As I said, you may disagree. But although I note you have better points than the ravings of some people here, this issue has nothing to do with what I or anyone else can or cannot “face”. Your country cannot simply run into debt indefinitely; no country can. Incorporating that reality into an economic assessment makes sense.

grackle: Any time you want to discuss my actual claims, rather than regurgitate the horrors of the Ottoman slave trade, feel free. I stick by my point. We speak English, not Turkish or Arabic, in North America. They speak Spanish in Central and South America. They speak English in Australia. They speak English in South Africa, French in the Congo, Purtugese in Mozambique– where do those languages come from? Not the Middle East— I believe they hail from a little corner of the world called Europe. They speak Turkish in, um, Turkey.

Vince P: It’s right there in black and white print, the monotheist scriptures carried it onward for future generations, codified the warrant for, gave permission for, slavery. You can say it been misread, but why would a divine scripture be so misinterpreted, unless it was really invited by and written by … men.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=97ccc078-df30-4a61-9bb4-d017510779cc

Ibn Warraq shows that things were all together otherwise. “Black Africa was a full and active partner in the slave trade,” produced black captives and was solely responsible for organizing and controlling their sales. “African powers remained in control of the sale of the slaves as long as the slave trade lasted.”

Moreover, Arabs participated heavily in the black slave trade as well–according to their own accounts, which Bin Warraq duly cites. The 10th century Arab geographer al-Maqdisi termed Bantu-speaking East Africans and Africans generally as “Zanj.” Al-Maqdisi wrote, “they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair and little understanding.” Similarly, a 10th century Islamic Persian treatise described black Africans as “people distant from the standards of humanity,” while a 13th century Persian observed, “the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanji.” And Islamic social scientist, economist, historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) wrote, “the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery because [they] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.”

In fact Muslim traders were far more culpable than Westerners. From the 1700s through the 1920s, Arab traders handled over 17 million black slaves–including 1.5 million who died en route, many crossing the Sahara, according to a 2004 comparative study by Olivier Petre-Grenouilleau. By contrast, little more than 11 million crossed the Atlantic. Whereas the Occident finally outlawed slavery, abolitionism “did not resonate in either black Africa or the Islamic world.” Indeed, Muslims regarded Western abolitionists as “a threat to their very livelihood but also as an affront to their religion,” writes A. Azumah in Islam and Slavery. Thus Orientals were the largest slave traders, as Ibn Warraq shows here, through collected sources.

Even the supposedly “tolerant” Ottomans accepted slavery, “perpetuated [it] by tradition and sanctioned [it] by religion” and lacked an abolitionist movement, according to Ehud Toledano and Turkish historian Y.H. Erdem (again, carefully cited).

The Ottomans also engaged in a huge enterprise manufacturing and trading eunuchs–males usually castrated during boyhood. In the Muslim Mediterranean–southern Europe, North Africa and the Near East including all of the Ottoman Empire at its largest point–“large harems [maintained] by the upper classes greatly stimulated demand for males who could be trusted with large numbers of nubile women.” Eunuchs survived “total removal of testicles and penis” that caused extensive hemorrhaging and death rates of 90% or more in the sub-Saharan west and west-central Africa, according to Jan Hogendorn’s 1999 essay, “The Hideous Trade.”

The Biblical slavery was more like an indentured servitutude. It was a type of contract. (especially if the slave and master were Jews), otherwise it was like being in the army. It was not like what developed later as a consequence of the Islamic slave trade that the Europeans got their slaves from.

Did you put the seven hundred billion dollar, seven with eleven zeroes cheque a Republican administration wrote

Who other than the most boring partisans would consider this a Republican idea? Paulson is a Democrat, and the Democrat Congress voted for it. Other Republicans went along for the ride because they felt they had no responsible alternative. And the Democrats added 150 Billion in pork for the 2nd bill. Are you against that?

This was a non-ideological solution to a problem that no one knows how to solve (Because there is no solution other than to take the pain now instead of later)

At the very same time period(1400 to 1800) slavery was also widespread among “people of colour.” In fact slavery has been widespread among all groups, not just those whom the writer labels as “Europeans,” since the beginning of recorded history on up to modern times.

For example, Bernard Lewis, a renown historian of the Middle East, in his book, “Race and Slavery in the Middle East,” has this anecdote on p. 1:

In 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco, as part of his government’s worldwide endeavor to bring about the abolition of slavery or at least the curtailment of the slave trade, made representations to the sultan of that country asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to accomplish this desirable objective. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that “the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam . . . up to this day.” The sultan continued that he was “not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.”

The book is available on line and I invite the reader to peruse it. What will be found is that slavery was widespread and taken for granted by a large group of “people of colour,” namely any Islamic group – all during the time period(1400 to 1800) cited by Spragge. The Islamic world imported slaves from every continent and the victims came from every racial group. Below are a few relevant quotes and a link to the book. Read what a real historian has to say instead of the half-baked Marxist pabulum offered up as historical fact by Spragge.

The vast majority of unskilled slaves[of the Islamic world], however, came from the lands immediately north and south of the Islamic world — whites from Europe and the Eurasian steppes, blacks from Africa south of the Sahara.

In the Islamic world, where slaves were transported over great distances from their places of origin, the slave trade was more complex and more specialized with a network of trade routes and markets extending all over the Islamic world and far beyond its frontiers and involving commercial relations with suppliers in Christian Europe, in the Turkish steppe-lands, and in black Africa.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html

I don’t dispute the historical fact of Western empires but it’s historical bunk to imply only the West has indulged in empire-building. The principle empire during the time period specified by Spragge(1400 through 1800) was the Ottoman Empire. The Western empires didn’t dominate until the 1900′s and were relatively short-lived compared to the Ottomans, who held sway for hundreds of years. Do the Ottomans, known today as Turks, owe reparation to all the folks who now reside in those formerly subjugated regions? Or do they get a pass in the reparations game?

You mean as far as you’re concerned. For me, it firmly places the candidate who holds the opinion that some sort of race grievance must be paid on the same level of a class warfare espousing communist. What’s the diff? Very little as far as I can tell.

love the talking points ! You did well !

“extending” the tax cuts is keeping tax rates the same. Not “extending” the tax cuts is “raising” tax rates and it does hurt the economy whether you can BRING yourself to say it or not. And why would you want to hurt the economy at the entrance of a recession?

You wrote, “It merely increases the debt your people will have to pay back later”

Again, no it merely negatively affects job creators, small businesses (s-corps) and they have created 80% of jobs in the last decade.

So, you are for more dependency on government and higher unemployment ?

It’s the big government way! Right !

I simply insist people who have at some time discussed some form of monetary compensation for 200 years of slavery and 100+ years of economic and political discrimination, or for that matter for 500 years of land and resource theft have not ruled themselves out as presidential candidates. I really haven’t said anything else on this topic, except that we have to face our history and not make excuses for it, a very different thing from the paralyzing shame some of you apparently imagine I must feel.

Along the way, yes, I have added that Senator Obama’s current tax proposals arguably make sense, and they certainly do not convict him either of communism or class warfare.