Five days ago, a bill was introduced in Congress to provide reparations to (i.e. pay) the “descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent.”
“We’re here to say that there’s no more waiting, no more watering down, no more putting justice on layaway,” said [Summer Lee (D-Pa.)], the descendant of enslaved Africans. “Black folks are owed more than thoughts and prayers. We’re owed repair, we’re owed restitution and we’re owed justice.”
The resolution calls for the federal government to allocate trillions of dollars in reparations to Black Americans to atone for chattel slavery, Jim Crow and the ongoing effects of other federally sanctioned discriminatory policies.
Go back and reread the tenth word in the second paragraph. It’s kind of important: “trillions.”
Okay. How many trillions, you might ask?
But this isn’t just about the money, you silly racist. This is (ahem) a moral obligation.
During Rep. Lee’s speech, the “moral obligation” argument was front and center:
“Reparations are a proposal to level the playing field, but the only way we could ever have a level playing field is by remedying the harms that have been done by the system,” Lee said on Thursday. “We need real, concrete action. We need policies that close the racial wealth gap, eliminate Black maternal health disparities, fund education, address environmental racism in our communities, and we need reparations. It is a moral obligation, the debt that this country owes.” [emphasis added]
Who are we to argue with a moral obligation?
Of course, slavery ended in 1865. It’s now 2025. Those distant descendants are increasingly distant. (And did you notice that the reparations weren’t just for the descendants of slaves, but everyone who’s black?) But hey, what can ya do?
It’s a moral obligation.
Of course, if we have a moral obligation to provide reparations to the people we’ve hurt indirectly, it stands to reason that we’d have an even GREATER moral obligation to those we’ve hurt directly. Right?
So, first things first: If the Democrats want reparations for the wrongs of centuries ago, it probably makes sense to remedy the wrongs of last freaking year.
Last week was the one-year anniversary of the Democratic Party’s attempted character assassination of attorney Robert Hur, the man who declined to charge Joe Biden for mishandling classified documents, despite overwhelming “evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.”
In a normal universe, you’d assume the Democrats would’ve been grateful to Hur. After all, it was within his powers to indict Joe Biden — and we know that’s true, because, in another wacky coincidence, Donald Trump was indicted for the exact same thing.
The Democrats should’ve thrown him a tickertape parade!
But instead, they tried to destroy him, because he wouldn’t cooperate with their cover-up of Biden’s health.
Hur’s “crime” was noticing that the emperor had no clothes:
In the report, Special Counsel Robert Hur, a well-respected former U.S. Attorney, explained the president’s “lapses in attention and vigilance demonstrate why former officials should not keep classified materials unsecured at home and read them aloud to others, but jurors could well conclude that Mr. Biden’s actions were unintentional.”
But he said that Biden would make a defense that many jurors would find sympathetic.
“[A] trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” reads the report.
Biden’s memory lapse was a common theme throughout Hur’s report. He writes that Biden did not remember when he was vice president or, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died. Biden, Hur writes, “appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.” He predicted that Biden’s attorneys “would emphasize these limitations in his recall” if they were called upon to defend him at trial.
Over the weekend, the Hur-Biden tapes were finally published by Axios. It substantiated everything Hur claimed. If anything, he understated the extent of the ex-president’s senility.
In the Democrats’ desperate bid to hide the truth, they attacked Hur’s professionalism and character. They accused him of being a partisan hack. They were insulting, belittling, and bullying, and they did so without remorse. For posterity’s sake, here’s now-Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) lunging for Hur’s jugular:
And don’t forget how the Democrats rushed to defend Biden’s immaculate brain:
“What you have is a grandstander not a prosecutor,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in a brief interview, adding he expected the U.S. would see Biden “very vigorously engaged” as the campaign season heats up.
“It is outrageous the way he disrespected and maligned the president,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said. “What he said about the president not remembering the death of his beloved son is just so despicable.”
Oh, the Democrats were outraged. Outraged, I say:
The White House's simmering animosity toward the media also burst into the public. One Biden aide said the media was “shameful” in its handling of the highly sensitive political moment.
“Hur couldn’t make his case and he takes partisan, personal and untrue swipes at Joe Biden,” one aide, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal views of the president’s team, said. “[He] did it so the media would take the bait, and none of you have learned a damn thing since 2016.”
Who you gonna believe, Hur or Harris?
“The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts,” Vice President Kamala Harris said, calling the report “clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”
And don’t forget ex-Attorney General Eric Holder:
Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) February 9, 2024
Had this report been been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.
If Democrats have a “moral obligation” to offer reparations to people who were unjustly attacked, slandered, or injured, they don’t need to go all the way back to 1865. Flip the calendar to 2024 and begin with Robert Hur.
