The Student Government Assn. at Western Kentucky University has passed a resolution that free college tuition ought to be given to “black” students–I put “black” in quotes because they don’t define the term–as reparations for slavery, which ended 150 years ago ( https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kentucky/articles/2017-04-21/wku-student-government-calls-for-free-tuition-as-reparations ).
And by the way–what kind of reward is a college “education” that blows four or five years of your life to give you a bachelor’s degree in Nothing Studies?
Don’t you just love liberals? They give away other people’s hard-earned money so they can feel good about themselves. You don’t see them ponying up any of their own money.
Maybe I ought to demand reparations from Italy: the Romans enslaved my ancestors. With the interest accruing over 2,000 years, that ought to be a pretty hefty wad of dough.
Another thing that makes liberals feel righteous is stirring up strife among people who would otherwise be at peace with one another. The last thing they want is racial harmony. It would be a calamity for them.
Anyway, there you have it–more proof that America has too many colleges and universities, with way too many people in them, way too much money poured into it, and no longer serves any constructive purpose whatsoever.
Cut the funding now. These ninnies on the WKU Student Government panel need to be out in the real world, working and trying to support themselves. It might teach them a thing or two about cavalierly slinging around other people’s money to indulge a political delusion.
As I understand it, family members in Europe had property confiscated by the Nazis in WW II. That should be good for at least a new Mercedes, shouldn’t it. 🙂
376,000 American men from the North gave their lives in the cause of ending slavery. Slavery in the US was established while it was still a British colony and this was done by the will of the British monarchy. As soon as the colonies declared their independence from Britain, the struggle to end slavery began. The British, also, outlawed slavery and intercepted slave trade when they encountered it.
Now I have nothing but compassion for the victims of slavery throughout history and especially as it was practiced in America, because that is the example with which I am most familiar. The bottom line is this, most of the people in the US were against slavery, even before the Civil War. The south resisted, because they had built their economy on the basis of slavery, but they were in the wrong and paid the price.
Demonizing the US as a hotbed of slavery is, at best, a shallow assessment. It would be every bit as correct to consider it a hotbed of resistance to slavery. The issue was present from the first days of the Republic and there were more people against slavery than for it.
I believe that the best we can do for ALL people, is to offer opportunity. A healthy, robust, productive economy creates opportunity and each individual has to take it from there. Unfortunately, there are people out there that hate others based upon racial origin, but no law will change the feelings of such people. All any of us can do is cleave to what we know to be right and hope that more and more people see the light.
Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor… It was a high price to pay.
Indeed! I understand that it must be terribly frustrating to think that your ancestors were enslaved, but it would be only appropriate to hear some gratitude for the many soldiers that lost their life combatting the evil of slavery.
My ancestors came from Germany, and my Uncle John came off the boat just in time to be drafted into the Union Army and whisked off to the Battle of Chancellorsville. His unit, the 11th Corps, consisted mostly of German troops who couldn’t speak English. That didn’t stop their general from giving them their orders in English.
Very badly led and positioned, the 11th Corps, posted out of contact with the rest of the army, was shattered by Stonewall Jackson’s surprise attack. Uncle John was shot in the head and spent the rest of the war in the hospital. That turned out to be a blessing, because it meant he missed Gettysburg, where the 11th Corps was practically wiped out. The head wound should have killed him, but he recovered by the end of the war.
I think my family has already paid its reparations.
Holy smokes!
I’d say you have paid your reparations.
On the one hand, people who never owned slaves and whose ancestors never owned slaves and/or weren’t even in this country when there was slavery should pay reparations to people who were never slaves themselves, because any member of a group is responsible for — or owed reparations for — the actions and history of the entire group. On the other hand, judging an entire group by the actions of individual members of a group (viz. terrorism, crime, etc.) is bigotry. Interesting doublethink.
“Interesting doublethink.”
Intersting, but also self-serving. There is a culture of self-pity in this country that has grown beyond all imagination. IMO, many of these people would benefit greatly from having to to a bit of real work to ensure their survival. Lamentations 3:27
It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
When I was college age I was working hard, mostly in semi-skilled construction jobs. It took me years to work my way up to something better, but I appreciate it much more than I ever would have had I walked straight into the white collar world. I think that if more of these young people had to work their way through college, instead of amassing huge debt in the form of student loans, there would be a real change in perspective.
I know what you mean. I worked my way through college, mostly in grubby office jobs, and then worked my way up from low-level jobs to high-placed positions in three different careers (including the Air Force). And I, too, appreciated what I gained from the hard work. In fact, I kept the first major luxury purchase I made with my own savings — a 1960 Magnavox stereo — for 54 years, until it finally bit the dust. That’s how much it meant to me.
There is a little thing I believe in called personal responsibility. It means I’m only responsible for my own actions, not for anyone else and certainly not for someone who lived well over a century ago. If we are guilty for the sins of our forefathers then everyone is guilty of something, and where does it end? Should black Africans who kidnapped and sold other black Africans to the slave traders also pay restitution? Should Egypt pay restitution to the Jews for their time in slavery? It’s ridiculous. These idiots either suffer from a guilt trip, or they just want free stuff.
It’s always hard to analyze the motivations of idiots.
I think you nailed it with the last sentence. It’s a pity too. People of such a mindset are unlikely to never learn the satisfaction of taking responsibility for themselves. Even small successes feel good, and inspire us to greater successes to follow.
As to personal responsibility, I’m right with you. The lack thereof is behind many of today’s problems.
It occurs to me that there’s another thing missing in these people: gratitude. I don’t mean just gratitude toward individuals or a society, but gratitude for the bounty of God, for the gifts they’ve been given and the opportunities they have — including the gift of living in a society that affords them the opportunity to use the other gifts they’ve been given.
Gratitude, really, is little more than an expression of joy in the things we have. (Chesterton once said that there comes a terrible moment for an atheist when he feels grateful and has no one to thank.) How sad that the people who are mired in grievances can’t enjoy things because they refuse to be grateful for them, because they can’t or won’t acknowledge the bounty of God.
Oh, I think they enjoy having grievances, and are never more pleased than when they’re angry. Leftism is totally perverse. They have finally convinced me that their whole enterprise is satanic.
One thing I rarely hear mentioned: It was God, through Moses, who first said “Let My People Go”, and not MLK, Jr. as some suppose.