Be careful what you wish for, goes the old saying.
Some 175 members of the House have signed on to co-sponsor HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. Every one of the co-sponsors is a Democrat. The prime sponsor, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, said, “This is not a cry for a handout. It is a cry for an acknowledgement that there has never been a response to the unpaid labor that helped build this nation.”
Well, yes? And just who was responsible?
As it happens, back in 2015 in The American Spectator, yours truly asked the then-DNC chair when the Democratic Party would apologize for its decades long support for slavery and segregation. Not a peep in response.
Now comes Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert with a proposed amendment to the Jackson Lee bill.
Uh-oh.
Congressman Gohmert has been discussed in this space before for calling out Democratic Party history in terms of statues and paintings celebrating pro-slavers or segregationists in the Capitol — picking up a challenge on the issue from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Now there is a new challenge.
The congressman’s statement on his amendment is as follows, in full. The headline:
Rep. Gohmert Amendment to Reparations Bill Seeks to Determine if Democratic Party Should Pay FundsÂ
Congressman Gohmert said this, bold print supplied for emphasis:
Last night, Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) offered an amendment to H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, to determine whether or not the Democratic Party should be responsible for any compensation to descendants of slavery in the United States given the party’s longstanding support for the barbaric practice.
“Throughout American history, one political party has had a virtual obsession with protecting and perpetuating the evil institution of slavery,” said Rep. Gohmert. “That is the Democratic Party, which even had party platforms in the 1800’s that advocated for slavery. Even after the Civil War ended slavery, Democrats continued to attempt perpetuating the outrageous wickedness of racial discrimination, including disparate treatment, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. As Democrats continued to fight against equal treatment for African-Americans, not a single Democrat in Congress voted to support the 14th Amendment which granted full citizenship to freed slaves. Nor did any Democrats vote for the 15th Amendment which gave freed slaves the right to vote.Â
“Democrats now try to hide their Party’s hideous history by claiming that all the racist Democrats changed parties, which a look at the facts and numbers disclose is blatantly false. Should the commission determine that compensation should be awarded to descendants of slaves,those funds should come directly from the party which embraced, perpetuated and promoted nearly two centuries of terror and injustices against African-Americans. We’ve already seen the modern-day damage that Democrat policies have done to African-American communities in big cities across America. Let’s continue to fight for equal opportunity, and cease attempting to punish children for sins of people they never knew.”
And the reaction from those 175 Democrats who support reparations? Silence. Suddenly they are quiet as church mice.
Why is that? The answer is as simple as it is obvious. The political descendants of those who used the Democratic Party to impose slavery on black Americans want to pretend their party had nothing to do with it. Not to mention that once slavery was ended over the objection of those Democrat Party ancestors, they were silent on the party imposing Jim Crow laws, segregation, lynching, the use of the Ku Klux Klan as the Democrats’ military or terror arm, and more. In fact, in today’s world they are devoted to identity politics, the son of segregation.
The real truth here?
Democrats supporting this proposed commission have no intention of having their party and its members pay reparations for what their party once so vociferously supported.
Cynicism and hypocrisy, anyone?
