Regarding California’s movement to force taxpayers to fund reparations to Black descendants of slaves: what about the children of the payees? This question has not arisen yet (until now that I’ve asked it here at TPC).

The children of anyone who receives reparations must also be considered descendants of slaves. Will reparations go only to the current generation of adult Black Californians? or will reparations continue to be paid for every successive generation of Blacks for eternity?

It’s a question that urgently needs an answer because this issue involves a lot of money but involves no common sense.

If restitution stops with our generation, is it hush money? If it continues perpetually, does that not create a new privileged class based on race (and thus illegal under U.S. law)?

California was established as a free State that never supported slavery, so what standing does the State have to saddle its citizen taxpayers with the burden of making every Black Californian a multimillionaire as restitution for ancestral slavery in other States? None. And the same applies to our nation.

No one alive in the United States today is a slave owner. No one alive in the United States today is a slave. No one in the United States today should owe or receive reparations for slavery they neither practiced or suffered.

Historically, slavery—reviled now—was long a widespread human practice. Existing from prehistory and largely ending through the 19th century, it mostly continues today only in eastern Asia and parts of Africa. Slavery is understood as a crime today, but that gives no one license to apply today’s standards to the past in order to dredge up a tort to be assuaged today.

Shall modern Egyptians pay restitution to the descendants of the Pharoahs’ slaves? Shall Europeans, Asians and Africans pay restitution to the descendants of Rome’s slaves? Shall “native Americans” pay restitution to the descendants of its 9,000-year multi-racial slave practices? Shall Turks and Arabs and Mongols pay restitution to the descendants of the countless enslaved Slavic people from whom the word slavery itself is derived?

Even if modern people were willing to make such payments, few today could ever prove direct ancestry from slaves. Fewer still could ever prove demonstrable harm to themselves as a direct result of their ancestors’ bondage.

Reparations are a form of “social justice” that has no place in a constitutional republic. We have a system of justice under law, not a chaos of mob rule by zealous lynchers. Our system of justice demands due process, not submission to strident public opinion.

A time may come when proponents of reparations will necessarily be challenged in a court of law. Reparations will not survive the challenge. It will be picked apart and tossed aside like the garbage it is, and those who hoped for its free ride to wealth will see that it was nothing but a pie put in the sky by the same Democrat socialists who misled and exploited them for votes again and again and convinced them they were entitled to unearned money. 

Actually, your very good question was asked more than ten years ago on this thread:

A List of Barely Socratic Questions to American Progressives - The People's Cube - Political Satire (thepeoplescube.com)

So you want to give “reparations” to a certain group of people because of something bad that happened to their ancestors more than a century ago. Is it fair that only the current generation at the time reparations are enacted should benefit, or do you mean to pay reparations in perpetuity, from one generation to the next? After how many generations and hundreds of years will reparations be determined to have finally compensated for the suffering of one's ancestors? Will it be for the same length of time as the suffering that took place?
Is there a statute of limitations on slavery reparations? If not, then shouldn't Egypt pay reparations to Israel? How about Italy to Greece?

I predict we still won't have an answer ten years from now (and that ten years from now, we'll still have only ten years left to save the planet; drilling in ANWR will still be just as futile as ever because it'll take ten years to see enough oil to increase supply/bring down prices; and there's still no point building desalination plants because those take at least ten years too and we need the water now but because it takes too long we'll just have to continue rationing indefinitely; but oh, let's keep throwing money at the California bullet train because it might be ready to take on passengers by 2040.)

I think they will continue talking about reparations for years to come but never actually do it because then what? Since when did they ever solve a problem they invented? As you pointed out, how are they supposed to keep getting votes (and more government funding) otherwise?

Commissarka Pinkie wrote: ↑

3/6/2023, 4:43 pm

Actually, your very good question was asked more than ten years ago on this thread:

A List of Barely Socratic Questions to American Progressives - The People's Cube - Political Satire (thepeoplescube.com)

I think they will continue talking about reparations for years to come but never actually do it because then what? Since when did they ever solve a problem they invented? As you pointed out, how are they supposed to keep getting votes (and more government funding) otherwise?

Thank you, Comissarka, for giving credit where credit is due and for your insightful additional remarks. You (but not your children) deserve the honorable title of Beet of the Week.

I'd say all leftist movements are driven by greed. Collective greed. That's the worst type of greed. While individual greed can be rational and will lead to increased productivity, collective greed is by its very nature an irrational herd instinct used by conniving herders to drive the herd in a certain direction. Frequently, however, the herder gets trampled in a stampede and the herd runs off a cliff.

Red Square wrote: ↑

3/6/2023, 5:31 pm

I'd say all leftist movements are driven by greed. Collective greed. That's the worst type of greed. While individual greed can be rational and will lead to increased productivity, collective greed is by its very nature an irrational herd instinct used by conniving herders to drive the herd in a certain direction. Frequently, however, the herder gets trampled in a stampede and the herd runs off a cliff.

That certainly explains the latest episode of "The Last of Us."
 

You can't even begin to make a reasonable discussion about this until all the facts are known. The people wanting restitution need to deliver all the facts and data on who the restitutionees are along with all the factual data tracing their claims so they can be verified. Only then can a number be established as to how many eligible people there are. 

Once all the information is submitted for verification they will be told that it will take 75 years before the verification committee can get back to them.

The social justice reparations is a mashup of Exodus and Marxism. America is Egypt in need of God directed plundering to release the new Jews, American blacks from their enslavement. Reparations are based in bad theology. Theology (God) is so poorly understood in America, America operates more like the Egypt of Exodus, than the promised land of the Declaration of Independence.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/20 ... -case.html



The only problem with this mashup of Marxism and theology is that the paid off black Jews remain in America’s Egypt rather than return to original homeland to worship God by building a great nation.

https://globalvoices.org/2009/11/11/den ... e-country/

jackalopelipsky wrote: ↑

3/7/2023, 8:30 am

The social justice reparations is a mashup of Exodus and Marxism. America is Egypt in need of God directed plundering to release the new Jews, American blacks from their enslavement. Reparations are based in bad theology. Theology (God) is so poorly understood in America, America operates more like the Egypt of Exodus, than the promised land of the Declaration of Independence.
The only problem with this mashup of Marxism and theology is that the paid off black Jews remain in America’s Egypt rather than return to original homeland to worship God by building a great nation.

The Old Testament's early books show only God as seeking to punish the sons for the sins of their fathers. Later books indicate that this is a violation of the Laws of Moses as God commanded.

“Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

But the sons of the slayers he did not put to death, according to what is written in the book of the Law of Moses, as the Lord commanded, saying, “The fathers shall not be put to death for the sons, nor the sons be put to death for the fathers; but each shall be put to death for his own sin.”

“Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity?’ When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all My statutes and done them, he shall surely live.

The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Clara Illbustyourballs Zetkin wrote: ↑

3/7/2023, 7:11 am

You can't even begin to make a reasonable discussion about this until all the facts are known. The people wanting restitution need to deliver all the facts and data on who the restitutionees are along with all the factual data tracing their claims so they can be verified. Only then can a number be established as to how many eligible people there are. 

Once all the information is submitted for verification they will be told that it will take 75 years before the verification committee can get back to them.

My main contention is that there's no need for further facts or data or verification because no Black slave is alive today and no living Black can claim injury from slavery that they did not endure.

Additionally, I'm interested in whether reparations amount to hush money. Surely the recipients would not relinquish any further claims or discontinue grievances, but rather set a legal precedent that opens a floodgate to a never-ending torrent of future litigation.

Again, arguments for reparations cannot withstand Constitutional due process of law, which will obviate that current citizens/taxpayers have no culpability for past events.

We are all heirs of the times and events that precede us. Whether rich or poor, black or white, we get what we're bequeathed but can't be held responsible that we inherited it.   
 

All true, Colonel Obyezyana. ‘pelipsky is only reporting the Marxist use of Jewish history to demand everything Americans own. Marxism thrives in bad theology. That the American State (Egypt) is on board to sell/enforce the guilt is pure Communism.

jackalopelipsky wrote: ↑

3/7/2023, 10:31 am

All true, Colonel Obyezyana. ‘pelipsky is only reporting the Marxist use of Jewish history to demand everything Americans own. Marxism thrives in bad theology. That the American State (Egypt) is on board to sell/enforce the guilt is pure Communism.

1. Never miss the opportunity to create a crisis.
2. Never let a crisis go to waste.
 

Alinsky at all times.

Back in the mid 80’s, ‘pelipsky heard the new political religious gospel of Blacks as new Jews, deserving what they appropriated, through the power of Dark Jesus, as taught by Saul Alinsky. The idea went from the “cultured” NPR, to the nation, to be reflected in behavior of remedial middle schoolers feeling the NWA bass on boomboxes.