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Larry Elder vs Kamala Harris
I would pay a lot of money to see Larry Elder debate Kamala Harris. Golly, that would be fun! Think of the ratings CNN could get out of THAT debate! They could do pay-per-view, like boxing, and sell millions. I’d be first in line. Kamala could just do that and retire. But somehow, I find that unlikely. Too bad…
Yeah. So many stupid ideas out there. So little time to set them on fire and pillage their towns.
I have often thought when the subject of reparations comes up that we should ask, “What is a human life worth?” Then multiply that by the number of people killed in the Civil War. I think that would cancel out any amount of reparations.
I’m liking this post only because I like Larry Elder, and I like the idea of an Elder/Harris debate. So long as I can put Harris on mute.
I don’t like the argument that the Civil War counts as reparations (not that reparations make any sense in 2019). If someone steals $1000 from me, I would certainly appreciate any police officer that was killed attempting to get my money back. But his death doesn’t mean I’m repaid. The crook still owes me $1000.
The bleeding and dying of the Civil War didn’t restore the lost years to the slaves. It wasn’t the equivalent of having x number of years back-wages. They never got those.
Of course, the question is now moot. No one’s still alive to either pay or get paid.
When I saw the title of the post, the first thing I thought of was “Larry with a knockout in the first round.”
I think the point is that the families of the deceased are essentially paying twice: once in the death that was sacrificed and twice in the reparation in something in which they were not guilty. Or to use your metaphor, the widow of the police officer pays you the $1000.
This is the genius of abortion. There’s no one left to ask the question or demand reparations.
“The Thrilla with no vanilla!” Larry in Round 1
Trying to monetize slavery is like trying to calculate the value of things we don’t agree with, but our taxpayer dollars are used for.
Can I reparations for that spending, on say, congressional salaries and pensions (just to pick one thing)? Or are we just cherry-picking our outrages here today. How about reparations for the $18 trillion or so spent on “Great” society programs since the 1960s? How great are we now? Was greatness achieved? I mean, other than the size of great swaying paunches of well-fed congressmen and the owners of companies with federal contracts to build
ghettossubsidized housing.It’d be great if they’d stop spending other peoples’ money with the same level of enthusiasm that zombies devour human brains out of their living skulls.
And people still wonder why I don’t like big government. This is why I don’t like big government. It’s why they are all inherently destructive, to one degree or another, and taken to extremes, can become murder factories. Paid for by taxes.
Crawling through history books to find an outrage in the past that happened to people you never knew, and now you ask to be paid for that outrage, does not seem like a productive use of time or money. But here we are.
@max needs to permit multiple likes.
If that’s your argument then find the direct descendants of slave owners who took their earning years away and make them pay. My relatives were in Poland until the early 1900’s, so don’t come knocking on my door, I don’t owe them a penny.
Not enough computing capacity in the world to determine who owes what to whom. This also assumes that the descendants of slave owners now have two nickels to rub together. What if Joe Doakes can’t afford to pay $X? Does his brother who can pay then have to pay $2X?
Here’s my proposal. All reparations should be paid in the form of one-way tickets back to the ancestor’s land of origin. You want reparations? Here is your ticket to Nigeria (or Benin or wherever). Don’t come back. You don’t want to leave the US? No reparations for you.
I wonder how many Americans have ancestors in all or most of the following groups:
So, if someone has at least one ancestor in each of, say, 3 or 4 of the above groups, does he pay himself reparations? Or, get a portion, or pay a portion, depending on percentages of ancestors in various groups?
Does anyone have a specific proposal for exactly how to do this?
Because if we start paying people to have slave ancestors, I suspect that there will suddenly be A LOT of Americans who can trace their ancestory back to a slave somewhere – including, possibly, me.
This will get really complicated really fast.
Wait just a minute. Wasn’t it West African tribal chiefs who sold their people into American slavery? Shouldn’t West Africans be the ones responsible for paying reparations to African-Americans? Many of those who served as middlemen in the slave trade were Moslem Arabs. Shouldn’t their descendants also be required to pay reparations?
What follows is somewhat off topic, but . . .
Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. A relatively new policy in these countries stipulates that anyone who can prove Spanish ancestry is entitled to Spanish citizenship and likewise regarding Portugal, without giving up citizenship of the country where they currently reside. The incentive is that, as a resident citizen of either of those nations, you have immediate access to all EU nations for purposes of career enhancement. Thousands have taken advantage of this offer.
I was just wondering what would happen if the African peoples (Nigerians, for example) who sold blacks into slavery invited American slave descendants back to Africa. Just wondering . . .
*Crickets.*
Huh? I thought I was pretty clear in stating that too much time has passed for reparations to be reasonable.