Portrait of Booker T. Washington by Frances Benjamin Johnston
Yesterday I penned a quick note regarding the latest Democrat outrage/issue for 2020, Slavery Reparations. In it I noted a number of difficulties implementing such a program. Today however, we’re after a much more fundamental question, “Why are we even talking about this in the first place?” We should ask this question a lot more often than we do when confronted with leftist tropes such as this.
Usually, when confronted with such, the first thing we do is start looking at reasons that “it won’t work,” or “it will cost too much.” Once we do that, we’ve effectively ceded the basic premise of the debate to the leftists. Our biggest violators are of course the RINOs, but even conservative stalwarts such as Pat Buchanan, as noted yesterday, occasionally fall prey to this trap.
We did this with the so called “Green New Deal,” where our side focused almost entirely on the astronomical cost of Congresswoman Occasionally-Cogent’s 3rd Grade Science Project, thus giving her the opening to ask, “So where’s the Republican Plan?” So once again, we are on the defensive. We are in a position where we have to come up with a plan to solve a non-existent problem. Really?
What we should have done, as I noted in a previous article, is right from the start, deny the foolish premise. Deny (using facts) that there is any significant climate change and deny, that Mankind’s paltry 15 parts per MILLION contribution of CO2 (plant food) has any influence on it. Stop the conversation aborning. Ridicule the left for their abject stupidity and move on.
We are already going down the wrong road in the case of reparations. We’re already discussing who will be doing the paying, how much we will pay, who will be getting the payola and how much this will sap the treasury. By debating the “how can we do this,” we effectively admit that, “YES, we do owe reparations.” By discussing the details and difficulty of how we might go about this and how much it will cost, we are stupidly agreeing with the outlandish idea that somehow today’s American taxpayers (presumably just the white ones) owe some sort of debt to today’s American Blacks who may or may not be the descendants of slaves.
NO. We most certainly do not. Period. Full Stop. Nobody living in the United States today, ever legally owned a slave. Nobody living in the United States today was ever legally enslaved here. THAT is the discussion. Not whether we can afford it.
Although the practice of slavery long preceded the establishment of the Federal government, that same Federal government did, through a war that killed over 600,000 Americans and via the Constitutional Amendment that followed, eliminate that heinous practice. If the blood of over 600,000 Americans isn’t enough atonement, isn’t enough reparation, then heed the words of the late great Booker T. Washington who said (emphasis added)
Having once got its [slavery’s] tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.
Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.
Indeed.
Tomorrow, Part III
Mike Ford is a retired Infantry Officer who writes on Military, Foreign Affairs and occasionally dabbles in Political and Economic matters.
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