On Wednesday evening, Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-Loonbaggia) announced to a largely black audience at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church that if elected president, he would apologize for slavery. Given that nobody knew Sanders owned slaves, this came as a bit of a revelation. And given that America fought a bloody war 150 years ago involving hundreds of thousands of dead white men dying to free black men from their white slaveholders, the apology seems a bit superfluous.
Sanders continued by stating that blacks should receive de facto slavery reparations through government redistributionism. “[W]e understand the legacy of slavery,” Sanders said. “As everybody in this room knows, what we’re seeing in many African-American communities, outrageously high levels of unemployment, inadequate education, inadequate healthcare. I think that what we have got to do as a nation is invest in those communities who need that.”
Now, Sanders isn’t sincere. He’s a socialist who believes that poor people deserve other people’s money, regardless of color. And he knows full well that America hasn’t embraced slavery for approximately seven generations.
No, Sanders is pandering.
Just as I said he should:
I desperately want Bernie Sanders to endorse slavery reparations. Hillary would be put on suicide watch.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 2, 2016
Sanders thinks he has a shot at the nomination if he can just pry enough black support away from Hillary. So he’ll say anything, including imputing pro-slavery motivations to his opponents. In reality, of course, the president apologizing for slavery 150 years after its conclusion only exacerbates racial tensions by reinforcing the notion that America is irredeemably racist; Sanders’ protestations that he wants to “wipe the slate clean” are nonsense. Teaching yet another generation of young black people that America was born in sin and raised in evil and bears a stain that will never be washed away – all of that will do nothing to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own lives.
But Sanders doesn’t want individuals taking responsibility for their own lives. It’s government’s job to take responsibility for everybody’s life – to seize from them their property and their labor for its own ends. Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot more like involuntary servitude than freedom.