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.
Y'all were doing such a grand job, weren't you...
Give Keyes a chance.
The WBTS was not about slavery. It was about states' riights. While many people didn't own slaves, the social thought of the time allowed it to go on wholly support by the US government. I don't support reparations, but those are the facts.
Looks like he's blowing his chance. Candidate for a little over a week and he already has a bullet hole in one foot. What will next week bring?
Well, unless Keyes was asking the City Club of Chicago to write papers or otherwise debate this issue, it's an integral part of his campaign. See:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1194545/posts
What is the percentage of blacks who pay income tax?
Since most blacks are in the middle class, a majority pay at least some income tax.
Technically, those "free state Americans gave their lives" to prevent other states who freely joined the union from peacefully seceding.
Then YOU pay them reparations. Y'all wanted slavery bad enough to rebel, now pay the piper.
On a positive note...
We will never have to pay reparations to the descendants of aborted babies.
It's legal, but usually frowned upon and not many do it. One good reason for this is that almost everyone who runs for high office either already holds an office (Like Kerry, Obama, and Bush) or are independently wealthy (like Jack Ryan or John Corzine).
In fact, part of the rational behind it being legal - and behind Keyes doing it - is that few "ordinary people" could afford to be away from their prime source of income for the time necessary to be elected.
Personally, I understand the negative political ramifications, but I see nothing wrong with it so long as the salary was not excessive. I suppose one could argue that $96,000 a year is excessive (depending on what your obligations were) but the fact of having a "salary" itself doesn't bother me at all.
God knows If I ever ran for anything I'D need one.
Actually, Keyes intent is to repair economic hardship - not to compensate directly for being slaves. The economic hardship didn't end in 1865.
It might still be a bad idea, but the rational is based in economics, not the morality of slavery.
No. The proposal is directly targeted to those who could PROVE slave ancestory.
Welll, I don't think you can go that far.
Thomas Sowell likes the Keyes candidacy, Horowitz does not.
Opinions vary.
Never can tell. In a nation where Jessie Ventura can be elected govorner....You can always say "stranger things have happened"
:D
We will never have to pay reparations to the descendants of aborted babies.
I knew there was a silver lining here somewhere...
Such an effort would be an impossible task filled with fraud.
The details of the reparations plan are moot. The truth is that no handout will be enough, and will merely encourage additional efforts to loot taxpayers.
Keyes should have offered 40 acres of Southern Illinois land and 1 mule instead of the tax-exemption. That would grab the attention of the Illinois voters.
Once again Front Page Magazine shows its shotty research. Keyes was running against Mikulski in 1992. As for Horowitz and Front Page Magazine, this isn't the first time, he's showed up bashing Keyes. THis goes back about 4 years when he invited the good Doctor to leave the party. He and I got in a major duel of words over his inaccurate assertions. I've not had any use for him since.
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