Posted on 02/22/2014 8:11:03 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Everyone on the planet is a descendant of some slave.
So if the children of illegal aliens who were brought to this country and therefore are not citizens can’t be “punished for the sins of their fathers”, how is it that people who never held slaves or had any responsibility for slavery are suddenly responsible for reparations? How about reparations to the citizens of the US for all the resources drained by and mayhem committed by illegal aliens who are perpetrators of the crime of being here illegally?
A strong set of personal moral values and righteousness are the bedrock ‘wealth’ that all should cultivate first; otherwise, any material wealth will be wasted on the immoral.
Serfdom for all is Obamacare. Everyone is doomed including the descendants of slaves. It took the lives of 300,000 white men and boys to liberate the South from Slavery. The descendants of those 300,000 need reparations from the descendants of slaves as payback for their blood and mental suffering. I will take my first $50,000 in silver, please.
A contradiction in terms. If you extort money from me in the name of reparations then I'm not going to feel very conciliatory.
In short, through the tremendous amount of crime and addiction to gov. handouts, black Americans cost the country far more than they're worth. I realize there are millions of blacks (even many who voted for Obama) who work hard, obey the rules, and contribute to society. But overall, they're a completely unnecessary part of the general population ....great Americans like Tom Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Dr. Ben Carson, and a few other conservative blacks aside. The latter are welcome to stay....the rest of the whiny complainers please leave.
“Comments?”
The appearance of articles such as this one about reparations, and the increasing noise from the left about wealth inequality and white privilege, plus occasional articles in academic journals and the media about the $16 trillion in 401K and IRA accounts suggests the next crusade of the left may be “social justice” which includes a massive redistribution scheme. In today’s New York Times there is an article referencing a new academic study suggesting social mobility is very slow and needs to be addressed by government.
Once the election of 2014 is over, Obama and his handlers will be unrestrained by any prospect of facing voters in the future. Given the aggressiveness with which they have pursued the health care, gay rights, government funded abortion, global warming, and immigration amnesty agendas it may be wealth redistribution will be the major push for the 2014 to 2016 period.
I have to words or letters “FU”
I didnt read it but imo, this would be cover because I believe through the banking system and govt that reparations have been going on for a number of years. Less interest on money, easier to get loans and just easy money from govt loans. jmo
“I have said in the past – and I’ll repeat again – that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed,” he said in 2008 right before his historic election.”
I bet half just want a $10million paycheck and white people in chains.
It's about time the Black race-baiters like Sharpton/Jackson/Obama/Holder and a whole lot of others had to make restitution for the damages they have wrought and continue to perpetrate. Add them to the average Democrat and we have a real start. Then, have those that riot/rob/murder make personal restitution to everyone of every color that they harm/have harmed.
If they do that, I'll be glad to chip in my 25 cents for my personal transgressions that have kept Blacks in slavery...
My Scotts ancestors were enslaved by the Romans. I wants a Ferrari for repairashuns. (sic, sic and more sic)
Perhaps there can a case be made that no black person with as much as 1/8 or less Caucasian or Asian genes shall be permitted to reside in the western hemisphere.
Exceptions to the rule would be those that have emigrated of their own free will. Only those with ancestral slavery would be subject to the ruling.
Those that recognize the benefits of living in the western hemisphere rather than Africa can remain if they sign a sworn statement disavowing the need to receive any form of monetary or other damages. The receipt of the privilege of not living in Africa is all that is required to off set the need for any reparations.
I also find it interesting that the author has expanded the justification for slavery to include Jim Crow. If they want to use the reparations settlements in Kenya as precedent then they obviously feel the need to have actual, live victims.
We are already there.
Food Stamps, EBT, TANF, Affirmative Action, and every other program is designed to to steal our money, and thus our time and our lives, to give to these people while they do not have to lift a finger.
Public schools denigrate whites while teaching blacks that they deserve the world without having to earn it.
I think reparations are in order.
Black people should repay the government for all the welfare support they have received—several trillion dollars since LBJ and his “Great Society”.
Native Americans should stop taking government welfare and stand on their own.
Illegal immigrants should make reparations by repatriating.
White liberals should be made to repay for all the social and economic damage they’ve done to the rest of us. They should have a special tax rate and be required to pay back the 20 trillion in debt they’ve burdened us with.
Yes. Reparations are in order.
Slavery in the United Stares has resulted in an African descended citizenry that has more liberty, opportunity, education, wealth and prosperity than any other similarly sized group of black people on the face of the earth. I suspect that the perpetually racially aggrieved discomfiture with the notion that black people should express gratitude for this eventual outcome has much to do with the realization that it undercuts much of the basis for “White Guilt” that the Politically Correct so love to wield as a cudgel to beat back dissents against slavery reparations.
I have always been mystified by racial grievance mongers who pontificate on the glorious Nirvana that their lives would be had they only been left in Mother Africa, notwithstanding the general quality of life there. Since most American blacks have some measure of Caucasian genealogical ancestry, and since slavery was the transmission belt that enabled the mixing of their black and white ancestor’s gene pools, (whether by rape, semi voluntary or voluntary sexual associations) what they are really saying is that they and their descendants would rather not exist.
I acknowledge the kidnapping and suffering of my African ancestors, and the resultant decades of slavery, oppression, and discrimination that amounted to a monstrous crime for them and to this nation’s creed. I experienced some of that horrid legacy in the form of beatings and assaults as a youngster when I strayed into white neighborhoods in 1960’s Chicago. But the result was me and my family living in a nation that is the enormous net benefit that this one is NOW. I am profoundly grateful to be here. That reality is the embodiment of the meaning of “paradox.” As progressives and liberals LOVE to say GET OVER IT!!!!
Do not misunderstand me. I welcome the opportunity for any clarification of the historical record, and should that clarification reveal more evidence of the often bestial nature of the American institution of slavery, than we should unflinchingly face and acknowledge it. The historical record should be properly contextualized, and honestly examined without any attempt to inflate the crime beyond the actual truth of the injustice. We also should acknowledge that the only organized political and philosophical opposition to the once nearly universal institution of slavery was centered in the Western world, principally the US, Great Britain and France. The racial navel gazing, racial identity posturing, and puffed up grievance mongering should be rejected for the PC irrelevance that it is.
Reparations advocates often attach a variation of the of the tiresome “Uncle Tom” argument without using that epithet by referring to black opponents of reparations as “black people who didn’t want to leave the Masters plantation when slavery ended.” I can safely conclude that most of them view contemporary issues first and foremost through the prism of racial identity politics. It is probably inconceivable to them that historically aware black people can object to reparations for principled reasons that are grounded in constitutional, historical and cultural factors.
They will speak of of the legacy of colonial exploitation as though it was completely negative with absolutely nothing of significance to contribute to any nation’s future successful growth. Much of Great Britain was subdued and conquered by the Romans, at an enormous price in slaughter, blood and enslavement, but the infrastructure, basis for law, and technology that they left behind had much to do with Britain becoming one of the greatest empires in history from a disparate aggregation of uncivilized tribes. Singapore, Ireland and Hong Kong were brutally colonized, but despite being devoid of natural resources are now among the most prosperous countries on earth, owing in large part to the civil service tradition that the British left behind. Similar institutions were extant in most of the British and Belgian African colonies. I do not attempt to gainsay the proposition that colonial rule is often brutal, exploitative and cruel. Rather I say that it can often serve as a basis for the future success of nations that are freed from the colonial yoke should they embrace capitalism, the rule of law and liberty. Africa’s contemporary problems have more to do with corruption, graft, strong man rule, tribalism, and an undue infatuation with Marxist socialism than with any legacy of slavery or colonialism.
Similarly many of the contemporary problems of the black community have little to do with the legacy of slavery than that of a “monopoly of philosophy” (i.e. an unwarranted loyalty to the Democratic party and many of the tenets of modern day liberalism) within the black community that rejects educational alternatives such as school choice, charter schools, and home schooling instead of the ignorance factories that many public schools within the inner-city have become. In his book “Unfounded Loyalty” the Rev. Wayne Perryman lays out a solid case that due to the singularly racist and destructive historical policies of the Democratic party (and I will include the Great Society Welfare state of LBJ’s democrats which has been shown conclusively to have been the single most important factor in the destruction of the two parent black family) it is THEY who should be paying reparations to American blacks.
The main reason that I am not entitled to slavery reparations is because I was NOT ENSLAVED. I grew up in an era in which I remember all of the visible (literally) signs of Jim Crow when I visited relatives in the south in the early 60’s. I experienced physical racial attacks as my newly acquired South side Chicago neighborhood underwent racial integration. I experienced some minor racial discrimination at other times and places. No one has to tell me how bad it was, I have first hand experience. The United States today is NO LONGER THE NATION THAT ONCE LEGALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IT’S BLACK CITIZENS, unless you wish to consider “Racial Preferences” for preferred minorities, which is another form of legally codified racism in the guise of cultural Marxism. None of that changes the fact that I am blessed to be a citizen of the greatest nation in the history of mankind, with a higher standard of living, opportunity and liberty than any other.
If you want concrete evidence of the butcher’s bill to atone for the sin of slavery, than look for the thousands of Civil War graveyards of Union soldiers that proliferate the length and breadth of this country, particularly east of the Mississippi river. Sometimes it seems as though the race industry merchants and class action lawyers would divide us into warring ethnic enclaves with mortar pits in the streets sniping at each other ala the Balkans, all of them seeking racial spoils with government help. I truly think that the reparations racket is nothing more than an immoral cultural Marxist wealth redistribution scheme, spearheaded by the shock troops of the divisive racial industrial complex.
I’m with you, there, Cousin.
If reparations are to be paid, they should be paid by the Democratic Party. They were the slavers, they were the authors of Jim Crow. They are the ones who fought against freeing the slaves, they are the ones who fought for race repression, and they are the ones who continue to be obsessed by race in the modern era.
When you look at old photographs of lynchings there isn’t a Republican to be seen, except for maybe some of the people hanging from the trees. When you see old photographs of people being fire-hosed, the only Republicans in the picture would possibly be some of the people being fire-hosed.
I remember those days, and it pleases me to know that with the passing of my generation there won’t be anyone left alive who remembers how it once was. I admit, I was shielded from much of it, my folks were Republicans and the church we were raised in taught us that in Christ there is no jew or greek, no white or black. We believed it. But I saw enough and heard enough from the surrounding world and it disturbed my sense of right and wrong.
Nobody could explain it in a way that didn’t make it worse.
And I remember otherwise good people defending what was clearly wrong, and that taught me a life-long lesson:
Evil persists because of otherwise good people. The evil people are easy to spot and you can defend yourself against them. Its the good people who accept evil who are the most dangerous, because you don’t see them coming, and believing in their own goodness they can’t accept that they can be on the side of evil themselves.
A corollary to that lesson is this: most people get their sense of right and wrong from the culture that bred them. It makes it impossible for them to see when the culture itself is going off the rails.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.