now rest in peace