Imagine this: You're driving down a road doing nothing wrong. Not speeding, swerving, or driving recklessly. Your license is valid. The car is plated and insured. You are legal in every sense of the word. Then, all of sudden you are pulled over and a cop hands you a ticket. You ask what for, and he says your grandfather was a known reckless driver that hurt someone in 1922 and this is how the justice system works now. Somebody has to pay for the sins of your forefathers, and today it's you.
Imagine your response when you go to Traffic Court and the Judge fines you a hefty sum. To your surprise, he awards it to someone you've never met or even heard of.
This is what reparations are: A fine imposed (one year, one century, or whenever) later on completely innocent people for sins that happened long ago at the hands of others. And to consider it right, just and proper shows what vacuous cheeseheads the Democratic Party in this country have become.
The idea of reparations for wrongdoing (in this case, slavery) long ago is becoming popular among Democrat Presidential candidates. Of course, they're courting the black vote, and what better way to get it then to promise ... free money. Spartacus, Fauxcahontas and Kamala-twoface are already on record as supporting it in some fashion. Bernie Slanders is dodging the question for the moment, and to his credit he is on record in 2016 as opposing it. But it's a new day, and sooner or later he'll have to go on record about it.
President #44 made it patently clear he would not consider it; rightly so. If I remember correctly, he identified as black.
Once the door is opened, where does it stop? Do we pay the expanded generational pyramid of slave descendants only? What is going to be the litmus test to determine who really is a descendant of a slave and who isn't? What about other wrongdoings perpetrated while the country was marching towards manifest destiny? Do we pay the descendants of native Americans for cheaply purchasing their land? Do we pay them for killing their women and children (google it, it's not pretty) in a genocidal fashion? Do we pay Mexico for taking Texas and California from them? Do we make the grandchildren of bank robbers repay the bank a hundred years later? Do we pay the children of military members because a DI roughed up dad? Do we pay the Vietnamese for spraying Agent Orange during the war? Agent Orange didn't just cause cancer in Americans; it killed a whole bunch of Vietnamese also... just as slow and awful as it later killed our GIs who served there.
No living citizen of America today has owned slaves. No black or white person alive in America today has ever been owned by another American. I've never owned a slave and nobody I know has ever been a slave. Slavery has been illegal in this country for over 150 years now. We know what happened, we know how it happened and we know when and how it stopped. We've learned the lessons and have moved on. Generations have come and gone in the meanwhile and we're far beyond where we were then.
While we're on the topic let's also say that if you were the victim of an unconscionable governmental action as were the Japanese-Americans during their illegal 3-year internment during WW2, then you are entitled to reparations. In 1988, Congress finally did the right thing and awarded $20,000 to each surviving person who was interned unjustly. But this only applied to people who were actually there, not their descendants.
Reparations is a dangerous path to go down. When one group of "victims" is paid off, the next group will pop up and demand their "fair share" for whatever ills their ancestors suffered.
To use the notion of reparations as a political tool in a campaign is despicable. But it seems there is no shortage of despicable people in politics, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
The movement of moderate Democrats further left does have a silver lining in it. Moving to radical positions such as legalizing infanticide (aka late-term abortion), reparations for slavery, and legitimizing illegal immigration including calling for voting rights for non-citizens will have one good result: Fewer Democrats will be elected, and this is not a bad thing.
If reparations for centuries-old sins perpetrated by our ancestors become reality someday, may I suggest a settlement?
One dollar each and a sincere apology, which of course, is priceless.
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