Op-ed: 
On Reparations 
By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on American Political Radio

“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing."  
- American author Mark Twain

Words forgotten by many, manipulated by some, yet words that ring as true today as they did when first uttered by Mark Twain over a century ago...for when you enter this life you alone are ultimately responsible for both the good and bad choices you make while on life's journey. Simply, it's time to take responsibility for your own actions or lack thereof, and not expect others to be your proverbial cash cow.

And nowhere do those words ring more true than in today's political climate where a certain segment of the American population thinks they're owed money for their ancestor's past. Forgetting...or better yet ignoring...the fact that the past cannot be changed...that the past can only be learned from and hopefully not repeated again...these folks hoot, holler, and stomp their feet demanding said money...big money...from another certain segment of America's population. Reparations is the word they use...reparations demanded for slavery long gone from America's landscape.

It's the old black vs. white game...a game now peppered with the so-called “collective guilt trip” thrown in for good, or should I say bad, measure.

And it's a game being fueled on by a small but ever so vocal minority of black Americans and their just as vocal white liberal supporters, who together want to make sure the Obama started parameters of racism are not only being kept alive but expanded. And what these black reparation folks want from we run-of-the-mill mostly conservative white folks is simply what they have not earned...as in monies garnered through hard work...monies garnered that through taxes funnel down into the federal government's coffers...monies garnered that these black reparation folks now want to see divvied up amongst themselves as payment for what they still refuse to accept as truth. And that truth is that it was Africa's past tribal chiefs who started the chain by which the selling of their ancestors into slavery became what they perceive as their direct link to an earlier and uglier chapter of what was then America's historically accepted norm.

And it's that small segment of today's black population who not only continues to scream for reparations, but who relishes in and draws a perverted sense of strength from their stirring up the pot of racial animosity, discontent, and all out hate. Now demanding that all attention be focused on their reparations agenda alone, these angry black folks and their white liberal supporters will try to convince anyone who will listen that we of the white race collectively owe them something...owe them something simply because they share a skin color with those who were once slaves.

Now portraying themselves as being the ever haunted victims of but one cruel chapter in our nation's otherwise illustrious past, a repugnant yet ever increasing narrative of false victimhood has become part and parcel of the liberal media's 24/7 news cycle for remember, anything racist or even perceived as being racist is a ratings and advertising bonanza. And so with the media covering their backs, we now see some in the very halls of our government trying to cash in and become heroes for all the wrong reasons. And why the wrong reasons...because the reality is that human suffering affords no racial, ethnic, or religious barriers for it exists today in parts of the world just as it did in the past...black slavery most certainly included.

So while slavery here in America basically ended with President Lincoln's issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and with the Civil War itself being the official end to this sorry chapter in Americas history...forgotten by these reparation sorts is that 350,000+ mostly white Union soldiers gave their lives in part to set their black ancestors free. And those efforts in turn saw the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865, thus bringing a formal end to the institution of slavery throughout these United States. And while you would think that 350,000+ Union deaths would be reparations enough...for some it seems that is not nearly payment enough.

Not nearly enough no matter the fact that no one living today, nether black nor white, was alive during America's slave past...no one living today was a slave nor a slave master...nor where those living two or more generations before them. So why should those folks demanding reparations be given even one dime of our hard earned monies...simply they should not. And yet we are now seeing both black and white Democrat politicians, especially those with presidential aspirations, agreeing that reparations are needed in an effort to lock-up the black vote.

Remember, everything the Democrats do today is nothing but a concerted effort to garner more party line votes.

And so as most of the Democrat 2020 presidential candidates step forward to jump on the reparations bandwagon, the black candidates themselves see reparations as their just due dessert while the white Democrat candidates see reparations as penance of sorts... misplaced penance but penance nevertheless.

And leading the reparations bandwagon is none other than Spartacus wannabe himself...New Jersey Senator Cory Booker who last week introduced a bill that would not only study the possibility of giving reparations to the descendants of slaves, but called for a commission to be set up to study and report on the impact of slavery and discrimination against black Americans today. Also, his bill would deliver a verdict of sorts on different proposals for offering reparations.

Saying his bill “is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country. It will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed,” what Sen. Booker forgets is that the racism and racial bias he sees in America today is the handiwork of one of his own...as in Barack HUSSEIN Obama...the very man who ripped off the scab of long healed racial wounds for his own political gain as well as that of his puppet masters.

Also in the presenting of his bill, Cory Booker stated that slavery had “oppressed African-Americans economically for generations,” and that, “Many of our bedrock domestic policies that have ushered millions of Americans into the middle class have systematically excluded blacks through practices like GI Bill discrimination and redlining.”

But what Senator Cory Booker and his political cohorts seem to forget...more on those cohorts in a bit...is the fact that opportunities for blacks have always been there...been there but either misused or deliberately unused as many blacks willingly chose to take the easy way out...as in their securing welfare, food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid...things they perceived as owed to them for their ancestors slavery days. A form of generational reparations already put in place...a form of reparations that is helping to bleed our country dry. 
 
In other words...their “free ride” has gone on long enough...the so-called reparations have been paid-in-full and it's time for these folks to move on and stop whining over happenings that ended over a century and a half ago.

And that's what it is...a “free ride”...for no other group in America has been catered and pandered to more than America's blacks. Never mind the a fore mentioned welfare, food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid...how about the fact that blacks can belong to clubs and organizations that cater specifically to people of their race alone...like the NAACP...the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People...but remember there's no National Association for the Advancement of White People because such a group would most assuredly be deemed racist. And then there's Affirmative Action, The Great Society, The African American Employment Program, The Office of African American Affairs...to name but a few. 
 

And what is the one thing these groups and organizations have in common...simply, they focus on the color of ones skin not on the character of who the person is. The all consuming feature that seems to define a certain vocal segment of black America's sole identity has driven these groups forward, and I believe has done more harm then good for when a bodily feature defines who one is the battle for equality has already been lost. And while, of course, most blacks do not feel this way as they have risen beyond the “we were slave mentality” and have gone on to meld into the components that make America great, it's that vocal angry minority who refuses to move on from days long gone for it's those days alone that they think define who they are.

Now as for Cory Booker's fellow Democrat 2020 presidential candidates almost all are on the reparations bandwagon. In fact, former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke said he would sign Texas Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee’s bill...H.R. 40 Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act...if he was elected president. Her bill not only wants reparations but a formal national apology issued for what she says was the “cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery.” And while Shelia Jackson Lee is right as to what slavery was, she chooses to overlook the fact that times were different during slavery's days, and besides we are well over a century and a half past those dark days. Besides, people of other colors have been slaves at one time or another in our nation's history...for example the Chinese and white Irish. Will there be reparations for them or just for blacks as Jackson Lee's and other reparations proposals seem to indicate. That in itself is abject racist if you ask me.

And Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth 'Pocahantas' Warren; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; former San Antonio, TX mayor and HUD secretary Julian Castro; South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and NYC entrepreneur Andrew Yang; have also all backed the idea that some sort of reparations should be considered in light of what they say is ongoing economic inequality. Odd though that socialist Bernie Sanders dodges the question of reparations every time he is asked about it instead arguing that inequality itself must be addressed.

So the bottom line is this...reparations for slavery not only would signal a formal acceptance of collective guilt by all white Americans when the fact is that a very small percentage of whites ever owned slaves and quite a few blacks were slave owners themselves. And logic itself dictates that in no way are today's blacks or their families the direct victims of slavery's injustices, thus making their receiving reparations a racist act in and of itself. And any reparations given helps to solidify the leftists idea that all blacks are victims, thus setting up a permanent victim mentality that could divide our nation even more than it already is. But then again maybe that is what the Democrats want...as in to create the Civil War Part 2...with a hoped for totally different outcome this time.

Simply, giving reparations to any one group no matter their race, nationality, or religion...no matter the injustices they perceive...is something that must never be allowed to happen for reparations are not a solution to anything but just another problem that could have dire consequences in both the short and long term. And besides, one must never forget the root of slavery itself...as in the trading of human beings for money. And therein lies perhaps the ultimate irony...for those black people who are pushing for reparations today are frankly affixing a monetary price on their very ancestors, thus selling them all over again.

It's time to move on from day's long past...it's time to stop thinking America owes you something when it's you who owe America and the freedom's she affords you everything. Case closed.
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For another take on racism and reparations please read my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's article, The Inescapable Legacy of Democrat Racism.

Copyright @ 2019 Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / All Rights Reserved.

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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's blog The National Patriot to read his latest article, Illegal Aliens, Liberals, and the 5th Element.

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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS...LIVE!

Tuesday, April 16th from 7 to 9pm EST on American Political Radio, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss 'On Reparations'; and important news of the day.

Hope you can tune in at: http://listen.samcloud.com/w/73891/American-Political-Radio#history...or on Tune-In at: https://tunein.com/radio/American-Political-Radio-s273246/

Op-ed: 
The Lie of Black Victimhood

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots

“We will not be free until we reach down to the depths of our souls and sign with the pen and ink of assertive manhood our own emancipation.” 

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This past Monday on FOX News, in response to the newest round of black-on black-violence in Chicago’s inner city, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke called for the end of America’s inner-city 'ghettos'…a just cause for sure but he forgets one important factor...as in you can rid a city of the physical buildings of its inner city 'ghettos' but unless you rid the 'you owe me...gimme-gimme' mindset of the people who live in said 'ghettos' it does not matter how many shiny new buildings are built for within a short period of time those buildings themselves will be turned back into the very same 'ghettos' its inhabitants came from.

And why…because many black Americans…most especially those living in America’s inner cities…continue to have and relish in living in a ‘culture of poverty’ mentality…a mentality that plays well into their never ending cycle of self-perceived victimhood…a victimhood they believe is based solely upon the color of their skin.

But the color of their skin is exactly what affords them ‘free stuff’…lots and lots of ‘free stuff’…and they know it. But that ‘free stuff’ comes with a hefty price tag but not a price tag in dollars and cents per se, but a price tag of continuing the seemingly unending cycle of victimhood they seem not to be able to or want to break free of. And what’s even sadder is that by continuing to relish in their self-inflicted victimhood status, black people are not only harming themselves, their families, and America’s black communities in general, they are also denying themselves and their children something critical to any people’s well-being, and that is simply a ‘future.’
 

And it’s the ‘future’ that sets one free from the past no matter if that past was just or not.

Forgetting that all peoples have a past but a past they’ve moved on from, many of today’s black leaders feed into the present Obama caused newest racial divide and help to perpetrate the myth of the past that blacks are powerless to change their current lot in life. Using their own people for their own political and monetary gain, some of today’s black leaders…especially the likes of the anything but Reverend Al Sharpton and political hack Jesse Jackson…are actually the cause of the ongoing continuation of the all-encompassing victim mentality sadly overwhelming many of today’s black youth.

Remember, children are any people’s future but when black children think it’s ‘cool’ to be thugs…when black children make ‘street creed’ their chosen source of education…when they see their current socio-economic ‘low man on the totem pole’ status as a given…and when black children have ingrained in their psyches a generation after generation mindset that things will only change for the better if and when the white man’s so-called ‘system’ changes to bend to their wants and needs, then you just know that all roads traveled will indeed lead nowhere for the concept of personal responsibility and personal achievement remains not only unknown to them but is deliberately kept from them.

And lacking personal responsibility for one’s actions equates to complacency for the unbold…people who lack the courage to move on from wallowing in the past and embrace all the possibilities the future just might offer… offer that is if one has enough self-determination to not only see but to realize that the future is their only way to escape their always in their eyes dismal past…and to escape the inner-cities that they see as their prison of sorts.

But when the concept of achievement also remains foreign to them, the past coupled with their disillusionment of the present truly closes the door to any semblance of a brighter future…in fact the word ‘subverts’ actually comes to mind.

But what steps are needed to gain personal responsibility and at least plant the seeds about the will to achieve especially in today’s inner city black youth…especially in young black men?

To start with they must understand that groups like ‘Black Lives Matter’ are not now nor will they ever be the answer to their problems. Groups like this feed off of hate and prejudice, and help to expound the myth of black victimhood. Black Lives Matter hides behind the false claim and bravado that they are working for “the validity of Black life” but what they don’t say is they are doing so at the expense of white lives…of police lives…as their true goal is to rebuild the Black Liberation Movement…a movement from the 1970’s and 1980’s that espoused violence and assault against self-perceived “U.S. imperialism” and to bring about black liberation though socialism.

And groups like Black Lives Matter deem that to be a true and proud black person…not one of those ‘Uncle Tom’ blacks who have successfully left the ghetto behind and who they see as sellouts to ‘whitey’…one must be of their self-dictated black-power mindset that pushes forward the lie about blacks as perennial victims of an oppressive white society that affords them nothing but to continue to suffer from both unrelenting racism and discrimination. Each and every problem blacks have, according to these sorts, is the fault of the white man along with the notion that all young black man killed by the police are innocent victims of targeted police brutality against them.

Believing that black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state and that they are “deprived of basic human rights and dignity”…which is quite untrue as black people are afforded the same rights under the law as white people are and no person alive today ‘owned’ anybody…Black Lives Matter ignores the fact that, sadly, many if not most of the inner-city black communities are riddled with drugs and violence, and that alone aids in the destruction of said communities as well as nullifying the importance of black lives. And it’s black children who suffer the most but if truth be told, older black youth and black adults themselves are also to blame for allowing this to infiltration of sorts to happen for they are of the mindset that it's easier to make a buck selling drugs than it is to exist on minimum wage or to take the time to better themselves through education.

And it’s education that is the key to any peoples successful future for academics coupled with a positive work ethic truly does, as the old saying goes, "set a people free"…and to which I add, "from the chains that bind them to the past."

And that means that black parents must stress the importance of an education instead of seeing school as a free babysitting service. Black parents must get involved in their children's education through volunteering, making sure their kids homework is done, and they must attend PTA and school board meetings, as well as take part in classroom special activities. And very importantly they must stay on top of curriculum and make sure their children can read up to grade level, but simply put black parents must be involved in every aspect of their children's education just like most…but obviously not all…white parents are.

“Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people to pull themselves out of poverty.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And equally as important as getting a good education is that black families must be made whole again for most inner-city kids come from single-parent households or households with 'multiple daddies' of multiple kids...and this is anything but an ideal situation for achievement. This is street culture at its worst and actually goes against what black people once valued most…the family.

But blacks must accept as fact that change doesn't happen overnight but it does happen with consistency, involvement, and above all else love for their children...as in getting rid of the mindset that kids are a free ride to more welfare monies and more ‘free stuff’ especially now with unwed pregnancies being government subsidized no matter the number of children any given woman has. Only then can blacks still living in poverty…blacks suffering the scourge of unemployment coupled with the ever-growing number of black men who flood America’s court and penal system in highly disproportionate levels to their population numbers…begin to see a ‘future’ of possibilities at the end of the ongoing poverty tunnel.

And it’s these disproportionate numbers that tell the story of the collapse of the black family unit…a unit that once consisted of a married to the mother working black father who together set a positive example for their sons and daughters. But somehow within the last few decades that has been lost making the collapse of the black family the true root cause of all black American’s current woes whether they choose to face that reality or not.

And that reality means that neither slavery nor its aftermath…an aftermath that includes segregation…is the cause of the demise of the black family. What is the cause, in no uncertain terms, is former president Lyndon Baines Johnson’s (LBJ) and the Democrats 1964 welfare crutch known as ‘The War on Poverty’ which made generations of blacks beholden to them and bringing to life one of LBJ’s most infamous of quotes, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for 200 years.”  

In other words…welfare…as in a life lived off of ‘free stuff.’

Taking away from blacks the individual freedom of choice if you will…as in the freedom to decide their own destiny and fate…the Democrats replaced said freedom with “collective subjugation” to a system that caters to what the system hierarchy…as in the federal government… deems to be every black person’s wants and needs, and with anti-marriage incentives built into that very system using ‘free stuff’ as the bait to draw them in.

And it was the introduction of ‘free stuff’ via welfare that became the death knell for the black family as the 1970’s saw blacks moving from outlining areas back into urban areas en-masse, and with it black men were now being denied jobs...jobs that had now became unionized...jobs that once allowed them to financially provide for their families. And this lead to more and more welfare programs to provide assistance to the now increasing numbers of single black women with dependent children because the men in their shame of not being able to provide for their families high-tailed it and took off.

And these welfare programs…programs that pretended to be compassionate in their heralding of social justice above all else…actually masked provisions that offered economic incentives for one’s turning their back on marriage thus avoiding the formation of once typical two-parent black families. And this in turn has led to generations of blacks continuing to live in poverty without the will to achieve because of their very dependence on the ‘free stuff’ the government was and still is so willing to give to them in exchange for their all-important vote.

So with LBJ’s infamous words now having not only come true but having come back to haunt is the price black people have paid for their ‘free stuff’ for in their misguided and unwavering loyalty to the very party…the Democratic party who gave us the KKK, hangings, Jim Crow, poll taxes, literacy tests, and failed policies like the War on Poverty, the anything but Great Society, and Affirmative Action…has allowed blacks themselves to destroy their own families and they sadly don’t even see it.

And only when the majority of black Americans stop seeing and thinking of themselves as victims…only when black Americans say no to groups like Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panthers…only when intact black families once again become the norm and not the exception…only when black youth start taking responsibility for their actions...only then will the dream that is America…a dream that the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed and some black Americans have achieved…only then will the cycle of poverty be broken and will Sheriff David Clark’s above said dream of no more ‘inner-city’ ghettos become a reality.