Posted on 05/28/2003 7:35:01 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
With the passing years, it becomes ever more painful for me to read the preambles of legislation. Time and time again, the wonderful and inspiring words in those preambles have turned out to have no relationship whatsoever to the actual consequences that followed. The real issue is not what pious words you can come up with, but what incentives are you creating and what are the likely consequences of those incentives.
It is especially painful to read a proposal to create a "National Slave Memorial" on the Washington Mall. Supposedly this memorial will promote "reconciliation" and "healing," according to both the Republican and Democratic supporters of this proposal.
It is hard to imagine that any sane adult actually believes those words. You know and I know that a slave memorial will not reconcile anybody to anybody nor heal any racial divisions. Just the opposite.
A slave memorial is guaranteed to become a magnet for every race hustler from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton down to any local demagogue who can scare up a crowd to go stand in front of the slave memorial and spew venom at American society on TV. Some reconciliation, some healing!
As for whites, when a proposal was made some years ago by Congressman Tony Hall for a Congressional apology for slavery, so much hostile mail came in that the idea was killed. If a slave memorial is going to inflame both blacks and whites, who is going to be "healed" or "reconciled"?
Anyone whose IQ is not in single digits must know that, once a slave memorial is put on the Washington Mall, it will be politically impossible to remove it. Expediency-minded politicians of both parties may think of a slavery memorial as a cheap way to "throw a bone" to the black community, as someone put it, but it is in fact just a down payment on racial polarization that can cost this country dearly for years to come.
This proposal has bipartisan support in Congress -- as so many other disastrous policies have had. If the Democrats were to propose that all Americans leap off a thousand-foot cliff, moderate Republicans would come up with a compromise proposal that three-quarters of us leap off a 500-foot cliff. The slave memorial is apparently that kind of compromise proposal -- "reparations light," as it were.
None of this is affected in the slightest by whether the sponsors of this legislation are honest and earnest, or by whether their intentions are good or they write an inspiring preamble to the legislation. We all know what road is paved with good intentions. We don't need to have it proven one more time.
This is the kind of low-budget time bomb that can easily sneak into legislation in the last days before Congress adjourns, when everyone is too busy preparing to go home to read all the provisions of the bills they vote on.
The only way to prevent this from happening, either this year or in future years, is for the voting public to inform their Senators and Representatives loud and clear that they do not want any such memorial created by the federal government, whether on the Washington Mall or anywhere else.
Among the pious cant that we are being fed by those pushing this proposal is that a memorial will serve to remind future Americans that slavery was cruel and evil. Most Americans understood that in the 19th century!
What a memorial would do is perpetuate the fraud that slavery was something peculiar to the United States, when in fact it was one of the oldest and most widespread of all human institutions, existing for thousands of years on every inhabited continent, involving people of every race and color as both slaves and slaveowners. Even in the United States, there were thousands of black slaveowners, and in Africa many more.
The United States was one of many Western nations which turned against slavery in the 19th century -- while non-Western nations bitterly resisted efforts by the West to get them to abolish slavery. Only the fact that Western imperialists had more firepower enabled their revulsion against slavery to prevail.
Maybe we should have a monument to historical truth somewhere, though Washington hardly seems the place for it.
I've heard lots of people -- usually young, public school grads -- sneeringly insist that it did. It did not. Slap them down when you hear them say this.
i'll support a slave memorial the day AFTER we get toerect a memorial on Monument Ave. in Richmond,VA to the 100,000 or so black CSA soldiers, sailors & marines who fought/bled/died for the cause of DIXIE LIBERTY!
FRee dixie,sw
The liberals have too much say and control over such thing. They don't want Americans having a clear understanding of the consistent consequences of Communism, and they certainly aren't going to allow their race-baiting tactics to be diminished.
But I'm thankful you both also see the value of such a museum. It's a dream I have had for a long time. But I know it's just a dream.
A memorial for all of the white people that black criminals have killed over the many decades. A black person killing an innocent white person is no less wrong than a white person enslaving a black person.
Maybe you should start with this one.
I'm tired of listening to the rant. I also think they are hurting their cause by continually begging for something for nothing and I'll never give them. MY LIFE
I owe them nothing.
Any respect I might have for them is dwindling fast.
Here's an interesting little tidbit that I heard from a relative of mine: She has a friend from Germany who is actually offended that the United States has a Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Why?
"Because Germans were the ones who carried out the Holocaust, not Americans -- so we are the ones who need to be reminded of it."
I'm more than a little suspicious of the timing of this "new discovery." The involvement of many members of the Northern merchant class in the slave trade has been well known for many years.
You can BET that Jesse Jackson, Sharpton and the rest of the race pimps will now use this "new discovery" to say "See, slavery was even MORE widespread here than we thought. White America needs to pay us MORE REPARATIONS!"
Trust me on this.
**********
I consider Alan Keyes, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams possessed of three of the finest minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, all are black.
So far as I can tell, Keyes, Sowell and Williams oppose this idiotic call for reparations.
Those who are NOT descended from AMERICAN slaves need to sit down and shut up. Under even the most tortured, leftist, idiotic (redundant!) logic (oxymoron!), these people have no standing. And those who ARE descendants of slaves now calling for reparations need to remember a few things:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ON THE PLANET! Had their forebears NOT been sold to the slave traders, the blood of their ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago. Their ancestors would have been killed outright or worked to death by the OTHER black tribes who captured them in one of the interminable tribal wars still raging on that sad continent. These modern day would-be "plaintiffs" would not even exist.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of the approximately 3,000 SLAVE OWNING BLACK plantation owners in this country also be subject to PAYING reparations?
If so, how do we find THEM?
Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice:
“Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
What about the millions STILL living in slavery, held there by members of THEIR OWN RACE in Africa and elsewhere today?
Do you suppose THEY are NOT targets of these reparations whores because they have little or nothing of value for which they can be EXTORTED?
And how about the MILLIONS of WHITES and ASIANS who have slavery in their backgrounds?
And I have SLAVIC roots on my dad’s side. Does anyone have Johnnie Cochran’s number – PHONE number, that is. Past time for ME to sue someone for MY reparations.
Next problem!
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