One-way, tourist class to any country you like.
--Boot Hill
Posted on 08/19/2004 12:56:29 AM PDT by kattracks
The movement to legislate reparations for slavery has a new face: Alan Keyes.In a craven attempt to boost his faltering (read: hopeless) Senate campaign, Keyes said Monday that he would support exempting blacks from all taxation in order to repay the debt America owed them for enslaving their ancestors. Blacks would pay only Social Security taxes under his plan. The Chicago Tribune reported that Keyes justified his position with an appeal to ancient history, “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, usually no fan of the morés of the later Roman Empire, said this would “compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited.”
When whose labor was being “exploited,” Ambassador? It’s been far more than “a generation or two” since Americans atoned for their tolerance of the peculiar institution, which more than half the country never really tolerated, and which 300,000 free state Americans gave their lives to end.
In contrast, Keyes’ rival Barack Obama sounded much more conservative – not to mention sane – than Keyes, telling Illinois reporters, “I generally think that the best strategies for moving forward involve vigorously enforcing our anti-discrimination laws in education and job training and other programs that can lift all people out of poverty.”
Thus, in the Illinois Senate race, the left-wing Democrat has shunned the overheated racialist rhetoric embraced by his ultra-conservative Republican challenger.
So manifest is the illogic behind the reparations movement that it has been recognized by none other than Alan Keyes. Discussing the Civil War in a column in 2002, Keyes wrote, “The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood.” This would make Keyes’ second major flip-flop since announcing his candidacy last week, the first being his carpetbagger candidacy itself.
Mark your calendars: this is the earliest point at which Keyes has resorted to racial demagoguery, a staple of Keyes’ media appearances for nearly 20 years. When Keyes left the State Department in the late 1980s, he blamed his stalled career on a biased superior. Keyes referred to his inability to attract media attention during the 1996 presidential primaries as “a blackout, which means you keep the black out.” (Keyes last cited his racially charged dictionary in 1992, when he told Republicans they had gone colorblind, which “means that when a colored person walks in, you suddenly go blind.”) In 2000, the single-digit candidate accused the New Hampshire press corps of racism for not covering his presidential campaign to his satisfaction.
Beyond stirring ethnic animosities, Keyes also has a habit of engaging in genuinely neurotic behavior. Keyes chained himself to an Atlanta TV station in 1996, then went on a hunger strike to protest his exclusion from a televised debate. He deliberately provided fodder for Michael Moore’s camera during the 2000 primaries, body surfing the crowd at an alternative rock concert in return for Moore’s promised endorsement. (Moore predictably reneged.) Will this man convince Illinois voters that he’s the steady hand they want at the nation’s helm during a time of war?
The Illinois Republican Party chose Keyes, because, like his opponent, he is a minority and an eloquent speaker. If there’s any truth to the charge that the Republican Party is racist, it lies in the fact that the GOP continues to lavish political attention on a proven loser, with a case of racial hypersensitivity and a penchant for spouting nutty-sounding rhetoric, merely because he is black.
The reason Alan Keyes accepted the nomination is clear: running for elective office is his most reliable means of employment. Keyes paid himself $100,000 out of his campaign funds when he ran for Paul Sarbanes’ U.S. Senate seat in 1992 and more money out of subsequent campaigns. After telling Wolf Blitzer he was not taking a salary during his 1996 presidential bid, he was caught taking $20,000 (which he reimbursed after unwanted publicity).
For those who share a conservative position on social issues, Alan Keyes is not the face you want associated with your cause. Although he enacted little of his social agenda, Ronald Reagan gave religious conservatives a major propaganda coup by associating their opinions (which the media always portrayed as “extreme”) with his warm personality.
Alan Keyes does no such thing. He began the race by referring to the pro-choice African-American Obama as a “slaveholder” with all the sophistication and finesse of a street preacher. As Mike Murphy has noted in the Weekly Standard: “The job of a political candidate is to attract people to a party's political philosophy and bring victory to the party on Election Day. In two U.S. Senate races and two presidential campaigns, Alan Keyes has done the exact opposite: shown a great ability to stampede voters away from his candidacy like a herd of panicking animals fleeing a huge volcanic eruption.” Indeed, in his two home state Senate races (1988 and 1992), Keyes garnered 38 and 29 percent of the vote, respectively. In a ludicrous race against an equally charismatic, far more mainsteam-sounding minority politician, he is likely to pull in even fewer votes.
He’s already off to a disastrous start. In the now-reliably Democratic state of Illinois, Keyes chose to make his campaign’s keynote issue abortion, trumpeting his opposition to abortion in the case of rape and incest – a position far more restrictive than the Republican Party platform.
Electorally speaking, if Alan Keyes becomes equated with the pro-life movement, the public will safely conclude the pro-life movement is politically untenable. And the damage he does in the next seven weeks will go a long way towards eroding support for the Party of Lincoln in the Land of Lincoln.
Keyes is an eloquent spokesman for causes near to his heart. For the sake of those issues – and the Republican Party – he should never seek to be anything more.
One-way, tourist class to any country you like.
--Boot Hill
...Keyes said Monday that he would support exempting blacks from all taxation in order to repay the debt America owed them for enslaving their ancestors....
America did not enslave their ancestors.
A tiny percent of very rich people bought slaves and held them.
America shed the blood of over half a million men to FREE them.
Keyes should be telling blacks the same thing that Cosby is telling them: Handouts won't solve your problems. The answer lies in education and hard work.
Which brings up an interesting situation. Obama's father is a recent immigrant from Kenya. Obama's mother is white (from Kansas).
Is Keys proposing to pay Obama reparations just because he's black?
Interesting article.
Disappointed. Keyes is toast. Far better that he stood on principle and went down gaining philosophical ground, than this profane pandering. Now, not only will he lose, he will deserve to lose.
The opposite. Keyes is a descendent of slaves so he'd qualify. Obama was not descended from slaves so he does not.
The article is a good snapshot of the disastrous state of the Keyes'campaign.
I'm not sure I understand his call for reparations if this piece is accurate at all. I do know that he's a huge fan of the national sales tax so that all Americans can give themselves a tax cut whenever they like. He consideres the national income tax to be a "slave tax" in illustrating that the government, not the citizen, has first dibs on their paycheck and the level of taxation has no hard limits.
Thanks for pointing that out. It tells me *everything* I need to know. (I'm no fan of "reformed" lefty-radical, neo-Con Horowitz.)
reparations plan, which I am going to recommend to him:
After this legislation passes, (to take place in the year 2014, so everybody can comply with the voting requirement mentioned in 1.) anyone mentioning the word "Race," in any conversation anywhere on American soil is to be tattooed on the forehead and elsewhere with a big red "R," and is to be forbidden access to any bar where I might wish to stop and consume an adult beverage of my choice, so help me Obama Barak.(Come on, ya gotta love that name ... kinda like a super hero!)
As if you'd know anything about that.
Wishful thinking on your part.
The immoral practice was upheld by law, just as the immoral practice of abortion is upheld by law today.
Did he proofread this?
Which of course is the whole point of this purely political intellectual exercise.
Which proves the author is a dolt.
The Illinois Senate seat is an open REPUBLICAN seat.
Um, last I looked, Alan Keyes was a candidate for the US Senate and this is now an integral part of his election plank. The place for a "purely political intellectual exercise" is in a classroom, not on the stump.
The other senator is a Democrat. Most congressmen are Democrats. The governor is a Democrat. Both houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats. It's gone Democrat the last three elections and it will go Democrat in November. It is a reliably Democratic state.
Not necessarily.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.