Posted on 08/23/2004 11:39:59 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Edited on 08/23/2004 11:47:17 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Money wasn't paid as reparations - money was paid to specific people for land stolen by government fiat, when the government basically siezed private land from landowners (specifically indians) on reservations when they attempted to phase out the reservation system and the "assimilation" policy went into effect... At that time, indians could own private land on reservations, and the land was then siezed by the feds and disposed of...
Then, shortly after they reinstituted the reservation system but with the caveat that indians could no longer own "reservation" land privately - it became communal...
That wasn't reparations, that was the feds finally paying what it owed for a land grab...
IMO, it made a difference when the Freepers staked out Gore's house shouting get out of Cheney's house while carrying SoreLoserman signs. It made a difference when they insisted on witnessing the count in Florida. This time more attention, early on, is making it more difficult for any shenanigans.
Question for you, 'How many SBVT (SwiftBoaters)' members are there?
West Tech is gone, I think.
That's funny. I just got an invitation for a class reunion. I better check out what 'you think'. !:-)
In other words, the government made amends for past damage it had caused to some Native Americans in the form of land grabs. The federal government acknowledged wrong-doing, and then made restitution.
When the government steals, law requires just compensation. When a person is abused, he is owed damages.
The fact that there are several instances of the federal government making up for past wrongs with the Native Americans (albeit in a manner not always sufficient), yet nothing for the people the government allowed to be owned and abused as property--that is a double-standard.
Here's a history, much of which I've told already, to give you a better appreciation of what I'm talking about:
As part of reconstruction, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that would give all slaves 40 acres and a mule, as had been promised. Andrew Johnson vetoed that bill. As a result, freed slaves were left homeless, penniless. Many of them made their homes in areas now considered slums and ghettos in places like Philadelphia, New York, Chicago. These slums remain today.
Prior to Johnson's veto, and before the war ended, 40,000 freed slaves were given land by the federal government. The land was primarily former plantations in Georgia and South Carolina, land abandoned by slave-holders during the war. The former slaves worked this land, built schools, and started a new life.
That came abruptly to an end after Abraham Lincoln was shot. Andrew Johnson betrayed these former slaves, forced them off the land, and ordered the land returned to the previous slave-holding owners.
As a result, these 40,000 freed slaves had nowhere to go. Some may have fled to the slums I described above. Others, incredibly, ended up working for the former slave-holders on the land they had been promised ownership.
That is one example. The federal government's betrayal of these people caused an economic hardship that continues for many today. Had they been allowed to own land they were promised at the beginning, they would have been self-sufficient for the generations that followed, able to raise families in decent conditions, and have the confidence that comes from being in charge of your own destiny.
That tradition would have been passed on to their children and grandchildren, along with an inheritance of land. It would have fostered innovation, entrepreneurship, economic strength, and independence.
Instead, black people have been held back continually by disadvantage, often again at the hand of government.
Some have succeeded despite all of that--but only by limited options in a system more socialist than free. Those limited means of success will never make up for what could have been, had they been in control of their own destiny by owning the land promised in reconstruction.
I can think of no better way of making amends for past wrongs than for the federal government to follow Alan Keyes' or Walter Williams' suggestion. That would restore a kind of freedom and opportunity denied them by the federal government.
If the government came and took your property without compensation, that would be unconstitutional, correct? It wouldn't matter what race you are.
I stand by my belief that until and unless someone can come up with a constitutional basis for race-based tax exemptions, I'll have to be against it...
Which is why Keyes' proposal isn't for blacks. It's for descendants of slaves.
I stand by my belief that until and unless someone can come up with a constitutional basis for race-based tax exemptions, I'll have to be against it...
I misspoke if I gave the impression Keyes' tax-break proposal is race-based. The tax break isn't for a RACE, for African Americans. It's for descendents of slaves!
In other words, someone like Barack Obama, though African American, would be excluded from the exemption.
Sorry I was muddied in my thinking on this point before.
What demographic, with regards to voters, is he targeting with this proposal?
:o)
From what I read, this all started by a reporter's question, not by a calculated campaign scheme.
Keyes' answer surprised a lot of people. That's what all the hubbub is about.
Aug. 17: 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." http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0408170208aug17,1,3966582.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed
Aug. 20: Keyes said he only talked about reparations because a reporter asked him about it. He refused to back off of his position Thursday.
"The idea that I have put forward is a thoroughly conservative, thoroughly Republican idea," Keyes said. "It doesn’t take money from anybody else’s pocket. That was good thinking, I think." http://www.lincolncourier.com/news/04/08/20/d.asp
bttt
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