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Slavery was an injustice to thousands of blacks in America. The United States government was founded as a self-proclaimed protector of justice for its citizens. It denied citizenship to these persecuted minorities and ignored any concept of justice in its territories. It's no surprise to see the government's ineptitude, but are we more apt to handle the administration of justice to those persecuted by slavery today through reparations?
First we must define what is meant by reparations - a reparation is simply the repayment from an individual or group of individuals to another individual or group of individuals as compensation for a previous injustice.
But whom do we mean in this scenario? If the receiving individuals of the reparations are all African-Americans or if the repaying individuals are all of American society redistributed through government then I am staunchly against slave reparations.
The ideal scenario of justice in regard to slavery would be simple. Individual descendents of slaves would have the burden of proving a financial amount represented in today's dollar value that was forced out of their ancestors by a slaveholder. These descendants would then hold the slaveholders' descendents accountable of repaying such inheritance. If my father robs a bank then dies and leaves the money to me, I have no legitimate claim to it and must repay it to its rightful owner.
We have to define justice according to property rights. A person's rights are violated through crime only when his person or property is violated by another. Societies are incapable of committing crimes; individuals commit crime. Therefore, individuals are those who must be held accountable for justice to prevail. Even the government is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
The idea of funding slave reparations from tax revenues or expanding the money supply is not legitimate nor is it just. However, if one were to hold the government itself accountable for the crimes of slavery rather than its innocent citizens, then that would be okay by me.
What I mean by saying this is that the government holds a substantial amount of wealth and property stolen from millions of innocent people: black, white, red, purple or whatever. All of these parties are entitled to reparations from the government whether they be taken by force or repayment raised by auction.
Many current American citizens have no heritage connected with slaveholders or government officials charged with legitimizing slavery. To hold these innocent third parties accountable for the crimes of others is unjust. To say that these innocent parties have reaped benefit and are thus responsible for such a debt is ridiculous.
If my hired gardener happened to rob and brutally murder working businessmen in order to finance his lawn service operations, I cannot be held accountable for those victims' losses; yet, I certainly felt the benefit of his services.
Slavery was a grave injustice. In fact slavery still occurs in this very country. Every day millions of Americans go to work to attempt to earn a living and provide for their families. Week after week, these working Americans are forcibly taxed and robbed of vast amounts of their earned wealth by the state and federal governments.
These actions are fundamentally no different from slavery and those who support taxation by encouraging the government to spend more money and raise taxes are no different from slaveholders.
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