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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Oh well, if the D'rats could forgive Clinton for signing Welfare Reform, we can forgive Keyes for this. ;-`
"a moonbat"
Oh puleeze....
today's blacks are NOTHING like the jews fed to the ovens by the millions at places like auschwitz...
I am tired of a certain group of people constantly MINIMIZING and TRIVIALIZING the jewish holocaust by comparing it to their favorite pet peeve, or political agenda in ways so stupid and in such a ridiculously dissmilar constructs.
that strawman sample you gave is about as relevant to race based tax cuts, as hubcaps on a condom.
Thanks for not posting the more rancorous drivel that has flowed from the saint alan coffers for the past decade.
He thinks Bush is a threat?
Some folks are convinced HE is one.
I look at the 'drink the kool aid' comments around here, and see folks who will vote for anyone who says, "I am a conservative christian, pro life, and pro socialization of Christianity as the state religion via the law." And especially if that person shoots evil insults and implications towards our president.
AS I have said before. We need to reelect Bush.
We can live without a republican senator (rino) from Illinois. and any senator who proposes race based tax cuts... is a rino... I don't care where he stands on MORAL issues, they are NOT MY litmus test for authentic republicanism. TAX issues and RACE issues are first... and they are also the issues that we already fought ONE bloody civil war to resolve.
/feels wierd to say "my wife"
NFP
For the record,the two women I know who had ectopic pregnancies were both VIGINS/INTACT at marriage and didn't stray after marriage. CAN YOU MAKE THE SAME CLAIM;ARE YOU A VIRGIN? And neither woman ever had an abortion! These are good friends of mine,whose lives were shattered by the ectopic pregnancies,but because they are religious and believers,GOD gave them the strength to cope with their loss.It also helped,that both of them have loving husbands,wonderful families,and friends who were there for them.
CCP my posts,Askel,where I am a cheerleader FOR abortion...I double dog dare you! You can't do it,but try.
Hmmm..."harpies"? Coming from you,that's a compliment! But your LePer pals are cheering you on,I'm sure.Code words are just soooooooo handy,aren't they? But surely you can do better than that,can't you,or is bating and flaming your ONLY raison d'etre now? :-)
Ectopic pregnancies by themselves are not a clarion call to chastity. If someone had one because of PID then PID is the reason to be chaste.
=== Hmmm..."harpies"? Coming from you,that's a compliment!
You know ... it's not as if I mentioned anyone by name. I appreciate everyone's taking the time to show up for roll call, though.
=== CAN YOU MAKE THE SAME CLAIM;ARE YOU A VIRGIN?
For the last six years, I've been awfully consistent about focusing my anecdotal and illustrative arguments for Life squarely on myself as opposed to a friend, friend of a friend, etc. Surely a pro-lifer and longtime denizen of the forum like yourself is familiar by now with the events of the miscarriage which changed my life.
Or do you only hang out on the abortion threads concerning the Extreme Circumstances on which some base the conditional acceptance of the right to homicide which secures absolutely the legality of abortion, abortifacient contraception and artificial reproduction?
Unlike you,I NEVER "hang out" on abortion threads and made my comment on an ALAN KEYES thread.
Your straw men arguments notwithstanding,that IS what the topic happens to be,not specifically abortion or contraception or artificial reproduction.
And no,Askel,though I've been here a long time and have shared quite a number of threads with you,I don't know about your miscarriage,though I have vivid memories of your attacks on Libertarians,you talking about drinking,and endless polemics on Catholicism on threads that had nothing at all to do with religion. :-)
She as much as admitted she was baiting people, nopardons. I'm ignoring it, personally.
Only crazy people think the legitimate saving of a mother's life (as it is saved in the case of a treated ectopic pregnancy) is a "rationale" for legal abortion.
When pricked,the hollier than thou crowd have the blackest secrets. LOL
Facts,you and I shall continue to concentrate on the facts and stay on topic.
Hilliary loved her home state so much she shopped elsewhere.
Illinois is so corrupt, beginning with my Crook County that we begged Keyes to help.
Sorry to hear that Mike, for you know I respect your opinions
Deserves to be repeated!!
No kidding. I'm not supposed to think of voting for anyone but BUSH in 2004 or we'll end up with the great Satan and it'll all be MY fault. No culpability on W whatsoever for alienating his base, but hey, these are the same folks who like to blame Buchanan, Perot and 20 million voters for Bush the First losing the election rather than Mr. Read-My-Lips himself.
My question is where are all those incrementalist conservatives now? If we can find an excuse for cutting anyone's taxes and disempowering the fat greasy hands of big government, I'm all for it. I guess that there are those who are too politically correct on this forum to want lower taxes for anyone. It looks more and more like the left has won politically as well as culturally across the entire spectrum.
Thanks for the ping!
Obama has just lost the ability to go after Keyes on reparations; whereas Keyes doesn't have to bring the subject up at all now.
"Reparations was never an issue. Anywhere."
So you have inside information on what questions will be asked of the two candidates at the debates? At least one, if not many, of the questioners will be from Chicago, and one or more will be black. You think this topic won't come up? Think again. Remember, the topic has been brought up in the Chicago City Council, and if memory serves me right, Daley didn't come out against it. Also, companies doing business w/the city need to prove they were not involved in business involving any slave issues before their company can be hired by the city.
I am back for a few minutes trying to catch up on pings, not feeling to well today (like the commercial says, if you have your health, treaure it. I wish I did back when I had mine :(
Anyway, you are right as rain with your comment above. He left a long droning raving rant at me, which I am replying to right after this, I am pinging you to it, as well as the AM, whom I am inviting to check the server logs to prove that I am telling the truth. (Yeah, like a simple thing like the truth will get this guy to come to his senses, eh? Argh...)
Our fine feathered fiend is accusing me of having stalked him into another thread. His "evidence"? A friendly "make nice-nice" post I left to him in another thread, where I ran into him while replying, over the course of a few hours, to LOTS of people.
Of course, in his fevered mind, I hunted him down, and singled him out.
Maybe the voices told him that?
(I'm not joking about that, by the way. My late second wife was a diagnozed schizophrenic, and "the voices" told her similar "things" about me. He is starting to remind me of her. Like I said, creepy guy, very creepy. And I am uber-glad I did NOT let him bait me into giving him my RL contact information! I have a family to worry about!)
I dunno what other lunacy he's left here besides that mega-rant he aimed at me, and I haven't read it all, the first paragraph was all I could (literally) stomach. I may swing by later to see if I can wade through the rest of it -- and, see the rest of his ravings here.
More and more the Internet is turning into one of those bad scenes I'd encounter in "my yoot" in NYC. I remember the times I'd turn around a streetcorner, and be confronted by some loon with a spittle-spattered beard, that "thousand yard gaze" in his eyes, and a crumpled sheaf of hand-typed papers in his hand which he'd thrust at people with an angry "here, take this!"
(The one time I did look at one of those deranged broadsides, I couldn't make head or tail of it. It was page after page of edge-to-edge single-spaced no-paragraph deranged ravings about.. well, I never did figure that part out. ;)
The Internet: Streetcorner to the World. Soapbox Optional. <g>
I do not believe that you happened to ran into me on another thread to bring up a post that was more than 12 hours old within 2 minutes of you leaving this thread. Stop being deceitful. You clicked on my forums to read my other posts to see if I was a troll. I can accept that,
I did not follow you anywhere, and the administration can verify that, and has my invitation to do exactly that. You are starting to sound like a delusional paranoid.
This is a forum. People click on all sorts of threads. I never clicked on your posts, I never looked for your posts, I clicked that thread from the main forum page, and the Admin Moderator is hereby INVITED to check the server logs to verify this fact.
I stumbled upon your post in that thread. Big f'n whoop. I stumbled upon LOTS of posters in that thread. I must have left a dozen or more posts in that thread, to nearly as many posters. Thankfully, none of THEM are paranoid loons, accusing me of stalking THEM out, and finding them in that thread.
Only you, my creepy friend, only you.
And, only you have tried to get me to divulge my RL wherabouts too.
You are creepiness defined, pal.
Seek help.
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