Given what I just heard on the backstage about topics, I wanted to put the question out there and hear some thoughts.
I know there are a lot of smart people out there. There is a lot of talk about reparations to blacks because of slavery. The way I understand “reparations” the payments would come out of some federal bucket of tax money (and in fact some “Reparations ” already have been paid under Obama google Pigford vs Glickman). Can someone help me understand why reparations would not be considered “Collective Punishment” and be against the Geneva Convention? It seems to me nobody alive today owned slaves and nobody in the United States today was a slave.
To punish people who did nothing by taxing them to pay other people compensation for something that never happened to them seem completely wrong headed to say it nicely? Seems people in our own government are considering doing to Americans what the Geneva Convention would consider a war crime? Ultimately I know the Government can and will do anything they want to the citizens but this seems like such an obvious outrageous wrong headed thing to me.
Reparations, also known as “Collective Punishment” or punishing someone for a crime they personally did not commit is considered a war crime in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention
“Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”
Love to hear any thoughts.
3 replies on “Reparations”
The left has never been shy about committing war crimes, or any crimes against humanity. It’s all just eggs and omelettes to them.
It stands to reason that the if so called oppressor class do not and did not own slaves but benefited from slavery, so also the so called oppressed class who are not slaves, also benefited. If so, why are they owed by the non slave owning so called oppressor class who did not enslave the slaves?
I remember, as a child, an old picture of a grandparent x removed, standing beside a tent wearing a Union uniform. Which, indicates he fraught to free the slaves and was NOT a slave owner himself. Since none of my ancestors from that time on owned slaves and since I don’t own slaves, why must I pay for the sins of others to be given to those who have not been personally sinned against by me? I should not. I did not commit the crime and thus I am innocent of the charge.
Only if you presume that being white is to be guilty and to be black is to be a victim could that be so. Assigning guilt and victim hood on the bases of skin color, over which one has NO choice, is the essence of bigotry. It is also true, that the so called oppressed “poor” of today live better than the bulk of the slave owners of the mid-nineteenth century. ANY thing the “poor” have in excess of nothing is due to their benefiting from the slavery of the past just as much as the so called guilty white person who does not own slaves. No harm, no crime, no payoff!
It is also true that I could not prevent myself from being born white any more than a claimant of payoff who just happened to be born black. Nor did I cause him to be born black any more than he caused me to be born white. We both were dealt a hand to play and had the responsibility to play it as given. Different inputs have different outcomes. I owe you nothing and you owe me nothing. We are EVEN!
Get over it. Work with what you have just as I have done. Go to school. Work to get a good education. Become competent in something that others want to buy. Trade value for value, Live and let live. Stop claiming something from me that I don’t owe you!
I agree with you, but I’m not even a bump on the road in politics, so I have no influence. You?
You have a very interesting observation. Now go find the right button to push and whang down on that sucker…