Posted on 08/17/2004 2:38:57 PM PDT by unspun
By The Leader-Chicago Bureau (admin@illinoisleader.com)
CHICAGO -- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes has just released a statement clarifying what appeared to be a surprising position he took at a news conference yesterday.
"I think a cogent argument could be made for reparations in principle," Keyes is quoted as saying to reporters yesterday, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Chicago Tribune expanded:
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."
The response from conservatives was immediate. "Who downstate will now vote for Keyes?" wrote IllinoisLeader.com reader Randall Mead of Springfield today. "I certainly won't."
This afternoon, Keyes released the following statement, clarifying his position:
I have consistently opposed the effort to extort monetary damages from the American people. As I have argued in the past, the great sacrifices involved in the Civil War represented the requital in blood and treasure for the terrible injustices involved in slavery. In this form the so called "reparations" movement represents an insult to the historic commitment that many Americans made to the end of slavery, which included the sacrifice of their lives.I have also consistently maintained that the history of slavery, racial segregation and discrimination did real damage to black Americans, left real and persistent material wounds in need of healing.
In various ways through the generations since the end of slavery, America has tried to address this objective fact, but without real success. This was at least in part the rational for many elements of the Great Society programs of the sixties, and for the original and proper concept of affirmative action developed under Republican leadership during the Nixon years.
Unfortunately, the government-dominated approaches of the Great Society, which purported to heal and repair the legacy of historical damage, actually widened and deepened the wounds. They undermined the moral foundations of the black community and seriously corrupted the family structure and the incentives to work, savings, investment, and business ownership.
The idea I have often put forward to address this challenge involves a traditionally Republican, conservative and market-oriented approach: removing the tax burden from the black community for a generation or two in order to encourage business ownership, create jobs and support the development of strong economic foundations for working families.
This has the advantage of letting people help themselves, rather then pouring money into government bureaucracies that displace and discourage their own efforts. It takes no money from other citizens, while righting the historic imbalance that results from the truth that black slaves toiled for generations at a tax rate that was effectively 100 percent.
I have also made it clear that while I believe that the descendants of slaves would be helped by this period of tax relief, my firm goal and ultimate objective is to replace the income tax, and thereby free all Americans from this insidious form of tax slavery. It is well known that this is one of the key priorities of the Keyes campaign.
In response to Keyes' statement, conservative Jack Roeser of Family Taxpayers Network told IllinoisLeader.com, "I expect Keyes would say this is one of those interesting subjects to be talked about among people sharing ideas. Reparations is an impractical concept. Everybody in every category has been wronged in one or the other, and you cannot single one out."
Roeser continued, "Keyes is a man of ideas, and I expect he gets into discussions like this that are proper in their proper place, but that he would never vote for reparations. The problem with American politics is that people don't get into deep discussions."
© 2004 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved
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Retire already Keyes. You have ran out of gas. Your boring.
I see it differently. We'll just have to disagree.
Not from what I have read but ok.
I did not say I agree with his idea, but I'm not having a kneejerk reparations reaction like everyone else seems to be but nevermind.
I'm all for that.
How about making those with less political clout pay the way for those with more political clout?
How about "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, as determined by some guy named Luis"?
How about, "crank up the crazy-maker machine to eleven, and see what comes out the noisy end"?
Ultimately, that's what "reparations" of any stripe is likely to accomplish.
I guess 40 odd years of "great society" income/wealth redistribution isn't sufficient "reparation" to satisfy some comers.
Useful idiots of the left, line up to the left. Useless idiots of the right, line up to the right. Commence firing at will.
Oh, and everyone else -- yeah, you, you, you, you, and you (AKA "the clued"), duck!
The more I read about this insanity, the more I wonder if Charlie Manson is sitting back and smirking over finally seeing his "helter-skelter" dreams fall into place.
Good grief, what's happening to this country?
He's against reparations, what else do you need to know?
Better a "kneejerk" revulsion over reparations, which stand for everything conservatives are supposed to be against, than the kneejerk embracing of the idea by those who think everything Alan Keyes says is great.
He's proabortion which is more important to me than Keyes' ideas since Keyes' is not going to win anyway.
When Keyes has managed to turn off people who used to think he was better than sliced bread,forget about him "pinning back ears" of youngsters,who don't understand the majority of the words he uses.
You DO realize, of course, that this tax break discriminates not only against whites, but asian, hispanic, and every other race as well? Even if it ONLY affected the white race, I reject the idea that I am supposed to take this racial economic slap because my ancesters were not lynched. *I* didn't put a white hood over my head and burn a cross in a black person's yard. I didn't whip a black individual, treating than worse than I would a piece of cattle.
Keyes is advocating a RACE based tax. I don't support discrimination against blacks, nor do I embrace it for any other race.
That's because it's the correct deduction. :-)
Like it or not, you do have a gun to your head. You might want to figure out how to get that gun in the hands of Alan Keyes as opposed to Maxine Waters.
And I'm NOT going to give my money to Shaquille O'Neal just because he's black.
Your hyperbole is not helpful, quite frankly, I'm willing to have a thoughtful discussion that could perhaps enlighten us both. I'm not going to waste my time to discussing this with someone who won't honestly think about it. What if the price of your freedom was letting Shaq not pay taxes? What if the price of a divided black electorate, and thus the long term domination of the Republican party and platform was a reduction in taxes? You could argue that is not the case and will not happen. When you argue that you are simply going to have none of it, you might as well join the losertarians...you are on the road to irrelevant.
Nothing everything he says is great but I'm not willing to totally trash him either.
I grew up watching Chicago politics. Keyes won't "pin back" a damn thing.
He's an outsider, and will get treated as such.
I'll hope for the best. Thank you.
We were talking about reparations, weren't we?
yes. You don't like Keyes I know that. I think his idea sucks but that doesn't mean if I had a choice between him and Obama that I wouldn't vote for him.
Well okay you have a right to your opinion which I don't even disagree with but I'm willing to hear Keyes out.
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