5 Feet of Fury

Wisdom on race from Flea

“I don’t get it. Perhaps it is because I am not American. I do not belong to a polity living with the spectre of a promised 40 acres and a mule so reparations are a bit of a non-starter as far as I am concerned.

“But then I also do not belong to the polity which sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Union lives on the altar of liberty including and especially the liberty of the ancestors of today’s reparations advocates. It seems churlish to demand payment from the descendants of abolitionists let alone those of all the men who gave their lives far from home on behalf of people they did not know. Maybe, just maybe, it is James Cone and his fellow travelers who owe the debt.

“When it comes to the history of race in America there are villains, no doubt. But the United States government is not one of them. The United States government has been and remains the greatest champion of liberty in human history.”

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