"This issue is thorny and difficult and I am not an expert on it, yet there can be no possible legitimate basis to disagree" is really progressive Twitter is a nutshell.
Ask yourself, instead, why Nelson Mandela was a better man than Robert Mugabe.
Ask yourself, instead, why Nelson Mandela was a better man than Robert Mugabe.
I'm not against the concept of reparations in South Africa (it's already been done on a smaller scale, and it was no that far in the past). That's not what's going on here. irishtimes.com/news/south-afr…
The problem is South Africa's turn towards a punitive policy against *individuals* (w/o due process or adjudication of guilt) as well as the Zimbabwe precedent leading down a road to economic immiseration, or worse.
Once you establish the social principle that people can be stripped of rights to exact a grievance against a racial or ethnic group, you begin down a path that has often in history led to terrible things, including multiple genocides.
I have no illusions that Trump, or the "white genocide" crowd, would be equally concerned if the South African policy were turned against a wealthy group of, say, ethnic Chinese or Jews. But *you and I* should be. Don't let hatred for Trump substitute for understanding the world.
White nationalists tend to think the Earth is round and revolves around the sun. I'm uncomfortable sharing this with them, but I'll be damned if I will change my opinion of reality on their account.
Now, we should be skeptical of the sourcing of some of the more aggressive claims about the South African situation by people with a racial axe to grind. But the things the SA government *admits* to doing as state policy are quite bad enough to raise concerns.
There are, for example, serious financial consequences to Ramaphosa's policy
aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/s…
aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/s…
Yeah, these guys are not real consistent on this stuff.
Since we are on the topic of Southern Africa, worth re-upping my 2013 essay on Mandela, Reagan, and the Cold War thefederalist.com/2013/12/17/nel…
