Dana Mathewson

Good article -- sent by Eddie. Takes awhile to read, but worth the time. I just wish Frum had pointed out that the money that would be spent (if it is spent) to improve the quality of life for blacks in this project would also improve the quality of life for whites, when talking about schools.


The Impossibility of Reparation

David Frum writes in a 2014 article:

"The United States government launched its reparations program to African Americans in autumn of 1969. Originally known as "the Philadelphia plan,” the program set quotas for black employment in construction trades. Over the next decades, such quotas would spread from industry to industry, and would expand into higher education and public contracting.


The plan is usually credited to the Nixon administration. Sometimes it’s even described as a secret scheme to split the Democratic base. The history is more prosaic. The plan originated under the Johnson administration, following President Johnson’s pledge in his 1965 Howard University speech to seek racial equality as a result, not merely as a theory.

In this month’s Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes an eloquent case for restitution to black Americans, not only for wrongs done before 1865, but as much or more for wrongs done in the century of segregation that followed. Yet this powerful essay explicitly disavows any consideration of the single most important question about the restitution he has in mind: How would it work?

The affirmative action experience since 1969 offers some insights into what is likely to happen next:{
Read the rest at the Atlantic.

Jack Kemp adds this:

And there is another more controversial unthinkable claim - until today's victim mentality talk as charterized by Ta-Nehisi Coates writing in the Atlantic.

I was allowed into this country by Pres. Harry Truman. Truman noted that Franklin Roosevelt did not allow into the United States a certain fixed number quota of Jews during WWII, even though those entries would have been legal under existing legislation. Truman took that total six year figure and probably added something to it, to allow in 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors. But Truman's humanitarian act did not negate the damage done to European Jews by not being allowed into the U.S. in the years of WWII. Of course that assumes the Jews who wanted to come could have fled Nazi controlled Central Europe to get on a ship in neutral Spain or Casablanca or Vladivostok on the Siberian Coast. The financing of the travel would have come from American Jewish organizations.

My late mother used to curse FDR like a Kansas Republican any time his face came onto her tv screen. And she had a point. I am arguably owed reparations from the FDR Estate, if not (theoretically) the U.S. Government. If one assumes blacks are entitled to reparations under some grand plan as Ta-Nehisi Coates envisions, then I am entitled to a similar guilt trip based reparations from the very descendants of those who fought and bled and died to end the Hitler regime and fought his ally, the forces of Imperial Japan. Actually, I like the idea of suing the Roosevelt family for reparations better, but people like Ta-Nehisi Coates have much more ambitious plans. Whereas I would be very reluctant to sue the descendants of the USS Indianapolis which brought the Hiroshima atomic bomb to Tinian island and its airbase, and was then sunk by a Japanese submarine on its return trip to the U.S. The remaining crew members were then attacked and killed (if not eaten) by sharks. And there are the descendants of all the American aircraft crews who were shot down by German fighters and flak, as well as the descendants of the survivors of the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day. Actually, the idea of suing the Roosevelt family has a certain appeal and level of direct causation, even though I don't have the political influence to have that question debated as a serious issue. And I have no funds to hire a lawyer and would have great trouble finding a lawyer or a court to agree to argue such a Quixotic cause in a federal court. Maybe I could sue all the American Jews who voted for Roosevelt and considered FDR like a god to them.

No, clearly all these lawsuit plans are a recipe for permanent bitterness and permanent actual, literal madness and a great hinderance to my getting on with my life if I were to consider them, just as they would be for blacks embracing Ta-Nehisi Coates' plan. The only one who will benefit from Coates' plan is Coates himself, getting a paycheck from the Atlantic Magazine and perhaps some paid speaking engagements. By the way, the Atlantic Magazine is the same publication that ran an article years ago claiming that some of the NY City firemen at the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 were stealing blue jeans, claiming they were placed on the truck. I used to walk through the World Trade Center underground shopping plaza in the years before the 9/11 attack. There were stores there that sold gold jewelry, expensive watches, diamonds (all three easier to hide in one's pockets) and other stores that sold expensive stereo and computer equipment and expensive liquor. And this "intellectual" snob and elitist at the Atlantic thought the firemen were too dumb to steal Rolex and other Swiss watches but were concentrating on taking blue jeans. This claim lead to the topic of firemen allegedly stealing blue jeans being debated by a scientist who noted various objects were blown away by air pressure from the falling Trade Center Towers, such as a set of law books - in alphabetical order - that wound up on a fire escape of a building across the street from the South Tower. The scientist even got the Atlantic author to admit he only saw the blue jeans ON THE GROUND near a fire truck and NOT on it. So this isn't the first time the Atlantic Magazine has beclowned itself with a half-baked sceme from some "intellectual." As Dennis Prager says, some ideas are so dumb only a Phd. would consider them. Mr. Coates may not have a Phd., but the Atlantic Magazine probably has a few of them in senior positions

Oh, and another thing:

I've got it. The Vatican can sue the Italian government because the Roman military government carried out the crucifixion of Jesus. Roman soldiers arrested Jesus under orders of the leader of the fifth prefect of the Roman provence of Judea, namely Pontius Pilate, whose authority came from Emperor Tiberius in Rome. Yeah, that lawsuit would solve a lot of problems and create no new ones....NOT.

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