"He was the last of them..."
Charles P. Pierce:
Nelson Mandela died yesterday, and he was the last of them, the last of the patriots in a line all the way back to George Washington who fought to rid their native countries of the deadweight of colonialism, who fought for self-determination against the rule of distant, unyielding governments that slid into tyranny without even knowing they were doing it, who fought and won and, in Mandela's case, like Washington, but unlike Michael Collins and so many others, outlived the stifling detritus of dying empires. Nelson Mandela was a reminder of all the others, famous and obscure, who fought the same battle in so many places against so many oppressors, known and unknown. He was the last in their line, the last of them -- people like, to name only one, Ho Chi Minh -- who drew strength and purpose from the deep, lasting echoes of what a group of wealthy merchants and planters -- and, yes, slaveholders -- set loose upon the world in Philadelphia in 1776. What they did was to set freedom itself free, although most of them probably didn't know they were doing it at the time, and many of them would have blanched at the prospect. But the one thing they did, Mr. Jefferson and all of them, was throw out to the world in their magnificent rhetoric a magnificent bluff. Nelson Mandela was the last man who called it in the last place it was called.
All men are created equal.
Endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Self-evident.
Call.
And raise.
The rest: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/RIP_Nelson_Mandela
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