Whackos in the Windy City
Somewhere on the political spectrum – in the distant lands beyond the warm-and-fuzzy liberals who want to save the gays and end discrimination against trees (or something like that), beyond even the not-so-fuzzy über-liberals who think income is only good for taxing – lie the whackos. With absurd beliefs and a radical agenda, these loonies are the fringe of the fringe, the extreme of the extreme of American politics. And they are advancing.
Sound the alarm. Rally the troops. Because the whackos have seized Chicago.
This past week the Windy City government, led by whacko Alderman Dorothy Tillman, passed a law requiring any company even tangentially related to the old slave system to turn over paperwork detailing their involvement with slavery. Tillman hopes to pass this information along to a phalanx of lawyers that is pushing a $30 million class action lawsuit which demands reparations for the harm done during the centuries of slavery.
To hear Tillman and her cohorts tell it, the descendants of slaves deserve big cash pay outs because all of America’s current prosperity came about “because of the free labor of blacks. It was because of all … we did that made America so powerful.”
That’s right, according to the whackos it wasn’t the entrepreneurial spirit, it wasn’t the Protestant ethic, it wasn’t the American dream that made our nation so powerful. It was the slaves. That’s what the whackos claim, and they’re filing lawsuits to force the rest of us to accept this ludicrous notion, while at the same time looking to totally reshape the American economy through the undeserved redistribution of billions of dollars.
But the whackos have it all wrong. Not only by thinking that the descendent of a slave deserves some sort of compensation for wrongs that were committed generations ago, but by spouting the idea that America’s success stems from slavery.
Slavery has been dead and buried for over 130 years, and America has been the world’s economic powerhouse for less than half that time. From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, the period when America’s economy was still being impacted by the repurcussions of the defunct slave system, we were hardly the superpower we are today. Prosperous, yes, but not a global power.
The whackos seem to think that America has always enjoyed the economic status we currently possess, but that’s simply not true. From the 1870s to the 1940s America was a strong nation, but only one amongst many, and hardly the strongest.
Our nation’s ascent to the global summit began not on the plantations of the Old South, but on the battlefields of the Second World War. Dred Scott’s suffering has far less to do with America’s current prosperity than Adolf Hitler’s scheming. Low-swinging sweet chariots had an insignificant impact when compared to the low-flying Nazi Luftwaffe. By bombing most of Europe’s industrial centers back to the Bronze Age, Hitler paved the way for America to assume the economic throne. Those who attempt to rewrite history to support the claim the source of our prosperity is slavery do violence to the truth and dishonor those who died in both World War II and the Civil War.
What an America we’re living in today. Whackos to the left of us, John Ashcroft to the right. Maybe we can find a way to convince the Grand Inquisitor… excuse me, Attorney General that seeking reparations violates the Patriot Act, or that the Chicago city government is somehow in league with al-Qaeda (I wonder if Tillman has ever visited Iraq). Perhaps the whackos are developing weapons of mass destruction. They’re certainly threatening a crusade of economic terrorism. Just imagine George Bush speaking to the United Nations demanding the right to invade the Midwest in lieu of the Middle East. What an ironic sight that would be.
Chicago burned down once, after all. For the good of us all, perhaps it needs to burn again. You call up the troops, I’ll buy some marshmallows.
Yes, the slaves of the Old South were mistreated. Slavery was an abominable institution with no redeeming value. But the sins of the father do not fall upon the son, nor are black Americans today the victims of the horrors that befell their ancestors.
The descendants of slaves have no right to claim the cross of their ancestor’s suffering and use it as grounds for a series of nonsense lawsuits.
The goal Tillman and her allies persue is not just a wrongheaded idea, it is an unjust redistribution of wealth from those who have done no wrong, modern day white Americans, to those who have not been wronged, the descendants of slaves. It’s an idea so outrageous, it’s not absurd, it’s downright whacko.
