Reparations for slavery debated in Congress

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That's why total anarchy wouldn't work. There has to be "rules."

True... I guess it's not that I really support anarchy. What I really support is fighting corruption within our own system.

We should be making the world a better and happier place for everyone, not the lucky 10% who are privilaged.

Sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing.

To the notion of the people living now who think they never would have owned slaves if they lived "back then:"

You (editorially) don't have any idea what you would have believed, being brought up in a different age and different society. Quakers held slaves. Pennsylvania (ie northern) Quakers held slaves. It took years for Quakers to come around to thinking that slavery should be abolished. And yes, many were an integral part of the underground railroad, but that was later.

Many other people thought it was okay to have slaves as long as you treated them well. These were good people.

They could have been you or me.

I would have either been part of the underground railroad movement or treated them well. Or I simply wouldn't have been involved with it at all if I was as poor then as I am now. I'm sure being racially mixed with Polynesian ancestry would have meant that I wasn't treated much better.

It's true. I might have been like Lincoln and found it expedient to be a "Free-Soiler" politically.

Abolitionists used to be run out of town routinely in those days. Even in the North.

It's more like I "hope" I wouldn't have stooped so low as to have been a slaveowner.

With my ideals I think I would have been more like a Southern Unionist.

Andrew Johnson was a Southern Unionist----He had some good aspects....but many not-so-good aspects.

His wife was his teacher who taught him to read.

Yeah true, but I heard some Southern Unionists approved of abolishing slavery (but not all). They basically wanted what was best for the south and were against the Confederacy and the Civil War. Too bad they were greatly outnumbered by the Confederacy.

chances are, because i came from common stock, i would not have been a slave owner and if i was anything like i am now would have been repelled at the ghastly spectacle of slavery [in all its forms for both POC and whites] and lived in a dread of being press-ganged myself. there were no slave owners in my familial past.

They were close in time, but the two wars were waged by two different countries. So you couldn't have risen in the ranks of the same army by serving in both wars (the way that most generals in every nation in WWII had served with their own nation's army in WWI).

But yes... there were many Irish immigrants coming into America at that time. Ireland was ruled by Britain. I can imagine that many Irish guys who had fought for the Queen in Crimea, arrived in New York just in time to be put into the blue uniform of the Union Army to fight in our civil war ( and some might have arrived in Southern ports and ended up wearing gray).

The Crimean War was about Britain bolstering the dying Ottoman Empire of Turkey in order to screw over Russia. Britain and Turkey fought side by side in southern Russia to oppose the Czar expanding south, and seizing the slice of land on the north shore of the Black Sea still controlled by the Ottomans (basically the south coast of Ukraine and Crimea).

Did this psychic specify WHAT you were more specifically? Were you a British POW of the Russians, or were you a Russian POW of the Brits?

There was a much bigger population of POWs in our Civil War then in the Crimean War. So you might be right that she has her wars conflated, or that (who knows?) that you were in both wars in this previous lifetime- and that this pow episode was really in the Civil War. You must have been tough as nails in this previous lifetime! Lol!

There's actually a very large Irish population here in the southern states, and my Mom's family has a lot of Irish ancestry (as do many others I know in the south). So I can imagine being one of the many Irishmen who served on the side of the Confederacy if this psychic actually meant the American Civil War.

And she was from the UK. When I asked her to do my past life reading she didn't specifically say "You were in the Crimean War", she described it more like "The Crimean War era". So being from the UK it's possible she doesn't know much about the American Civil War.

I think it could have honestly been either war for all I know. Or both.

And I imagine both wars were fought in similar manners with rifles and cannons.

And she didn't specifically say what rank I was or which side I fought on, but she did mention an "act of bravery and courage" (and yet I somehow wound up a POW...).

A different guy who claimed he was psychic too (and he himself actually served in the military) said he believes I was most likely a spy who got caught by the enemy.

I also asked the lady how I died in a past life and she said she didn't see anything clear about that, but this lady told me to always trust my own instinct.

I believe I was executed by firing squad. I even have four blood red marks on my chest over my heart area that I believe marks where they shot through my heart.

Here's a picture of these four weird red moles on my chest that I've had for many years. They remind me of the Southern Cross constellation (which you can't actually see in the American South lol).

I believe it marks where I was shot by firing squad.

A total joke. American blacks today are already big beneficiaries of slavery. Because they're living in America, not Africa.

There's a racist comment if I ever did read one.

Typical Racist American Reasoning:

"You blacks should be GREATFUL that we brought you to this country in chains and used to beat you with whips, rape your women to produce more slaves, and lynch your people for crimes that any white person could get away with because at least now you people get to live in AMERRRRUUUCCCA!! ! instead of horrible Africa!"

America is no panacea...and Africa is no cesspool.

West Africa was a bountiful land at the time of the slave trade.

There are many blacks today who feel like Kunta Kinte (from “Roots”) who had his foot cut off because he escaped from slavery so much.

Slowly, slowly, this feeling is dissipating. And this dissipating is the result of much hard work and activism.