About 160 years ago my grandfather, John A. Campbell, enlisted in one of the army's New York Volunteers companies. He was given a battlefield commission during the battle of Gettysburg where he was also wounded. My father and mother took my sister and me to the battlefield and toured it including the stone monument where his company fought. It was sobering. I took my family there in later years and then returned on a motorcycle trip. The battlefields lay quiet and look undisturbed now but when my grandfather was there it was covered with bodies and blood.
I have heard the cry for reparations given to the ancestors of slaves for years but lately it has been very loud and demanding. Amounts of millions of dollars have been tossed around and added up to trillions of dollars. I have often wondered what the next generation would demand if these were given since the present generation have never been slaves and are three and four generations away from any ancestors that were. If we as a country would give millions of dollars to the fourth or fifth generation after the slaves were freed somehow all would be equal and we could move on for the next expected handout.
The reparations have been paid over and over since the slaves were freed. For every five slaves freed a white man was killed in the battle to free them. That was a high cost to pay and is greater that any amount of money that could be given. The Great Society by Lyndon Johnson has cost the US taxpayers billions to fund and keep going even today. A government plan to build and maintain housing with food, clothing and medical provided with no return of work or effort by those being housed. In returned we have received single parent families with no fathers, drugs and crime in our inner cities that has been increasing year after year until we see cities like Chicago with black-on-black killing exceeding those lost in the Iraq war each year. We are seeing crime continue to grow in al of our major cities with no attempt to stop it. We have been given a no-bail policy in New York that puts felons back on the street to commit more crimes while waiting for their hearings with a DA that does not seem to care about the citizens that elected him. We have seen black students being give privilege over white students entering college and professional schools. We have seen privilege given to black contractors when bidding government construction jobs. Black privilege has reigned over the so-call white privilege in many areas that we now see competition for promotions and job hiring. All of these are reparations that have been paid by the US citizen in form of taxes and education.
The new reparations should be the increase in education quality and insistence on working when receiving government benefits. The victimhood used to justify not getting an education or trying to compete in the labor front needs to be erased and instead attempts made to aspire to reach the goals of the black people that achieved great things like General Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, two Supreme Court Justices and on and on. President Obama erased the notion that anyone could reach the highest office in our land and should be the reason to aspire for all races to try to reach higher goals in their lives.
After 700,000 men died to end slavery which was not an idea of the new America but forced upon the colonies by the British before the revolution, should be sufficient to end any call for future reparations. We need to unite as on nation made up of many colors and sizes and shapes. The only man or woman that should count is the HUMAN that GOD created in his image.
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