THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW
BY RUSSELL TURNER
SINS OF THE PAST
One of the best things in our American culture is the concept that we are responsible for our actions and we will sink or swim on our own merits. Fortunately our founders rejected the idea of a ruling class of royalty which they had observed in Europe. In that system, if a person was born into a royal family they were assured of a luxurious life without having to work for it. Also in America a person who would come from a lower class family could elevate himself in society and the actions of his ancestors were not held against him. We are a nation that was designed to treat each person by the way he conducts himself, and his so-called pedigree is irrelevant. I do not believe that anyone should be punished for any sins committed by his father or grandfather, what is in the past should stay in the past. Unfortunately several of the socialist presidential candidates do not hold that belief.
Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders are all on record of wanting to use taxpayer money to pay reparations to descendants of slaves here in America. It never ceases to amaze me how the liberal left politicians are ready to use taxpayer monies to attempt to buy an election by catering to certain groups. Sure slavery was a dark time in our nation's history, but I think it is about time to give it a rest; slavery was outlawed by President Abraham Lincoln over 150 years ago. Our country fought one of our most bloody wars, among other things, to eliminate the practice of slavery. Since that time we have had the policy of affirmative action and we elected a black president. From what I have seen our race relations in this country are the worse in my lifetime. By some estimates a generation is 20 years, if that is the case there has been over 7 generations of Americans who have not practiced slavery. Now we have people on the left that want to lay a guilt trip on me from the actions of people who lived over a century and a half ago.
If we were to go down that path all of us have had ancestors who were cheated or treated badly in the past. Will we become a nation who uses the government to extort money from people if they can trace their roots to someone who lived 150 years ago who may have cheated someone in that time? Maybe we could have a system where we could extort money from some person because one of my ancestors gave their ancestor a hand up and that help enabled them to prosper. All of this talk of reparations is keeping old anger and resentment alive, the people alive today resent being punished for something that happened 150 years ago. Humans are a poor judge when it comes to issues like this; humans are influenced by greed and the desire for power or political advantage. The one true judge, Jesus Christ, judges each person individually and what his ancestors did centuries ago is irrelevant. Maybe we humans could take a lesson from Jesus Christ who knows something about sins of the past.
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