Posted on 08/17/2004 5:58:48 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
One day after their first meeting, U.S. Senate hopefuls Barack Obama and Alan Keyes were back on the campaign trail again Monday.
Speaking at a news conference at the Hotel InterContinental in Chicago, Republican Keyes added to his now familiar talking points his stance on slavery reparations.
Prompted by a reporter's question, Keyes gave a brief tutorial on Roman history and said that in regard to reparations for slavery, the U.S. should do what the Romans did: "When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time--a generation or two--they exempted the damaged city from taxation."
Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment." In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade Saturday...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
That I don't know. But he sure is giving the people something to talk about. I'm not sure if he's fully for it. This particular resolution only establishes hearings to find remedies to best put the issue to rest. Keyes suggested one. I'm sure I wont change anybody's mind concerning him, but if the President comes out and stomps for him, would you be willing to call a truce and back him?
We'll have to see what he comes up with next. I'd like to know what are some of the issues you're interested in him talking about.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Another good idea: What about the same sort of relief from taxation for descendants of immigrants who were displaced from their homelands because of Communist tyranny which resulted from the US providing aid to the Reds and allowing them to subjugate Eastern and Central Europe in the aftermath of WWII?
The vast majority of us don't support this. And don't tell me that the Bush people didn't contort when Kennedy's No Child Left Behind and the Medicare boondogle were being discussed.
Paid in Blood
By Alan Keyes
April 4, 2002
Holy Week is a season for reflecting on a great price paid, once and for all, and the life that arose in triumph over sin and evil once that price was paid. And what an unfortunate season, indeed, for some to renew their effort to extort "reparations" for slavery from their fellow citizens.
Yet, lawsuits have been filed. Those responsible propose to settle the accounts of slavery leaving the Civil War out of the equation -- complete and utter nonsense. The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood.
To answer the reparations question, we must re-awaken a living understanding of the great moral drama played out in blood, treasure and human spirit on the battlefields of America a century and a half ago. President Lincoln stated in the Second Inaugural that, at the beginning of the war, "slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war."
Somehow.
By this simple adverb, Lincoln captures the great question slavery posed to the soul of the nation. The war began in imperfect understanding, and concluded in clear understanding, that it had been caused by national violation of the laws of nature, and of nature's God. Lincoln spoke this truth for the nation:
If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."
The moral drama of the Civil War was the nation's discernment, in its agony, that slavery was the cause of the war not as an economic interest, not as a political provocation, but as a sin which must be paid for by the blood of North and South.
At the heart of Union sentiment was the sense that a precious common good, to which all had legitimate claim, was being denied by the illegitimate refusal of their fellow citizens in the South to accept the verdict of the 1860 election. In its various ways, the North understood that the Union was the attempt of one people to establish the possibility of self-government upon the basis of the equal dignity of all men. And so the North understood that secession in defense of slavery represented the illegitimate bid by the South to replace self-government by equal free men with its elder adversary -- the tyrannical rule of the powerful over their weaker brethren.
In ever increasing numbers and with ever increasing clarity, the soldiers of the North came to understand that the cause of the Union was the cause of liberty for all men. In their letters and diaries, the leavening motive, in the chaos of war, was increasingly the belief that God called them to sacrifice their lives to repair the moral stain of slavery. And over this increasing discernment, President Lincoln exercised wise, and good and patient statesmanship. He saw, and led, a people coming to understand itself and its duty -- its vocation unto death and a "new birth of freedom."
This story is so complicated, and deep, that the venal and superficial among us can continue to deny it. Pseudo-learned scribblers who find contradiction in every prudence, and hypocrisy in every generous concession, continue to offer us their "real Lincoln" and to deny that Lincoln, or the North, had any real moral purpose. They demonstrate instead only their own incapacity to recognize moral purpose in the genuine complexity of human affairs. The true Lincoln, and the true moral greatness of the Union cause, will continue to tower above their uncomprehending pettiness.
Our liberty, reborn from the Civil War's labor, remains imperfect -- as we must expect of any mortal thing. Pettifogging lawyers and dishonest scholars will always be able to carp selectively and ignorantly about the warts upon our body politic.
But the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all, by the American people's deliberate acceptance of their duty to pay it when, in God's providence, Southern intransigence brought it due.
Let us resolve, this Easter season, to remember the price America paid for her sin. Let us remember and venerate the high moral purpose of those, including Lincoln, who died to make men free.
True he could have said that.
What concerns me is that no one in the race is speaking plainly about the truth - that descendants of slaves are not entitled to reparations from people who were never slave-holders. I would have expected that to be Keyes' position, and I'm genuinely surprised that it's not.
Listen, don't try that; we have been discussing education and healthcare on this forum for years, with differeing views. And we will be discussing and arguing about it for years to come.
But one thing that has been a constant on this forum is NO REPARATIONS of any kind, period.
Until the great God Keyes brings it up. And now you all think it's just peachy.
So much for your view that Keyes is a REAL conservative.
See #504
Also, as a southern freeper said on another thread, we want reparations from the African American community for shedding blood in the Civil War to FREE the slaves.
I think it's perfectly plain for all to see that I don't like Alan Keyes; President Bush has to make certain appearances because of politics; I don't.
John Kerry was in Viet Nam.
Well, if you ever run for office, let me know so I can vote against you.
Civil War wasn't about freeing slaves.
The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood. - Alan Keyes
Some soldiers in the Army of Keyes seem to be AWOL at the moment. LOL
Uh oh.......shall we just sit back and wait for somebody to come along and explain to us why THIS is not a flip flop for funds, how we are misunderstanding? Again.
I've had that argument about a gaxillion times and am not going to have it again. The net result is that northerners shed blood, as did many southerners, in order to free the slaves.
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