paying off ex-slaves

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Sun Mar 25 06:42:59 PST 2001


Kelley Walker:
> this, below, is the kind of shit we're up against. i am so tired of the
> debates in this country being skewed in the worst possible way.! a minor
> reparations debate has just erupted elsewhere. comments are typical and i
> see, Gordon, Horowitz simply encouraged the reinteration of latent
> sentiments. what? 1. that one can compare slavery to, among other historic
> evils, the killing of christians by the romans or the Inquisition, as if
> that's the freakin issue. that the reparations movement is based on "back
> to Africa" Black Nationalism (oiy). 3. when someone mentioned the forty
> acres and a mule deal-- simply blown off as of no consequence. anyone see
> Cspan -- pathetic, disgusting crap from the phone ins. utterly absurd crap
> spouted the the, uh, differently klewed. ....

I've been seeing stuff like that on the Net for many years. It is probably much worse in other discursive venues, like your neighborhood tavern. My rather constrained version of the argument for reparations evolved in just such an atmosphere; hence its smooth armor plate. Its one defect, I think, is that it requires the other side to be fairly strongly committed, rhetorically at least, to the nominal values of liberalism. The general population is not so committed and will rely on arguments from power, convention, and self-interest and will see little benefit to themselves in paying reparations. So you can win all the arguments and still get nowhere, practically speaking. The dumb stuff Horowitz and his friends put out is relatively easy to defeat; the great political inertia of the general public isn't. However, Horowitz's stirring of the issue may have some unintended benefits for the Left and we should be alert for opportunities. The first step toward destroying a reigning ideology is to destroy its belief in itself.



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