The United States is Now Like Soviet Russia, 1984

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Remember Chernenko? He ruled Soviet Russia in the mid-1980s, along with a string of other half dead totalitarians. America now has the very same thing today. Biden signs unconstitutional executive orders like it’s Communist Russia in 1984. It’s so ironic: The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago, only for the United States to morph into the very same thing. We’ve got our Chernenko. All that’s left are jailing of dissidents and bread lines for the soon-to-be-former middle class. #NotMyDictatorship

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Supreme Court Goes Full Nicaragua in PA Election Case

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For a couple of years, my wife and I escaped Obama’s America by owning a Pacific Ocean hotel in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. The irony was that in supposedly socialist Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega’s government left us alone far more than government did in the supposedly free country of the United States of Obama.

Still, while Ortega 2.0 might have shed most of his socialism, he had not shed his lust for power, and the job of making sure he never lost again was that of the Chief Justice Roberto Rivas Reyes of what is in effect the Nicaraguan Supreme Court. I’m not sure who was actually more powerful or corrupt — President Ortega or Justice Rivas — but Rivas’s was bigger. His motorcade, that is, and he owned the two biggest homes on the two most elevated lots in San Juan del Sur, the nation’s top coastal town, a few hundred yards from our hotel.

Today I’m not sure whose court is more corrupt vis-a-vis election law: Nicaragua’s court or our Supreme Court. It appears that Donald Trump has remade the U.S. Supreme Court — in Mitt Romney’s image! (I am not blaming Trump, just stating the obvious.)

While I think the United States Supreme Court stumbled badly in its 7-2 rejection of the Texas case on standing last year, the refusal to “grant cert” (i.e., to take the case) yesterday in a Pennsylvania case is horrifying beyond words. I could say that our election laws are now full-on banana republic, but I’d hate to insult bananas that badly.

What the Supreme Court codified yesterday, and what it started with the Texas rejection, is that election laws and procedures cannot be challenged beyond a state court, at any time, regardless of how badly those states shred the United States Constitution, and regardless of the major consequences to the other 49 states as a result. They don’t ever say that per se, but the results of what those two rulings have done are just that. Period.

Those trying to challenge Pennsylvania’s obviously corrupt and rigged election system have been told that they cannot challenge the laws ahead of the election, because there is not yet a victim. They’ve been told that fellow Americans impacted by Pennsylvania’s corrupt system cannot challenge, because of standing. Now they’ve been told that they cannot challenge after the election, because it’s after the election – and therefore moot.

Ortega on line one, asking the Democrats just how do they get away with this?

This kind of infantile and absurd logic just defies belief and takes one’s breath away. And not just mine. I think it’s clear that Justice Clarence Thomas is even more mystified than am I, and he was livid. He was also, as he always is, right on the money in his analysis.

“One wonders what this Court waits for,” understates Thomas in his dissent, adding “we failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”

In other words, we are punting the ball again. But let’s make no mistake — this is “not doing nothing” with all respect to Justice Thomas. This is proactive, and it absolutely legalizes institutional voter fraud and neuters state legislatures in lieu of state courts. Lawyers gonna lawyer, I reckon.

The only other quibble I have regarding Justice Thomas’s statement is that actually no, we don’t expect more of our courts any more. This is exactly what we have come to expect. We saw Brett Kavanaugh emasculated in his hearing process, and clearly he hasn’t had enough testosterone replacement shots yet, and Amy Coney Barrett, the mom, seems worried about her kiddies at school. Cancel Culture 1, Constitution 0. Voters be damned.

For the record, the broad strokes of the Pennsylvania case revolve around the fact that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed election laws at the last minute to expand unchecked mail in voting. The Constitution, that once relevant but now apparently irrelevant document, makes it clear that the state legislatures are in charge of state elections. In Pennsylvania, as in many states, the legislature is controlled by Republicans – while Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court is controlled by radical leftists. One lesson the late, great Rush Limbaugh helped teach us is that the left always uses the courts to get stuff done that they could never accomplish through the ballot box.

Never has that been truer than in the 2020 Election, in Pennsylvania and other places as well. As Thomas adds:

“The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the ‘Manner’ of federal elections…Yet both before and after the 2020 election, non-legislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead…. [T]he Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots… the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline… (and) ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. … these cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address (this) before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Tragically, it’s not inexplicable. It’s very explicable. It’s that the explanations are chilling and uncomfortable. Our Supreme Court is now part of the Washington Swamp, and the Washington Swamp is now totally divorced from any understanding of or caring about the rest of the nation. Roberts surrendered to the Swamp shortly after being seated. Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett have done so even quicker.

Our Supreme Court is now no more an agent of a free people than similar courts are in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua. Our nation is becoming ungovernable, because there is no reason for a thinking person to have any respect for our institutions like the FBI, The Justice Department, or our courts on any level. We are facing dark days indeed.

Edmund Wright is a long time contributor to American Thinker, Breitbart, Newsmax TV, The Rush Limbaugh Show and author of several political books.

Economists Warn We Can’t Ignore National Debt Forever

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With COVID-19 ravaging the country and government pandemic lockdowns devastating our economy, the national debt has understandably slipped to the back of many Americans’ minds. But the federal government continues to fall deeper into the red at a dramatically accelerating rate. Free-market economists interviewed by FEE warned that we can’t continue like this forever without grave consequences.

Even before the potential passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal, the national debt officially exceeded the size of the economy in 2020. This means we will soon owe more than we produce in an entire calendar year. And it’s only going to get worse. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Official now estimates that we will hit a 200 percent debt-to-economy ratio in 30 years, a truly unthinkable and unprecedented level of debt.

And that’s under “a rosy scenario that assumes no new spending programs, no wars, no recessions, all temporary tax cuts expire, and interest rates remain low,” Manhattan Institute economist Brian Riedl tells me.

“By that point in 30 years, CBO projects an annual budget deficit of 12.6% of GDP (the equivalent of $2.5 trillion today),” Riedl says. “Half of all taxes will go towards interest on the debt. Again, that is the rosy scenario.”

Of course, the government drowning in debt likely isn’t going to affect the average American tomorrow. But while interest rates are at near-zero levels, they can’t continue like that forever, Riedl warns.

“Too many people believe interest rates can never rise again, or do not realize that nearly the entire national debt would reset into the higher interest rates,” he said. “Basically, we are gambling America’s economic future on the hope that interest rates stay below 3% or 4% forever.”

Economist Veronique de Rugy concurred.

“With these debt trajectories, interest rates are going to take off eventually,” said de Rugy, a Mercatus Center senior fellow. “What happens when these rising rates coincide with the Medicare Trust Fund depletion in five years, or Social Security in thirteen years?”

Cato Institute economist Ryan Bourne offered a somewhat different perspective, arguing that the bigger problem is the “longer-term trajectory.”

“Every time a recent major crisis hits the federal debt level jumps, but never falls back at all afterwards,” he said. “We therefore engage in a step up in the level of debt after each crisis, which has worsened our starting point as we are now sailing into an unprecedented fiscal tidal wave of debt as a result of entitlement commitments made to an aging population.”

“Without near-term policy change to entitlements to head that off, there will at some stage be a much bigger reckoning,” Bourne concluded. “But I see no desire to head that off today.”

While the future of interest rates may indeed be uncertain, it is nonetheless projected that Americans will soon have to pay trillions in federal taxes every year just to cover the interest on the debt—all while the problem continues to snowball out of control.

Even before this happens, though, there are real consequences that come with runaway deficit spending. The federal government cannot create wealth out of thin air. Every dollar that it spends or borrows has to come from somewhere else in the economy. (Unless it prints money, in which case it stealth-taxes us all through inflation).

“Deficit spending extracts resources from the real economy and there is no guarantee that the government uses these resources better than the private sector,” de Rugy said.

She also pointed to numerous studies showing that higher debt leads to lower economic growth.

“We are likely already paying for the heightened debt levels in the form of lower living standards,” de Rugy concluded. “And we will continue to suffer if we keep this up.”

So, what does this all mean for Biden’s proposal for nearly $2 trillion more in COVID spending and other big-spending policy proposals? Well, we’ve already spent an astounding and unprecedented $4-5 trillion on COVID relief, much of which proved fraud-rife and inefficient.

In light of this, “keeping our debt under control is a better priority,” de Rugy says. “The more in debt we are in, the harder it becomes to respond to future emergencies, and the more we risk slowing down growth and burdening future generations.”

Meanwhile, Riedl said that some forms of government spending can be necessary during a pandemic, but insisted “that is not a blank check for wasteful or ineffective programs.” Indeed, a new Ivy League analysis found that Biden’s budget busting plan—which contains $300+ billion in unrelated partisan spending—would actually lead to lower growth and wages in 2022.

As for other spending proposals, Riedl pointed to the projected $100 trillion in deficits we’re expected to run over the next 30 years. “Let’s figure out how to pay for that first before pouring gasoline on the fire,” he concluded.

The need to temper Congress’s big-spending ambitions was a point of agreement among the three economists.

“A lot of the Democrat spending proposals clearly go way beyond what’s needed to deal with the actual pandemic problem,” Bourne added. “So I don’t think there’s an economic case for most of this bill—it will merely worsen the underlying public finances without much clear economic rationale, and maybe even harming the recovery.”

Critics are quick to scoff at concerns about the debt and deficits, particularly given the hypocrisy of many Republican elected officials on the issue. But the laws of economics haven’t changed, and there’s still no such thing as a free lunch.

At some point, the consequences of our runaway national debt will become too punishing to ignore.

Brad Polumbo, FEE

Since We Now Live in a Dictatorship, Will Trump Go to Jail ?

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Former President Donald Trump reacted Monday to the Supreme Court decision to reject his attempt to prevent New York prosecutors from obtaining his financial records. “The Supreme Court never should have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did,” Trump wrote in a lengthy statement to reporters in which he condemned the decision. [Breitbart]

It’s worse than a fishing expedition. We live under a dictatorship now. One party–Democrats merged with RINOs–control everything, and cannot lose future elections for reasons we know well. The dictatorship includes the Supreme Court (minus Justices Thomas and Alito) and dictators jail their vanquished opponents. I believe his opponents will ultimately jail Trump under any pretext they can find.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Overthrowing Communism, Surprisingly Easy

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There is a saying in some parts of the Balkans, “hiqja qimen thiut” which roughly translates to: every hair from the boar. This phrase grew in popularity, especially around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and fall of communism in the Eastern Bloc states. What it means is a simple metaphor – the government is the boar and it can be killed by subtly plucking every hair from its fat body.

Less poetically, it’s a guide on how to dismantle the bureaucracy that communist regimes rely on. While I don’t believe America is quite ready for this conversation, readers that frequent sites like American Thinker may not mind, as Nancy Pelosi once eloquently put it, another arrow in their quiver.

Establishment governments, such as we see beginning to dominate in the U.S., are heavily dependent on inefficient bureaucracies. A frequent theme of dystopian novels draw plots around nightmarish red tape establishments like George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Franz Kafka’s The Trial – hell on earth is a non-moving DMV line. So, don’t think the bureaucrats don’t know the power they wield. And don’t think the bureaucrats don’t know it. This leaked Zoom call shows federal workers plotting a coup on Trump’s White House by using the pillars of bureaucracy against him.

While they believe this to be some sort of power, the real advantage that conservatives continue to have over our progressive opponents is that we are truly decentralized. Efforts remain typically localized like Tea Parties during the Obama reign, or lately, this group of 600 business owners in a single city in California that challenged Dictator Newsom’s economy-killing orders by opening their businesses in defiance.

Conversely, the left in America, and every other nation plagued by their presence, actively strives to be centralized. Antifa and BLM have chapters all over the nation but there seems to be a single hierarchy calling the shots. They seek out positions of power like school boards and state agencies where their Marxist teachings can be applied with little resistance and cause the most damage.

But if there’s one thing consistent in American history, it’s that our government doesn’t fight well against decentralized forces. The 20-year war in Afghanistan is a current example. So, the good news — if you’re uncomfortable with the rise of agitprop teachings in the form of public school indoctrinations, church humiliation exercises and mandatory Critical Race Theory training in companies like Coca-Cola that just want you to “Try And Be Less White” — is that the bureaucracy that the left grows more and more dependent on, is extremely fragile. Ironically, the easiest way to break it is to heavily participate in it. Every hair from the boar.

The following tactics are presented purely for entertainment purposes, taken from various examples in former-communist nations. Obey all laws! You assume all risk if you choose to pursue any of them, which we don’t recommend.

  • There are subsidies for everything. Housing, clothing, food, electricity, hot water and home heating fuels, hell even cellphones and internet bills are picked up by Uncle Sam (thanks, Obama!) Even if you earn too much, the processing time for millions of new applications would drain the system even faster and demoralize government workers. Before you describe your pride to me, remember that illegal immigrants do not hesitate to take every advantage of our social services. The reason communism ultimately fails is because more is taken out than can be put in.
  • In most states in America, you can opt out of weekly tax withholding and choose to pay at the end of the year. This gives our government systems less funds to gamble with during the year. Only the financially savvy should attempt this.
  • Caught speeding or fined for not wearing a mask? Ask for a trial. Most citations have an option to plead not guilty and if you don’t pay it, you will either be given a court date or have it dropped all altogether. Extra points for utilizing a public defender. Worse case is you end up paying the ticket anyway, but at least you did your part to clog the system.
  • I don’t know of any places left in this country with well-kept roadways. That means if you’re unlucky enough to get a flat tire, because you totally, absolutely, maybe hit a pothole, you can sue the town. A few dollars to file a civil claim and you could end up on a new set of wheels and tires.
  • Remember the tax credits for electric vehicles? It’s based on the number of hours that a battery can hold its charge. That means your golf carts, ATVs, even the right child’s Fisher Price car modifications means that they can qualify for this break too. Just add turn signals, seat belts and mirrors.
  • Struggling for cash during the Covid lockdowns? Take a look around. Our benevolent governments have a ton of scrap metal that can easily be turned into some green. In the communist-Balkans, the impression of a utopian society was more important than a functioning one. Because a feature of communism is to spend money as incompetently as possible, bike racks, manhole covers, stop signs and park benches were constantly being installed at the same locations after locals would take them to junk yards. Of course, if they were caught, they were sentenced to a hard labor camp but in the U.S., if caught, it remains a larceny charge.
  • Spread panic. The government takes a lot of power away from you by using fear. You can take it back the same way. Rumors that the proverbial enemy is at the border will cause people to stock up on essentials and when there are shortages, even artificial ones, the government is forced to intervene.
  • Stop buying from companies that hate you. Sometimes it’s impossible either due to logistics or cost effectiveness, but for the most part, we really don’t need Netflix and Coca-Cola to maintain our daily lives. These companies have become extensions of the same institutions that are hellbent on seeing you destroyed just because of your political opinions; the least you can do is find a better way to spend your ten bucks a month.

Of course, the actual destruction of communist forces took widespread revolts and rebellions. But if we can make the cost more painful to our socialist overlords now, the long term goals can shift and the final outcome can change. Bureaucracy is the pillar our government uses to oppress us. Lucky for us it’s made out of glass and easy to bring down. Hiqja qimen thiut, comrades.

Taylor Day, American Thinker

Ayn Rand on Altruism

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* Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?

The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right.

Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others—it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others—it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch—it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself—it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice—it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.

Your code divides mankind into two castes and commands them to live by opposite rules: those who may desire anything and those who may desire nothing, the chosen and the damned, the riders and the carriers, the eaters and the eaten. What standard determines your caste? What passkey admits you to the moral elite? The passkey is lack of value.

Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don’t lack it. It is your need that gives you a claim to rewards. If you are able to satisfy your need, your ability annuls your right to satisfy it. But a need you are unable to satisfy gives you first right to the lives of mankind.

If you succeed, any man who fails is your master; if you fail, any man who succeeds is your serf. Whether your failure is just or not, whether your wishes are rational or not, whether your misfortune is undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you a right to rewards. It is pain, regardless of its nature or cause, pain as a primary absolute, that gives you a mortgage on all of existence.

If you heal your pain by your own effort, you receive no moral credit: your code regards it scornfully as an act of self-interest. Whatever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights, if you acquire it by means of your virtue, your code does not regard it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice. The deserved belongs in the selfish, commercial realm of mutual profit; it is only the undeserved that calls for that moral transaction which consists of profit to one at the price of disaster to the other. To demand rewards for your virtue is selfish and immoral; it is your lack of virtue that transforms your demand into a moral right.

A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness—non-existence—as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw—the zero.

* What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”

Coping with Life Under a Dictatorship

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What can you DO about living under a former rights-respecting republic, rapidly transforming — executive order by executive order — into a dictatorship? Not a whole lot. It’s not defeatism to say so; it’s simply the truth. “President Trump will save us in 2024” does not apply. He may WANT to save us, but he can’t save us from a dictatorship, particularly when it’s a dictatorship that millions of people WANT. He’s out of the White House, isn’t he? And just wait to see what an unhinged and 100 percent politicized DOJ and FBI do to the former President and his family. We are dealing with monsters here, inept and stupid ones as all monsters are, but still monsters.

It’s too late for an election to save us. Sure, try; but don’t kid yourselves. Perhaps President Trump could find another way to “save us”, but that’s not really how freedom works. Freedom doesn’t come about because the equivalent of Superman comes to the rescue within a 60 minute window (43 minutes with commercials). Freedom is the complex result — and climax — of many, many things. And I probably don’t have to tell you: The Republican Party, upon whom Trump would depend, is no Superman.

The one thing you can do is REFUSE TO PRETEND. Refuse to participate. Within reason. You’ll have to decide what “within reason” means, in your particular circumstances. Resist wherever possible. Even passively. Think Martin Luther King. Think Ayn Rand — going on strike, even quietly. Mask rules are not going anywhere. Vaccination mandates are coming, even if only indirectly by using private airlines, grocery stores and banks to compel you to obey. We’re talking double and triple masks, even when alone in your bathroom. These people are beyond nuts.

If nothing else, just be silent, and don’t pretend to agree unless your physical life literally depends on it. The approval of your insane, crazy big-mouthed leftist neighbors, relatives or associates does not mean anything. YOU DON’T WANT THEIR APPROVAL, BECAUSE FRANKLY THEY ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE. And they are not smart people. But in the worst case, even if a gun is pointed to your head when you don’t pretend agreement with insane idiocy, nobody will ever be able to get inside your mind and inhabit your cognition, your emotions, or your innermost values. Not even Joe Biden or Kamala Harris can access those, not even with a trillion executive orders.
So protect your mind and mental state, first and foremost. Under a total dictatorship, in the extreme case, that’s all you will have. Now’s a good time to buy or download books and articles that will later be censored or cancelled. Ditto for movies. Minds and books, like music and movies or television shows, are critical, even if you have never been a reader or much of a movie watcher. We’ve come to expect whatever we want at our fingertips, but as it becomes clearer that most of the Internet is controlled by “private” companies who are part of the emerging dictatorship, you won’t always be able to access what you once took for granted.

I don’t know how far the dictatorship will go, and I don’t know how long it will last. I know it’s here, and evolving right before our eyes. It seems surreal, but it’s real. I don’t recognize the America I grew up in; I don’t even recognize the America of 2019 in today’s insane reality. The Soviet dictatorship lasted 75 years. The Maoist regime — the peak of the madness — lasted a decade or two, but China never fully abandoned dictatorship; neither did Russia. Cuba and Venezuela are Communist for as far as the eye can see.

America, on the other hand, began after armed rebellion against a dictatorship, and there’s no guarantee that history won’t repeat itself in some 21st century form. Don’t try to predict the future. There are too many variables, and you can’t do that. Be kind to yourself and accumulate everything you can (materially, intellectually, and yes, weapons of self-protection) to preserve what we once took for granted in this great country, and what we’re progressively losing by the day. And, like I said, most of all: Respect your mind. You’re always going to need your mind, whether you live under freedom, or tyranny. Dictators may rule your bodies, but they can never rule your souls; not if you don’t let them.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Reparations: The Demand from Unclean Hands

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U.S. House of Representatives has taken up H.R. 40 – Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act which begs some hard questions three generations after slavery was abolished.

Slavery is not the only springboard for the debate. The history of the Democrat Party, their role in slavery and how they hold a great deal of responsibility for the plight of the African slave during and after slavery cannot be overstated as they now lead Commission discussions with unclean hands, the political descendants of slavery itself.

For the record, the sin of slavery in the U.S. was an industry of the South led by Southern Democrats. The Union Army (from the North) beat the Confederacy in the Civil War giving way to the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction. Democrat President Andrew Johnson refused to comply with the planned reparations in which Union General Sherman’s Special Fields Order 15 (“forty acres and a mule”) provided 400,000 acres to the emancipated slaves, and Southern Democrats imposed a literal hell on the freed African slaves through Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. Let the record reflect these truths.

Further, the Democrats bargained with Republicans over the presidency in 1877 which could not be decided by the Electoral College. Democrats bargained to keep their foot on the necks of the freed slaves who thrived after slavery until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They bargained to remove federal troops from their states (which included the polling stations) and ended any political representation the freed slaves had garnered during Reconstruction. The Southern Democrats robbed the freed slaves of restorative justice after slavery and to the freedom Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party birthed.

Slavery was not a part of the founding principles of our nation. Before the Civil War, there were 19 free states and 15 slave states. At the hands of Republicans, slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and was ratified in 1865.

This truth of the U.S. Constitution as it relates to slavery is important to appreciate because those who seek to denigrate the United States as a racist country use the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution to impugn her.

Notwithstanding that some Founding Fathers owned slaves, the Three-Fifths Clause (1787) is the by-product of abolitionists fighting against slave owners who wanted to have a majority representation in Congress by counting the slaves. Rejecting that approach, the bargain was to count each slave as three-fifths thus holding the South at bay from having majority control in the House. The lie that the slave was not considered human can only be attributed to those who dared traffic in slavery and not to the whole of the nation.

If “reparations” is a check, which is the historic application, there are hard questions for those who support reparations for black Americans:

The Democrats were the ones who enslaved Africans. It was not a national policy. Why should anyone other than the descendants of slave-owning Democrats pay reparations? Is this an invoice best sent to the Democrat National Committee?

Blacks owned slaves too. Black plantation owners like Cecile Richards and Antoine Dubuclet of Louisiana to name a few. Surely, they have descendants too. Why should the descendants of blacks who owned slaves get reparations, or are they excluded?

The “Five Civilized Tribes” owned African slaves. These tribes included the Cherokee, Chickasaw. Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. The Thirteenth Amendment did not free their slaves, only the Treaties of 1866 did so after the war. How do we handle this hidden history?

White Union soldiers fought to end slavery. Should their descendants be required to pay the price for something they died to abolish?

If elected officials would stop doling out “feel-good” checks and start holding all Americans accountable to accessing the American Dream, the years of debate on reparations would have no place. Opportunity is priceless and is the best form of reparation. Opportunity can start afresh in America with enacting School Choice and ensuring equal access to capital for all Americans. If you want to make a difference, these are better starting points. Call them reparations if you like.

Marc Little, townhall.com