This is how it goes. First, the right accuses the left of wanting some policy goal (say, gun confiscation and repealing the Second Amendment) which the left pretty obvious wants. The left, however, knowing that said policy goal is wildly unpopular with the American people, vehemently denies they want the policy.
However, before long, the left will inevitably come out in favor of the policy goal they previously spent a good deal of energy denying they wanted.
Leftists in 2012: “Nobody wants to take your guns.”
Leftists in 2018: “Repeal the Second Amendment, and we’re coming for your guns”
The left will deny supporting some policy because the policy is not popular among the public at the time. But once the left feels it is politically safe to come out in support of said policy, they will “evolve” on it and pretend they just started supporting it now, even though in reality they’ve secretly supported it all along.
Gun confiscation, open borders, socialism, late-term abortion, letting illegals vote: you name it: Democrats have been for these things all along. The only difference today is that they feel they won’t be punished at the polls for it.
They now feel the American electorate is “ready” for their extreme positions.
And so today we have Elizabeth Warren and Kamala “The Whore” Harris coming out in favor of reparations. We’ve known all along that Democrats wanted reparations, but they’ve been careful about not letting the public know it:
“From the very first day of the 2020 presidential race, when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts blamed “generations of discrimination” for black families earning far less than white households, Democratic hopefuls have broadly emphasized racial justice and closing the wealth gap in their policy platforms.
But in recent weeks, some candidates have started embracing specific goals and overtly race-conscious legislation that even the most left-wing elected officials stayed away from in recent years.”
See what I’m talking about?
“Last week, Senator Kamala Harris of California agreed with a radio host’s recent suggestion that government reparations for black Americans were necessary to address the legacies of slavery and discrimination. Ms. Harris later affirmed that support in a statement to The Times.
“We have to be honest that people in this country do not start from the same place or have access to the same opportunities,” she said. “I’m serious about taking an approach that would change policies and structures and make real investments in black communities.”
Ms. Warren also said she supported reparations for black Americans impacted by slavery — a policy that experts say could cost several trillion dollars, and one that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and many top Democrats have not supported.”
No, they all support it: they just won’t admit it. Until now.
Watch more and more Democrats come out of the woodwork and pretend they “evolved” on reparations overnight.
Cough up the dough, whitey!
$15 trillion dollars over 55 years of the War on Poverty is not enough. Medicaid isn’t enough. Food stamps aren’t enough. The Community Reinvestment Act wasn’t enough.
We need to throw even more money at the black community.
Of course, the Democrats never tell us who gets to decide how the reparations payments are divided up and distributed. I’m sure it’s “community leaders” (read: Democratic politicians) in the big cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York and LA. Because they’ve done such a tremendous job thus far!
In reality, reparations would be the largest Democratic scam in history, with most of the money (and we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions) ending up in the pockets of corrupt Democrat politicians and political machines.
But let’s just for a bit consider the arguments for reparations at face value–in other words, let’s assume the money is somehow miraculously doled out fairly evenly to regular black Americans and isn’t just a huge scam.
The case for reparations boils down to one phrase which I’m sure you’ve heard on many occasions: the “legacy of slavery.”
We need to address it. In 2019.
Even though slavery ended in 1863, and Jim Crow ended in 1964.
My question: how long can we reasonably blame the “legacy of slavery”?
Consider that Japan and Germany experienced total and complete destruction in the wake of World War II. Their economies and currencies were not only devastated, but virtually their entire infrastructures. Germany suffered 4.3 million casualties in the war, and Japan lost 2.3 million–and those were primarily young, able-bodied working-aged men as well. It was estimated that by 1945, Japan had lost 42% of its national wealth.
Yet within four decades, Japan had become the second-largest economy in the world and the leading exporter of high-tech electronics. Japan was able to bounce back remarkably quickly from the massive devastation it suffered in the war.
Half of Germany was behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet Rule and the country was not fully reunified under democratic capitalism until the early 1990s. And yet today Germany is the powerhouse of Europe–its biggest economy and most influential player.
I have visited both countries within the past few years. Both are technologically about on-par with America–you really don’t feel any culture shock visiting either place. Outside of the heavily-migrant areas in Germany, you feel very safe in both countries.
In terms of GDP per capita, America’s today is $59,500. Germany’s is $50,000 and Japan’s is $42,800.
I’d say both nations were able to recover quite well from the total devastation they suffered by the end of World War II in 1945. They went from being completely destroyed by war to rich, advanced, first-world nations in half a century.
And on top of all this, both countries were forced to pay billions in war reparations–plus Germany was still paying off its massive reparations from World War I. Germany didn’t pay its debts off fully until 2010!
I actually brought up this point about Japan and Germany in a debate the other week about this very topic, and the other person said, “Well Japan and Germany didn’t have racism when they were rebuilding.”
Really? The whole world wasn’t against those two countries in the wake of the war?
In terms of US aid dollars, the Marshall plan to rebuild Western Europe as well as the postwar occupation of Japan, only cost about $100 million in today’s dollars. Meaning the US gave Japan and Germany barely a fraction of what it has spent on the War on Poverty and welfare over the past few decades.
And the implication is that being nuked and firebombed and shelled repeatedly for years is no big deal, whatever.
But racism, that’s the real killer.
Sure, you can recover from being NUKED pretty easily. No biggie.
But racism is insurmountable.
Yep. Makes sense.
So, again: when do we cut the BS over the “legacy of slavery”?
The Great Thomas Sowell has explained countless times that the “legacy of slavery” excuse is nonsense, and that the real “root cause” of the turmoil in the black community today is the legacy of liberalism:
“[New York Times’ Nick] Kristof’s “overwhelming” evidence of the current effects of past slavery is that blacks do not have as much income as whites. But Puerto Ricans do not have as much income as Japanese Americans. Mexican Americans do not have as much income as Cuban Americans. All sorts of people do not have as much income as all sorts of other people, not only in the United States, but in countries around the world. And most of these people were never enslaved.
Liberals will always find a way to blame White People for inequality all around the world, though. It’s central to their political movement.
“If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words, we could compare hard evidence on “the legacy of slavery” with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals.
Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and “war on poverty” programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.”
Wait, black poverty was 87% after the New Deal? Interesting.
“Ending the Jim Crow laws was a landmark achievement. But, despite the great proliferation of black political and other “leaders” that resulted from the laws and policies of the 1960s, nothing comparable happened economically. And there were serious retrogressions socially.
Nearly a hundred years of the supposed “legacy of slavery” found most black children being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent.”
Specifically, over 72% of black children today are born out of wedlock. That’s the Legacy of Liberalism, not the Legacy of Slavery.
“The murder rate among blacks in 1960 was one-half of what it became 20 years later, after a legacy of liberals’ law enforcement policies. Public housing projects in the first half of the 20th century were clean, safe places, where people slept outside on hot summer nights, when they were too poor to afford air conditioning. That was before admissions standards for public housing projects were lowered or abandoned, in the euphoria of liberal non-judgmental notions. And it was before the toxic message of victimhood was spread by liberals. We all know what hell holes public housing has become in our times. The same toxic message produced similar social results among lower-income people in England, despite an absence of a “legacy of slavery” there.
If we are to go by evidence of social retrogression, liberals have wreaked more havoc on blacks than the supposed “legacy of slavery” they talk about. Liberals should heed the title of Jason Riley’s insightful new book, “Please Stop Helping Us.”
If anyone should be paying reparations to black people, it’s the Democratic Party.
***
A part of me almost supports reparations just to get it over with: “That’s it. No more complaining. We don’t owe you shit anymore. No more excuses.”
If the reparations payments go out and don’t make things better, then white people no longer have to feel any guilt whatsoever. The “sins of their fathers” have been atoned for.
Because reparations is the logical endgame of white guilt, no? That’s what it’s all building up to, right?
There is really nothing greater white Americans can do for black Americans to say, “We’re sorry for slavery and we’re sorry for holding you back,” than to give black Americans vast sums of money, is there?
And so if/when the reparations happen, and if/when those reparations payments don’t change anything–because the real problems in the black community stem from absent fathers and toxic inner city rap/drug/gang/materialistic culture, not Whitey–then we’re not on the hook for anything anymore.
It’s not our fault–we paid up.
That’s why a part of me could, in theory, see a rationale for supporting reparations.
But, of course, we all know that even if reparations do happen, the left will never let us off the hook.
White guilt is just too important to their political fortunes. So it’s forever.
I figured the left would quit guilting white people after Obama was elected in 2008. I figured, “Okay, that’s it, America has finally redeemed itself. We’ve proven we’re not a ‘racist country’ anymore by electing a black president. A nation nearly 70% white elected a president who represents 13% of the country. No more “RACIST!!!!” cries.”
No more excuses.
But instead of the white-guilting subsiding, it got worse. Way worse. Race relations in America have gotten significantly worse since 2008.
If you went back in time to election night 2008 and told someone that in 10 years, race relations would be significantly worse than they are today, they would not have believed you. Yet here we are.
Somehow, the left has convinced people that despite Obama being elected and reelected, America is still Extremely Racist. The left has convinced people that Obama’s eight years in office don’t mean shit.
So this is why I won’t support reparations: because even if we agree to reparations, the left will still never shut up and stop guilting white people.
If and when the reparations fail to fix anything, the left will just say it wasn’t enough and that they need even bigger reparations payments the second time around.
***
Chappelle’s Show had a hilarious skit on reparations back in 2003:
Reparations, aka Dems pandering for the Black vote.
It will never end. After reparations there will be something else we owe to atone for our sins.