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Well, you can continue to believe the media’s fabrications or you can look at the facts:

What is the truth about Alan’s reported position on so-called “reparations”? Is it true that Alan supports reparations for descendants of slaves?

This question reflects a misunderstanding.

Alan does not support “reparations” — which he calls “an effort to extort monetary damages from the American people.”

The confusion arises from an occasion when Alan was asked by a reporter what he thought of controversial statements about reparations that other black leaders were making when Alan was running for the Senate from Illinois in 2004.

At the time, Alan had no formal “position” on reparations, never had one, and has none today — other than to say that he has long opposed monetary awards for descendants of slaves, a disastrous policy promoted by various black leaders.

Without altering his opposition to monetary reparations, he instead offered the questioner a hypothetical solution to the potential need to help disadvantaged descendants of slaves have a more level playing field upon which to better themselves economically. He offered this proposition as a descendant of slaves, himself, one who believes that blacks as a group have been undeniably discriminated against in overt and subtle ways since the days of slavery and Reconstruction — despite modern strides to improve the situation.

The hypothetical solution Alan offered his questioner was this:

To right a historical injustice or imbalance in the marketplace that tends to give blacks certain disadvantages, Alan suggested allowing descendants of slaves an income tax break for a limited period of time — by which they might have the means to invest capital, create new businesses, and otherwise escape the destructive dependency on government welfare that Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society had created within black culture during the 1960’s, and which continues undiminished today.

Although Alan’s remarks were widely interpreted as an endorsement of monetary reparations, they clearly were not, nor were they a departure from sound conservative principles. One of the most common conservative solutions to verifiable inequities or desirable societal ends is positive incentives that avoid the “heavy hand of government,” any kind of handout, or an increase in regulations. Conservatives therefore typically favor tax breaks over monetary redistribution or government intrusion.

That’s all Alan was proposing — to deal with a real legacy of injustice. His answer to the reporter’s question was a thoughtful application of conservative principles to correct the consequences of historic injustice.

He does feel, however, that if his hypothetical solution were ever implemented (something he does not anticipate), it would bring about a swift and decisive end to the federal income tax for all Americans, since once the American people saw the economic energy that suspension of the income tax unleashed for Black Americans, they would clamor for abolition of the federal income tax and implementation of the Fair Tax proposal Alan has long advocated to replace it. This would free Americans from the liberty-destroying shackles that make us all wage-slaves of the federal government.