They couldn't spend the worthwhile time debating our energy policies and what we can do TODAY about reducing our dependence on foreign oil BUT they did have time to apologize ON MY BEHALF to Native Americans, Blacks and victims of Jim Crow laws. What in hell are these demagogue apologists doing? This absolutely chaps my hide that the people who are supposed to represent me not only don't spend time working on important issues but waste time on stupid counter-productive issues like this one.
There is no question that slavery was wrong - but at the time it was the way of the world. Why are we apologizing today for transgressions none of us committed and none of us condone? How stupid is that? My ancestors lived in Europe until about 100 years ago, they never owned slaves, never committed an offense against a Native American, what gives these bozos the right to issue an apology on my behalf?
I doubt that any of us alive today have ever owned a slave or been a slave and that our parents probably didn't and weren't either nor our grandparents. Actually there weren't a lot of slave owners even back in the day. Slave ownership in this country was confined to a few wealthy individuals, farmers and plantation owners who owned slaves by the hundreds. Not only that, the slave trade was a prosperous business throughout the new world long before it came to America. The entire Caribbean cotton and sugar trade was built on slave labor for the Spanish, French, Dutch and British long before the American Revolution. We were an afterthought in the process, Johnny-come-lately to the practice and a relatively minor contributor to the problem.
And here's another historical tidbit for you. While the Portuguese, British and Spanish often supplied the ships, who supplied the slaves? Why that would usually be other Africans. They'd raid other tribes and sell boatloads of their Brothers into bondage, often treating them worse than the treatment they received on the ships or when they arrived. Most Plantation owners who spent hundreds of dollars on slaves and relied on them for production made sure their investments were fed and treated with some care. Again, it was a less than ideal situation and from our enlightened perspective today, it was morally wrong and a repugnant practice. But it was what it was at the time and it was deemed an economic and cultural necessity by the builders of the new world AT THE TIME. Throw out the history books and let the liberals explain reality as it should have been in the 1500's based on how they think in the 2000's.
While most Caribbean nations today are the result of slave revolts, in the US it was resolved by white men fighting white men for the abolition of slavery. Did some injustices carry on in the form of Jim Crow laws, segregation and racial bias? Absolutely. The problem continues to this day IN SOME CIRCLES and ON BOTH SIDES of the color line.
So you liberal hacks, please don't apologize for me or on my behalf for something I had no part in and which nobody alive today took part in or was subjected to. We've got plenty of real issues to deal with, if you have the balls.
And if you're going to continue in the apology and reparations mode, my Austrian ancestors were not well treated when they arrived either. My ancestors were often called Italians, Wops or Dago's in spite of the fact they were Austrian. I lost one Grandfather in a mine because of unsafe working conditions (roughly equivalent to conscript labor). When another group of miners tried to protest working conditions, they were vilified, persecuted and even prosecuted during the Colorado mining strikes in the early 1900's. A whole group was rounded up, had their possessions and property confiscated, were chased over a mountaintop by militia members and barred from returning to their homes under penalty of death - all because they were Italian or some derivative of middle-European heritage.
I trust my Congressional apology is in the mail right along with my hefty reparations check - you spineless, gutless hacks.
Well, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong.
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