Reparations as Poison
Col. Mike Walker, USMC, retired
Reparation for wrongs committed in the past where every living participant is long dead is not unjust and unwarranted but frightening.
For us Americans, the rationale is slavery and the associated wrong of discrimination. Slavery and discrimination are evils yet universal ones. No one is exempt from the taint.
I doubt there is a country in the United Nations that did not enslave their fellow humans in its past. Even Pacific Islanders embraced slavery.
We so obsess about our history that we think Americans are exceptionally bad but that just is lying to ourselves – yes we were shamefully bad and so was everyone else -- shame on us all.
It seems all humans -- regardless of race, allegiance, creed, ethnicity or what have you -- seem to have an impulse to enslave and judgmentally discriminate when they have the power.
My life took me across the world and I never met a people I did not like, respect and admire. It is equally and painfully true that I never lived in a land that did not have a history of slavery or still practiced prejudice and discrimination – not one – not ever – not anywhere.
I have seen the violent carnage of societies that visit the sins of the parents upon the children in the name of racial or religious or ethnic justice. Punishing innocents that were not even alive when events took place creates an endless cycle of violence and hatred. It is a terrible evil to behold.
Keeping animosities alive from generation to generation ends in bloody wickedness.
But that is what some politicians endorse: Never forgive, never stop dividing people and never stop punishing. That is the inevitable product of retribution. It is a great sin.
How can the majority of Americans be held to pay reparations for wrongs that they had no part of -- that occurred before their ancestors came to America?
How can they, who are innocent, be judged guilty? Are we to adopt a cruel system of collective punishment?
And what of those whose forebears were here during slavery?
Are we to conduct a mass genealogical study to punish innocents 150 years after the fact? Should we make them wear scarlet letters or stars to mark their “sins” and punish innocents yet to be born?
Are we to create a permanent caste to beat down and demean for selfish pleasure? Where does this end?
And after so many generations of offspring, what will we do with millions of Americans who are descendants of both slaves and slave owners?
Order self-flagellation? Subject them to an Americanized version of the Nazi ancestral Mischling blood test to identify the guilty? Where does this end?
I became the third generation of my family to have put on a uniform, pick up a rifle, and go to Europe to stop the madness.
I was stationed for a time near Srebrenica where thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) systematically had been massacred by Serbs.
Why? To avenge a Turkish massacre from centuries earlier – the people there nurtured and embraced ancient hatreds from generation to generation. They never let go of the past.
It was a societal sickness that cherished divisions and worshipped the worst memories to ensure the destruction of their future.
That is what happens when you legitimize the moral prevision that you can punish offspring for their ancestor's sins -- and do so for all eternity.
Of course, under this detestable philosophy, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre now gives Bosniaks justification to kill Serbs not yet born in some future act of reparation and retribution. That is the sickness.
As for the institution of slavery, here is the uncomfortable historical truth: In 1776, slavery was legal all across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
The United States ended slavery in 1862.
Some countries were more progressive. Japan ended the evil in 1690. Mexico ended slavery in 1829, England (to include Canada) in 1834, Denmark in 1848 and the Netherlands in 1861.
It is equally true that other countries lagged behind the United States.
Portugal did not end slavery until 1878; Spanish Cuba did not act to end slavery until 1886 and Brazil held out until 1888 – the country that enslaved more Africans than any other.
The Ottoman Empire officially ended slavery in 1890 but small-scale illegal slavery continued.
China and Korea only ended slavery in 1910 and it stopped in Tanganyika in 1919.
Some places never abolished slavery – it just went underground – and slavery is still practiced to this day in parts of the world.
Human beings of every race creed and color were enslavers. Slavery existed in Africa for centuries before the Europeans arrived and the same is true of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
And what government ended slavery in the United States?
It was the United States of America -- not the Confederate States of America.
As for my history, no one in our family tree ever owned a slave.
During the Civil War, my father’s ancestor was a surgeon in the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and my mother’s was an Irish immigrant who served in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
My father's ancestor was wounded and later died from those wounds leaving his family destitute save a not very generous $8 per month survivor’s benefit from the government.
He was a successful doctor in a farming community in northeastern Ohio. He could have stayed home and made a very good living for his family.
He did not sit on the sidelines. He gave up everything to end slavery.
Our family paid a dear and terrible price. Enough is enough. We owe no one reparations. If our family were to adopt the logic of reparations, then we too are owed a debt yet unpaid. I say no!
Where does this end? Stop the madness!
For us Americans, the rationale is slavery and the associated wrong of discrimination. Slavery and discrimination are evils yet universal ones. No one is exempt from the taint.
I doubt there is a country in the United Nations that did not enslave their fellow humans in its past. Even Pacific Islanders embraced slavery.
We so obsess about our history that we think Americans are exceptionally bad but that just is lying to ourselves – yes we were shamefully bad and so was everyone else -- shame on us all.
It seems all humans -- regardless of race, allegiance, creed, ethnicity or what have you -- seem to have an impulse to enslave and judgmentally discriminate when they have the power.
My life took me across the world and I never met a people I did not like, respect and admire. It is equally and painfully true that I never lived in a land that did not have a history of slavery or still practiced prejudice and discrimination – not one – not ever – not anywhere.
I have seen the violent carnage of societies that visit the sins of the parents upon the children in the name of racial or religious or ethnic justice. Punishing innocents that were not even alive when events took place creates an endless cycle of violence and hatred. It is a terrible evil to behold.
Keeping animosities alive from generation to generation ends in bloody wickedness.
But that is what some politicians endorse: Never forgive, never stop dividing people and never stop punishing. That is the inevitable product of retribution. It is a great sin.
How can the majority of Americans be held to pay reparations for wrongs that they had no part of -- that occurred before their ancestors came to America?
How can they, who are innocent, be judged guilty? Are we to adopt a cruel system of collective punishment?
And what of those whose forebears were here during slavery?
Are we to conduct a mass genealogical study to punish innocents 150 years after the fact? Should we make them wear scarlet letters or stars to mark their “sins” and punish innocents yet to be born?
Are we to create a permanent caste to beat down and demean for selfish pleasure? Where does this end?
And after so many generations of offspring, what will we do with millions of Americans who are descendants of both slaves and slave owners?
Order self-flagellation? Subject them to an Americanized version of the Nazi ancestral Mischling blood test to identify the guilty? Where does this end?
I became the third generation of my family to have put on a uniform, pick up a rifle, and go to Europe to stop the madness.
I was stationed for a time near Srebrenica where thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) systematically had been massacred by Serbs.
Why? To avenge a Turkish massacre from centuries earlier – the people there nurtured and embraced ancient hatreds from generation to generation. They never let go of the past.
It was a societal sickness that cherished divisions and worshipped the worst memories to ensure the destruction of their future.
That is what happens when you legitimize the moral prevision that you can punish offspring for their ancestor's sins -- and do so for all eternity.
Of course, under this detestable philosophy, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre now gives Bosniaks justification to kill Serbs not yet born in some future act of reparation and retribution. That is the sickness.
As for the institution of slavery, here is the uncomfortable historical truth: In 1776, slavery was legal all across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
The United States ended slavery in 1862.
Some countries were more progressive. Japan ended the evil in 1690. Mexico ended slavery in 1829, England (to include Canada) in 1834, Denmark in 1848 and the Netherlands in 1861.
It is equally true that other countries lagged behind the United States.
Portugal did not end slavery until 1878; Spanish Cuba did not act to end slavery until 1886 and Brazil held out until 1888 – the country that enslaved more Africans than any other.
The Ottoman Empire officially ended slavery in 1890 but small-scale illegal slavery continued.
China and Korea only ended slavery in 1910 and it stopped in Tanganyika in 1919.
Some places never abolished slavery – it just went underground – and slavery is still practiced to this day in parts of the world.
Human beings of every race creed and color were enslavers. Slavery existed in Africa for centuries before the Europeans arrived and the same is true of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
And what government ended slavery in the United States?
It was the United States of America -- not the Confederate States of America.
As for my history, no one in our family tree ever owned a slave.
During the Civil War, my father’s ancestor was a surgeon in the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and my mother’s was an Irish immigrant who served in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
My father's ancestor was wounded and later died from those wounds leaving his family destitute save a not very generous $8 per month survivor’s benefit from the government.
He was a successful doctor in a farming community in northeastern Ohio. He could have stayed home and made a very good living for his family.
He did not sit on the sidelines. He gave up everything to end slavery.
Our family paid a dear and terrible price. Enough is enough. We owe no one reparations. If our family were to adopt the logic of reparations, then we too are owed a debt yet unpaid. I say no!
Where does this end? Stop the madness!
