"My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs -- in the people."—Ronald Reagan, July 17, 1980

Current Issue

Reparations For White Slaves?

According to the 1860 Census, there were about four million slaves in the United States.

Today, according to the Internal Revenue Service, there are about seven and a half million slaves. Slavery here is defined by those who slave roughly half the year just to send every penny earned over to various taxing authorities.

Tax slavery is still slavery as much as cotton slavery was slavery.

Seven and one half million Americans pay roughly fifty percent of all income taxes. This is a little less than three percent of the population who pay half the taxes. Since LBJ, taxpayers— especially these so-called "rich" taxpayers—have forked over about six trillion dollars in wealth transfer payments to various poverty programs. Since these wealth transfer "payors" work half the year as slaves, and since we assume the black slaves worked all year as slaves, we can say that the total amount of hours worked as slaves equal about the same amount of hours worked as slaves in 1860.

Will we see reparations for whites since slavery today is little different than in 1860 in terms of slave hours worked?

Will the black taxpayers who make up part of this 2.7 percent who have paid reparations already—part of this six trillion dollars of wealth transfer payments—get any rebate back?

With all the talk about reparations for blacks, it is time a study is done to show that the total number of blacks who were slaves is dwarfed by the number whites that have been slaves. This is simply due to population growth and as the years go by, this ratio will get even more extreme. It may be hard for some to grasp this important detail, but working a full week and showing nothing for it is slavery. If, instead of having a portion of your pay withheld as taxes each week, you had 100 percent of all your earnings taken out of your paycheck from January 1 to about May 15, would you then see that you are a slave for half the year?

It could be said that some blacks are the masters and that whites are the slaves. When you have six trillion dollars taken from the those who pay 50% of all taxes (mostly, but not all whites) and this money is then given to those dependent on poverty programs ( many, but not all blacks) then there are indeed many black masters to white slaves—at least for six months out of the year.

Walter Williams posed this question:

Thomas Sowell asked, "Does anyone seriously suggest that blacks in America today would be better off if they were in Africa? If not, then what is the compensation for?"

According to the AP, "hundreds of blacks rallied in front of the Capitol on Saturday to demand slavery reparations." This is a far cry from the million that was hoped for, maybe a sign that there are a growing number of Walter Williams and Thomas Sowells out there as opposed to your Jesse Jacksons, who was absent at Saturday's turnout. I guess he did not want the small size of the crowd to embarrass him. Louis Farrakhan, who was there, has a different approach than Mr. Williams and Mr. Sowell:

"It seems that America owes black people a lot for what we have endured. We cannot settle for some little jive token. We need millions of acres of land that black people can build. We're not begging white people. We are just demanding what is justly ours."

(The racist and the "jive token slave)

There are many serious questions that have been asked on how to justify any thought of paying reparations to blacks. David Horowitz made such a good case that it caused an uproar at all the liberal universities in his "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too". Most of these commentaries have a central theme of the inherent unfairness to those who had nothing to do with slavery and the fact that slavery was status quo throughout the world for centuries.