Reparations over slavery turned incredibly naive when a Fox News Host complained that America isn't given enough credit for abolishing slavery after 150 years. Apparently, she forgot not only about the hundreds of years of slavery but the 620K people killed in the Civil War over it.
Elizabeth Warren's town hall on CNN Monday night drew a lot of attention from Fox News' Outnumbered program today, and one topic was that of reparations.
The ladies of Outnumbered weighed in and Trump super surrogate and Townhall editor Katie Pavlich, a sharp conservative advocate, did not distinguish herself at all.
Pavlich said, "They keep blaming America for the sin of slavery, but the truth is throughout human history slavery has existed, and America came along as the first country to end it within a hundred an fifty years, and we get no credit for that to move forward."
I froze where I stood. Was I mistaken and didn't hear her correctly? I rewound and listened again and was just as stunned.
The conservative Washington Examiner's Tiana Lowe writes, "At one time, the various governments over what is now the U.S. did allow people to own and sell other human beings like chattel, solely on the basis of race, for 246 years. Not only that, but the U.S. government botched Reconstruction and spent the next century allowing legal discrimination against black Americans."
(I'm not sure how she came up with "150 years".)
Kennedy jumped in to remind her some truth she obviously had forgotten, "Well, we did have a very bloody Civil war ('Over that issue, Katie replied) and the remnants of the Civil war particularly blacks in the south -- that, that was not an easy path, and it was bloody and violent and deadly, and we cannot forget that."
Pavlich didn't give up on her prepared talking points, "We are the country that decided to end it, and we're still dealing with the issue -- start blaming people who had nothing to do with it."
Katie's argument might have sounded better in the shower than it actually did on-air.
Fighting a four-year horrific war over slavery wasn't just a decision to end it. It was madness.
Conservatives get into real trouble trying to either rewrite history, defend or excuse the indefensible.
England finally rid itself of slavery with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 even if it took some time to enact entirely and they didn't fight a monstrous Civil war to free themselves of it.
