Posted on 03/17/2021 10:34:43 AM PDT by rktman
If someone were to ask me what the United States of America's greatest mistake was, I would answer without hesitation: slavery. The legacy of slavery is a cloud that hangs over our nation much like clouds of genocide that hang over China, Germany, and Russia. One of the solutions proposed by people who want to move beyond the shadow of slavery is to pay reparations to those who were hurt by slavery.
Opponents of the idea of reparations claim that both the people who carried out slavery and the people who suffered under slavery are dead. It is hard to argue that point. Nevertheless, the left ensures that the cloud of slavery remains, and today, there are people who vigorously lobby that the 21st-century descendants of slaves in America receive compensation for the horrors of slavery their ancestors suffered in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. They do not acknowledge that uncounted numbers of Americans are descended from people who arrived in America long after slavery had ended.
On June 1, 2020, a well known black businessman, Robert Johnson, called for the United States to pay 14 trillion dollars in reparations to living descendants of African-American slaves. In his proposal, each living descendant of a slave would receive $350,000 in reparations.
I would urge the advocates of reparations like Robert Johnson to consider some deductions in the amount demanded. The bloodiest war in American history was fought over the question of slavery. Over 620,000 men and women died in the war that ended the institution of slavery. After the war, three amendments to our Constitution were added to end the discrimination caused by slavery.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
rktman wrote: “Somewhere along the line all of our ancestors have been enslaved by someone.”
True. My main issue with reparations is this: if we were to give every black $350K that would result in a horrible pushback against blacks. It could be the trigger for a race war.
And certainly preceding that, when Marshall defined/usurped the power of the courts to invalidate laws that they find to violate the "living" Constitution, which says whatever the hell they want it to say whenever the hell they want it to "emanate from the penumbras".
At the time that the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and English were bringing Africans to the New World to work as slaves, Europeans were being enslaved by the Turks. Some of my relatives were captured by Turkish pirates in 1715 and spent the rest of their lives as slaves.
When the US declared its independence, slavery was already well-established in the colonies. Even though some of the Founding Fathers recognized it was an evil institution, getting rid of it was not easy. You couldn't just go to the court house and sign a piece of paper. States did not want a lot of indigent former slaves who might be forced to steal to stay alive. George Washington decided to free his slaves and it turned out to be very complicated because he had to figure out a way for them to make a living afterwards, and because he did not want to break up families (some of the slaves at Mount Vernon were his wife's dower slaves and he had no authority to free them--and some of them were married to his slaves).
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Check out the details of your monthly bill..
You’re ALREADY contributing to reparations.
You are exactly correct. They just won't be called slaves, some other moniker will be used.
😄😯😨🙌 Got a bank account? (Even USAA). Buy gas? Buy food? Buy clothes? We’re paying one way or another. 🚛💰💰💰💰
Some countries on this map have no date of abolition, might we suppose that's accurate?
Greatest or not, it was a mistake. Putting aside the lost lives and destruction due to the Civil War, it endowed us with a bi-racial society and the constant bickering and acrimony that accompanies it as we forever try to placate the aggrieved.
The moronic demands for "Reparations!" and the idiotic screams of "Racism!" will never end. Every time the clueless liberals get angry, they scream "Racism!" or "Reparations!" (or both). Maybe the best approach is to just ignore all of it. When people scream at you, "Reparations!" or "Racism!", simply respond, "No thanks," and walk away. I usually just laugh at the total idiocy of it all. But every once in a great while, I get suckered in and respond (like I did here).
The Royal Family/Meghan World War III is the newest example of it. The whole Royal Family is "Racist!" so the entire Royal Family must be "CANCELED." Then the liberal Piers Morgan defends the Royal Family and the liberal Sharon Osborne defends Piers. The clueless liberals then mindlessly assume Mr. Morgan & Ms. Osborne must be "Racist!" and thus "CANCELED." That's why virtually every Hollywood celebrity is viciously, relentlessly attacking Sharon Osborne. Liberal comedian Steve Harvey now calls her "Sharon Ass-Torn." The rare few Hollywood celebrities who side with Ms. Osborne don't dare publicly express their opinion. Or else. CANCELED!
This Royal Family/Meghan World War will drag out for a very, very long time. Already, some journalists are wondering aloud whether Meghan spells the end of the Royal Family. Heck, even the producers of the U.S. TV show, "The Talk," say they need at least 1 1/2 weeks to intensely "review" the Royal Family/Piers Morgan/Sharon Osborne/Sheryl Underwood "issues" before the show can air again. And it's only going to get worse from here on out.
I love that the foolish liberals are now "CANCELING" each other. They're desperately trying to destroy The Royal Family, Piers Morgan, and Sharon Osborne. And any other liberal who dares stand up and defend any of those three will also be destroyed and "CANCELED" by the clueless liberals. ROFLMAO. Couldn't happen to a better bunch of liberals. They all get what they deserve.
It won't end until the clueless liberals themselves get tired of being relentlessly attacked and "CANCELED" by their fellow hateful liberal "friends." It's funny how the liberal comedienne Sheryl Underwood directly said to her co-host Sharon Osborne on the show, "Right now I am talking to a woman who I believe is my friend." LOL. What a load of BS. What she actually means is, "You're a racist and no friend of mine." Then when the liberal Ms. Osborne directly asked Underwood what she said that is racist, the liberal Ms. Underwood cluelessly responded with a totally irrational mumbo-jumbo word salad that made literally no sense whatsoever. Liberals.
I read the article. At the end the writer suggest moving on from reparations and this I believe is the best approach. So he gives some good background and gets his point across. I don’t know why so many are trashing him.
Previous attempts at selling reparations to Congress had the cash going to Black organizations run by the likes of Je$$e Jack$on and Al $harpton but with BLM I bet that the BLM will collect billions and billions. Doubtful that Democrats will allow any money to go the actual Americans that somehow can prove they are decedents of slaves. How much “blood” counts 1/4 or 1/16 to qualify - this would be an incredible task to figure it out.
If an interracial couple in any scheme would the White wife have to pay the Black husband sort of because her tax money would be a transfer payment to her husband. We have people in my family that are 1/4 Black but have blond hair and blue eyes and would never be identified as Black would they get cash? Would Kamala Harris’ family slaves that migrated here to the USA get cash? Would Kamala have to pay because her family owned slaves.
Black Americans living in other countries get cash?
Would Black athletes who make millions every year get cash?
No, women’s suffrage is a plague.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.
All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.
Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
If the colonies and then the USA had never had the institution of slavery we would not have a large black minority derived ultimately from Africa.
In the early Middle Ages European Christians felt that it was perfectly OK to enslave anyone who was a pagan--the term "slave" comes from the ethnic term Slav because so many pagan Slavs were enslaved. Later in the Middle Ages it was OK to enslave Muslims or people with the wrong version of Christianity--or pagans. That was the justification for enslaving black Africans--the fact that they were not Christians.
The ancestors of African Americans were from a variety of places in Africa. Enslaved Africans had offspring with people they never would have met if they had never been taken from their native places. So anyone descended from someone who was a slave in the US would never have been born except for the misfortune suffered by his or her ancestors. Not to justify the wrongs done to their ancestors but it is time to be grateful for being alive—and being Americans.
You’ve provoked me to read and consider the address for myself.
And the same is true for many other nations and nationalities throughout history that enslaved his fellow man.
Point is, in order to move forward and disentangle current society from those that wish our demise with this nonsense, we must not let the race pimps divide US. We (the last several generations) had absolutely nothing to do with what transpired centuries ago just as other nations throughout the world that practiced slavery in the past. That’s not to say that other countries still don’t practice the enslavement of their fellow man as this is something that has occurred for eons.
We threw off enslaving our fellow man long ago yet it still exists though disguised in different forms such as debt, property taxes, etc. I’ve often wondered from time to time if those blacks that clamor racism the loudest ever thought what their fate would have been if their ancestors had not been fortunate enough to have made it to the US and instead ended up in say: the Middle East or worse. They should be down on their knees thanking the good Lord that their ancestors survived allowing their lineage to continue in the freest country on the planet.
United We Stand, Divided We Fall.
"Technically" is not the right word here, since slavery can take many different forms, both legally and de facto.
For example, indentured servitude was usually a relatively benign form practiced extensively until outlawed in the early 1800s.
Young people were "sold", or sold themselves, into a temporary slavery, i.e., for five years, in order to pay off a debt such as transportation and lodging in North America.
Another example: two hundred years ago prisoners were treated as slaves for the duration of their sentences, etc.
So Stalin's Gulag and Hitler's concentration camps were essentially slave labor facilities often intended to work their prisoners to death.
And we might argue the fine point of whether, legally, European serfs & Asian "coolies" were slaves, but clearly some effectively were, if not all.
Verginius Rufus: "Later in the Middle Ages it was OK to enslave Muslims or people with the wrong version of Christianity--or pagans.
That was the justification for enslaving black Africans--the fact that they were not Christians."
Right, and it sounds like you recognize that the Bible strongly opposes slavery for God's people, which we take to mean Christians.
So, if a slave became a Christian then his Christian "master" was morally obliged to free him, if not immediately, then in due time.
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