OIG Hotline, please be informed that I have resumed reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, aloud to my son each day.
Obviously, Mr. Mandela's experience, language, opinions, choices, and affiliations were his own and no one else's.
My stalker has suggested that certain language within this narrative continues to be co-opted by far right FBI personnel as evidence of "radicalism," "Communism," "socialism," criminality or an approval of violence.
I harbor none of these views.
I am simply reading a book about an extraordinary man who believed in civil liberties and human rights for all South Africans.
My own beliefs support civil discourse and peaceful engagement as necessary principles in the nurturing and sustenance of our democracy.
Free speech, the open exchange of ideas, the right to peaceful assembly, the freedom to access literature such as Long Walk to Freedom without being mischaracterized -- these are freedoms I hope that we, as Americans, will reclaim.
During Nelson Mandela's decades of imprisonment on Robben Island, he read extensively -- a freedom of the mind which no doubt fostered his ongoing intellectual and spiritual evolution, and spared him from the bitterness which might otherwise have consumed him.
Here is a loving photograph of his books from that time period:
Hopefully, when we, as Americans, read books, we do so in the same spirit that Nelson Mandela read so extensively: in a search for insight, perspective, growth, and wisdom.
He was no doubt edified by that process. Perhaps we might find ourselves ennobled as well.
Lane MacWilliams
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