Democrats have always viewed social justice as a convenient vehicle for advancing an extreme policy agenda, and now, they want to dramatically expand the federal welfare system through their calls for reparations.
In recent weeks, several Democratic presidential candidates have proposed various forms of racial reparations, some of which take the concept far beyond compensation for the descendants of slaves.
Former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, for example, recently pledged to establish a reparations task force, arguing that he has “long believed that this country should resolve its original sin of slavery.”
“Until that issue is resolved, until that original sin is addressed, we may think that we’re moving forward as one nation and I don’t think that we ever really will,” Mr. Castro said.
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Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have endorsed reparations, suggesting that taxpayers should pay for racial injustice in modern-day America.
“[W]e have to all acknowledge that people have not started out on the same base and have not had equal opportunities to success,” Senator Harris said. In an interview with The Root, she said, “there has to be some form of reparations and we can discuss what that is.”
Senator Warren asserted that reparations for Native Americans “is an important part of the conversation,” and that the country needs to address its “ugly history of racism.”
Don’t mistake the intent of these Democrats. Reparations are a cover for imposing the social engineering that liberals have long desired, and a justification for a massive redistribution of wealth in our economy.
While Mr. Castro and others may urge lawmakers to address the “sin of slavery,” they conveniently omit another key moral precept — that children are not responsible for the sins of their fathers.
This principle shapes the foundation of the American justice system and separates us from regimes such as North Korea, where the “three generations rule” is frequently used to punish entire families for crimes committed by their ancestors.
It’s not just the descendants of slaveholders who would have to pay for reparations. Such a policy would penalize millions of Americans with absolutely no family connection to slavery, especially descendants of immigrants who have come to this country over the past century and a half.
It’s estimated that in 1860, roughly 75 percent of American families did not own a single slave, while only about 1 percent of families owned 40 or more. That was plenty to plague the nation’s conscience, of course, and hundreds of thousands of (mostly white) Americans would die in subsequent years fighting to end the scourge of slavery.
It shouldn’t be controversial to assert that forcing people to pay for crimes they did not commit is not a form of justice — it’s scapegoating.
Even some advocates of reparations are concerned about the ambiguity of the latest Democrat proposals.
“What does that mean? What do they mean? I’m not sure anyone’s very clear,” Senator Bernie Sanders remarked during a recent town hall meeting.
“I want to be sure that whatever is proposed and potentially enacted as a reparations program really is a substantive and dramatic intervention in the patterns of racial wealth inequality in the United States — not something superficial or minor that is labeled as reparations and then politicians say the national responsibility has been met,” said Duke University economist William Darity, who supports reparations.
Indeed, several of the reparations plans floated by Democratic candidates actually eschew the conventional notion of direct payments to the descendants of slaves in favor of massive new welfare programs, such as government-subsidized child care and tax credits to provide a guaranteed minimum income.
Democrats are more than happy to expand the scope of their reparations demands to cover as many minority groups as possible
The latest Democrat push for reparations is not really about rectifying specific historical injustices; it’s about using the legacy of those injustices to generate sympathy for imposing their far-left agenda and exploiting the issue to address the faux injustice of “wealth inequality.”
The author is CEO of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and a member of the Donald J. Trump for President Inc. advisory board.
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
First Published March 16, 2019, 10:30 a.m.
