This is regarding “Reparations cause is coming up empty; Potential lawsuits destined to remain meritless in courts” (Commentary, Jan. 30). I enjoyed reading this piece, by law professor Jonathan Turley, but I think he dismisses the claims of those demanding black reparations for slavery too easily. He argues that there is little legal basis for such payments, but we shouldn’t let that annoyance get in the way of doing a good deed. I can only assume that these reparations activists are motivated by the most lofty of principles, so it baffles me why they don’t also campaign for the payment of reparations to the millions of Native Americans who are descendants of people who were murdered or thrown off their land by our government. And while we are righting the wrongs of the past, how about all the Irish immigrants who were denied jobs, or the Jews or Mexicans or Asians who were discriminated against over the past 150 years.
This country being the melting pot that it is, I would venture to say that every American living today has an ancestor who was treated cruelly–by the government or society–at some point in our history. So by the time the government pays out reparations to every single citizen, there would be nothing left in the treasury, and we’d just have to give all the money back to the government so it could continue to function.
