“Freedom is slavery.”
So said Big Brother, the anthropomorphized character of the state in George Orwell’s “1984”. That, of course, was fiction. But the absurdist slogan is being made reality, in Evanston, Illinois.
According to Genevieve Bookwalter, of the Chicago Tribune, in order to make amends for a crime that was never committed by anyone against anyone alive in that area for over a century, residents of Evanston, Illinois who’ve recently gained the legal ability to sell and buy marijuana will now be taxed for exercising their “freedom”.
Evanston aldermen on Monday approved directing all sales tax revenue collected from recreational marijuana purchases to a fund that will establish a local reparations program. Officials say the program will help the city’s black population stay in Evanston while also providing training for jobs and other benefits.
And isn’t that wonderful.
‘We can implement funding to directly invest in black Evanston,’ said Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, 5th Ward, who proposed the reparations bill.
Which raises a few questions.
First, one wonders whether Simmons and her tax-hungry, completely anti-racist-but-reparations-based-on-race pushing pals have calculated the demographics of recreational pot purchasers. After all, since this money-extraction-and-redistribution scheme is designed to “invest in black Evanston” (and remember, this isn’t racist) she and her parasitical cabal must be certain that no “blacks in Evanston” buy from the shops she wants to tax-burgle. If that were the case, those people would be “paying reparations” as well.
Shoot, that’s a difficult problem. As Monty Python’s highwayman “Dennis Moore” discovered, “This redistribution of wealth thing is trickier than I thought!”
Then there’s the additional historical problem for the dupes who buy into this money-grabbing, bubble-gum-mentality scheme.
Illinois prohibited slavery in its 1818 state constitution.
Of course, black-market slavery and slave-trading did occur there, despite the law, but to expropriate wealth from contemporary Evanston residents for crimes committed by others is itself collectivist generational slavery, a repeat of the sin that most Illinois citizens banned over 200 years ago.
And, make no mistake, it is collectivist, it is slavery, and it is immoral.
This lays false guilt onto people who never committed any crimes. It collectivizes people into racial groups.
The concept of reparations is the “original sin” narrative woven by the state. It is the theme that you, or some group, were born into your evil, and only by paying “indulgences” to the priestly class called politicians can you be absolved.
Of course, absolution will never be granted, and those who believe that their “preferred group” will always be on the receiving end of the graft ought to think again.
Redistribution of wealth is always about some form of reparations over some slight, some perceived imbalance, some “inequality” that is viewed and characterized as inequity or injustice. The very notion of government functions hinges on this, in all ways.
Doubt this? Take a look at the Evanston commission on which Alder-human Simmons sits, where she introduced this idea back in June.
Here in Evanston, Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, 5th Ward, is scheduled to discuss what she describes as a "Solutions Only" policy for reparations for the west end of the 5th Ward at Thursday's meeting of the city's Equity and Empowerment Commission.
Empowerment through enslavement of others. Equity through theft. Balance and salvation through sin.
That’s what the “reparations” movement is.
It is a money-hungry, self-congratulatory, predator mentality that cannot escape the day-to-day impracticality of its own conceptual framework, a framework that could be drawn back to days when Brits enslaved Irishmen, when black Africans worked with the Dutch to capture members of rival tribes, when the Romans enslaved numerous people, the Egyptians enslaved the Jews, and the Mongols enslaved the Chinese.
And it is an immoral, unethical extension of enslavement by governmental expropriation of wealth, something given a simple name called a “tax”, but which will lead to imprisonment or armed conflict for those who would prefer to be left alone and decide what to do with their lives and the fruits of their labor.
The only reparations that make sense are those that tax-hungry politicians might consider paying the state-threatened tax slaves upon whom they prey.
Don’t expect Evanston to call for that any time soon.