Owen Ryan a socialist that fell away from his ideologies in later life. He wrote about totalitarianism and warned against it in any form. Read further, think better.
very true, you can tell a lot about a person by the way they write, its a glimpse into the inner workings of their mind... and the strength or lack there of their mental faculties.
@@Melville1800s Haha! Blubbering..If you ever listened to Hitchens, which iam guessing you do because you commented on his video, you would know that that is exactly what he teaches " It's not what you think, it's how you think" so your point is garbage, especially the troll ass way you said it..
@@mja91352 You bring up another example of bad faith argument. Thanks for arguing against something else you yourself set up in order to demean the first thing by association. Great irony and your lack thereof, you demonstrate oh clever one.
um.. your a racist....jews were enslaved in history many many times...where is your voice for thier reparations...oh wait... i forgot, you already stated your black and only care about blacks....
You can't force people to change their opinion, but you can educate yourself and present what you learned in a manner that is acceptable to anyone willing to listen without compromising your own principals and beliefs. I'm so grateful to have lived and learned from one of the best teachers this world had to offer.
"... to the principles of free inquiry and open debate, that goes up to make a great university..." For his sake I am glad he is not still around to witness the disaster that we are experiencing now.
@@jehjeh37111 Which is precisely why he'd be so effective today. As odious as Trump clearly is, the bigger problem is in the Liberal establishment, over which the Clintons wield so much power. They're the ones directing the identity politics community towards utterly destroying discourse in the Left.
He himself was a political agitator in his years at Oxford. A Marxist no less. I suspect, though we will never know, and I humbly admit my conclusion is speculative (something I note incidentally that you haven’t done), you might have been disappointed with his views on the current campus activism. What irks me most about internet commentators is how righteously they claim to know the thoughts of the dead. We see this everywhere: F1 fans claim to know what Senna would have thought of the current grid, film fans claim to know what Walt Disney would have thought of his company’s current output, and here we see Hitchens fans simply assuming he would have agreed with them no matter what. It’s wrong-headed, and demonstrates the same unthinking fatuousness he is on record as having opposed through his life.
@@hughtubecube You appear very much to assume most Hitchens fans are from the right - attacking so called 'Marxist' agitators on the left. For all Hitchens' contradictions over Iraq and The War Against Terror, he did so from the Trotskyist tradition of opposing the Stalinism of Saddam and a Marxist rejection of Theocratic Islamism. That this lead him into the cul-de-sac of supporting US imperialism is the great shame that he could never admit to. His Neocon admirers tried to own him but he stated many times he'd never been any kind of Conservative, he supported the US as the only successful revolution still standing. It's not enough to simply say Hitchens would have opposed identity politics activism due to his disgust at the Clintons or anything so fatuous. I strongly suspect he would have recognised the religious fervour in SJW puritanism leading to public denunciations without evidence and so on. The fetishization of identity is something Marx would have said allows the bourgeoise to divide and rule. It's built purely upon a perceived level of oppression in contrast to level of privilege - disabled/muslim/black/lesbian vs straight/white/male. Such a politics takes all the struggles and injustices people face, the energy that might be used to fight for a better world, and channels that all away from defeating class structures towards correcting 'privilege'. At this point it's worth noting that your class is abstract which means it can be challenged and dismantled, whereas privilege is inherent to you if you're a straight white male - whether you like it or not. And in this video, Hitchens identifies injustices that can be set right, especially as they continue to hold sway over the globe - while being very clear he opposed the fundamentalist mindset of repaying all debts throughout history - to empty the museums as it were. As he would have put it - it's crucial to understand how to think, not what to think. Hitchens would most likely have eviscerated the Orwellian nightmare of SJW activism and the Kafkaesque campaigns of MeToo/TimesUp. But equally if he were still around I'm sure the lightweights such as Jordan Peterson would not have come to prominence. Peterson wouldn't stand a chance against Hitchens, something he got a taste of while being effortlessly taken apart by Slavoj Zizek recently..
@@johndallara3257 - all the pro-Hitchens arguments (and Hitchen's himself), *not that you have made any!* .. are subjective and lack essence. What Hitchens is doing to you all (has been doing), is solely for the purpose of selling his books. Hitchens is a conman with a rich vocabulary that can manipulate the minds of people like you (the uneducated and the misinformed). I believe too, Christianity is a fake religion but is the easiest to debunk and that's why Hitchens attacks Christianity all the time, it makes him look good! But trust me when I tell you this, there's hardly any difference between the du mb christians who give money to the Church, and you bu ms who give money to Hitchens (or show support for him) .. this is what I meant when I said _"S T F U,"_ I just wanted to save space & time and being that you all Hitchens fan[atic]s are so _”smart”_ (LOL), I was expecting you gonna understand.
It's odd that someone like Hitchens would, on another stage, argue vehemently (and quite rightly) against the Christian concept of Generational Sin, yet in this forum he argues the exact opposite. Why should African Americans be the only ones who deserve reparations for past wrong-doings? Why stop at them? Why not Armenians, 1940's Serbians, how about British victims of Viking raids? Let's go back 2000 years...or maybe 4000 years....
Re-watch his talk. He preempts that line of argumentation with "don't let the best be the enemy of the good." Though I'll admit, I don't think reparations would rectify the situation that the vast majority of African Americans face. A one time cash payment will not fix the structural poverty cycle. We need to double down on efforts to improve education, improve access to healthcare, and to generally gentrify poor (and predominantly black) neighborhoods. One of the biggest failures of the establishment left in the US was to ensure that African Americans received political rights, and then to (largely) give up on economic justice.
Corey Graham I would love to argue with you, but not when you've clearly disregarded the contents of the debate in order to make some flowery, half-assed point. In this event, "mocking" and "rebutting" are synonymous, as I thought he so easily dismantled your flawed argument, that it made a mockery of anyone who would choose to use it. Watch the debate again to see Hitchens' argument, as I see no need to clarify what you can see for yourself, if you stopped being lazy.
Let me help you. His advocacy of the Iraq war is not missed by millions of Iraqis. His serial plagiarism is not missed by numerous authors. There I did it for you!
@@jugheadsrule But is his advocacy of the Iraq war missed LESS than Saddam Hussein himself...or the 3/4 MILLION Iraqi's in whose death or "disappearance" Saddam was directly implicated? By the way, out of curiosity, are YOU an Iraqi, or simply an anti-war activist who presumes to speak on their behalf? As for serial plagiarism, I'd be more than happy to examine any evidence you'd care to present. Either way...See Also: Ad Hominem.
@@OmniphonProductions It can't be ad hominem if it's true can it, you supercilious clown. Saddam was a lame duck by 2003. NFZs had wiped out most of his airforce and air defences so he wasn't a threat to anyone. In any case, the justification for the invasion was that he was connected with 9/11 and that he had WMD. Both provably false. And the result of that invasion? 1million plus dead, the birth of ISIS and the destabilisation of the whole region. As for his serial plagiarism, it's well documented, get off your arse and research it yourself. Here's a starter, and his most well known plagiarism, his book on Thomas Paine had copious amounts lifted from a book on Paine written by John Keene, who has personally acknowledged my publicizing Hitchens copying of his work.
@@jugheadsrule WOW! Defending an ad hominem with another ad hominem. Impressive. In RETROSPECT, you're right that Saddam was not a threat to anyone by 2003. However, his refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors to actually do their jobs...as well as no small amount of sabre rattling and his consistent violation of no fewer than 14 conditions of the Desert Storm Cease Fire Treaty...indicated otherwise AT THE TIME. For that matter, American, British, and French Intelligence agencies all concluded that he DID likely have WMD. I have no choice but to agree that this proved false, but we didn't know that BEFORE going in. Moreover, while Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, that event began a Global War On Terror, and...considering the 3/4 million Iraqis in whose deaths Saddam was directly implicated (complete with mass graves discovered only AFTER the Iraq invasion), his military strikes on Iraqi Kurds in the north, and the billions of U.N. Oil For Food dollars that were diverted to...among other things...building palaces FOR Saddam, the man was (by any objective metric) a terrorist, AND the world is a better place without him. As for the total body count, if groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban hadn't IMPORTED combatants INTO Iraq (from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iran...for starters), it would have been over far sooner with far fewer casualties. That said, the biggest failure of the U.S. in that respect is that nobody ANTICIPATED such importation of enemy combatants DESPITE the events of 9-1-1, and nobody ANTICIPATED the rise of ISIS (or any other terrorist group) to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam's removal. In that respect, you and I actually agree that it was tragically ill-planned, ill-conceived, and not _immediately_ necessary. HOWEVER, as mentioned earlier, we didn't know that BEFOREHAND. As for the plagiarism, thank you for actually providing somewhere to look. Far too many people online would leave it with the rude and unproductive, "Get off your arse and research it yourself." The person MAKING the claim is responsible for providing EVIDENCE. It's not the job of the person HEARING the claim to research whether its true, and in the ABSENCE of such provided evidence, the rational position is NOT to believe the claim. In this case, you have, at least, given me something. Actual links would be better, but anything is better than nothing. With that in mind, what did Keene specifically say about your efforts? ("...personally acknowledged," doesn't tell me much.) P.S. You still haven't answered whether you're Iraqi or not. Call me a racist, but your deep knowledge of Thomas Paine literature leads me to believe you're not.
@@jugheadsrule while I agree with the Iraq pay of your comment (Hitchens himself regretted his backing) is love to see a citation for the second part of your comment
My Irish ancestors came to the u s in the 1840s. If, if. They had food stamps ,subsidised housing and interest free loans i would probably be very wealthy,
@Mikkel The Red. Ah, but did the Irish have to go through slavery, then share cropping, then Jim Crow, all at gun point and threat of lynching, my racist little friend? I'm just kidding, I would never be your friend. I hope no one else is either, because you're a terrible person.
@Erik Mikkelsaar because, as white people, they would have been permitted to do so. To buy property wherever they could afford and participate in business. They were permitted to build an economic base. To be properly educated. They werent just "freed" in rags and told to pull up their bootstraps. But you already knew that. You just chose to ignore it.
@@phatbackbeat6553 yeah but thise who had authority over us abused their responsibility. The repercussions of their choices that rippled through time warrant some kind of compensation.
Reginald West we give Israel a lot of money to combat terrorism and keep the oil flowing to the USA 🇺🇸 That money is for no reparations .., it’s to fight Islam. 🤷♂️
ChristianDrums777 the Nation has moved on from this “very dark period “ in our history .., so too must its people. Reparations, legally speaking, is unconstitutional. The Democrats know this, but they make these promises to try to buy votes.., just like free tuition or free healthcare. The 40 acres and a mule is not coming.., and it never was going to happen. It was a lie then and it is a lie now. Stop believing and depending on the Government. They do not care about individuals and freedom.., just power and votes ! 🤷♂️
Have to disagree with Hitch here. There's a reason it was called the slave trade and not the slave theft. It's not like the slave traders were hunting down Africans and snatching them up. It would be one thing if that was the case, but the way it happened is that African warlords and chieftains rounded up their subjects and sold them to slave traders for rum. The slave traders were buying slaves, yes, but the African chieftains were selling them. So let's not act like white Americans (many of whom have zero slaveowners in their ancestry) are entirely responsible for slavery in North America.
No, because I wasn't involved in slavery and my ancestors didn't own slaves. Forcing me to pay for reparations simply because of some vague gamble that I'm "benefiting" from it now has about as much weight as me arguing that everyone else including blacks have benefited from slavery as well. It should also be said that black people also owned slaves in the US. A lot of them too. And quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned no, white civilization does not owe anyone a damn thing. The nature of competition insures that what is won is kept. Dinesh D'souza makes a million times more of a better argument than him. It is not non-sequitur to bring up the injustices of other races. It is not non-sequitur to bring up the injustices whole-sale committed and ask "what about them?" It's a rug-sweeping maneuver to imply that other injustices cannot be brought up when talking about reparations for slavery, because why are black african slaves the only ones to be considered for reparations? Was it not the Native Americans that both black and white stole land and killed for resources? Was it not the Native Americans who were originally enslaved first in this continent? So why must we then only consider the black population, who, by Hitchens own argument, are less deserving of Reparations when more was stolen and taken from the Native Americans? He has a pompous morale justification, but only from his own understanding of morales, not any actual sense of fairness or education. He sits on a podium that lays atop the graves of millions of not blacks, but Native Americans, which if it were not for them and their land that we had taken, this country would not even exist. So to this I say, no. We cannot and should not try to fix or mend the past. The past is what it is, the best we can do is do away with the constraints that hold individuals back, which as it certainly stands, we've done more than enough of.
Atheos B. Sapien I think you're an idiot that wasn't paying attention to what I said. I said it wasn't a non-sequitur to bring that up, and hitchens says it is, which I am saying that hitchens is saying that in order to "sweep under the rug" the fact that there are legitimate holes in his logic which he's choosing to ignore simply because of the inconvenient truth that injustices have occurred to all people all over the world. Try paying attention.
You haven't listened to any of the arguments contradicting your views. Hate hidden with obtuse logic is the only thing conservative folk have left as protection from others progression. Conservative means adverse to change or innovation and holding traditional values. It's not rocket science, Cupcakes. All our thoughts are never new. We're just confused with all times being new & deceived by the predictable few. Global conservative right-wing rat packs are muddying the waters because modern technology would evaporated the waters if used correctly.
James Brewer that’s not the point!!!!!!!!!! There has been WRONG done to a people of the ABSOLUTE worst kind and continues today. No there fathers aren’t alive but they’re decedents who are DIRECTLY affected by the actions of MANY countries and should be made whole. I mean this isn’t even a hard one. Did you watch the video???!!!! “Was there a rape a theft a wrong done?, can and should it be made whole?” Simple!!!!!!!!! Wtf dude
@@ischar23 Western society is built on the idea of the individual. As soon as you start punishing individuals based on what group you think they belong to every thing would collapse. Do you go to jail if your father steals a car? If you did, damn near everyone would be in prison. The whole innocent until proven guilty idea is out the window also. Plus, in this scenario, it is actually impossible even if you attempted to do it. I'm second generation here, my ancestors were surfs in Europe. Most slaves from West Africa were originally captured and sold by other African's. I'm white, no slaves owned by my family. Many Black people's ancestors were slave traders. Gonna try to figure out everyone's family history to see if they were the guilty or the victims?!? Or just say they are guilty or victims based on skin tone?
If the English Navy protected the Atlantic Slave Trade shouldn't they also be liable to pay Reparations? Tell me instead about the great slave revolt and how they earned their freedom, OH wait that never happened. Instead, 350,000 whites gave their lives to win their freedom. That sounds like reparation enough.
You can't say that, it goes against the liberal dogma and you will be hunted down and silenced for having an opposing opinion and thinking for yourself.
Those lives given were not to free the slaves, but to keep the Union intact. And I’m guessing you also don’t know or care to know, about all of the other injustices blacks were subjugated to after those lives were “given” and well up to today as well. Pick up a book and learn history before you shoot off at the mouth.
I'm sure that you care little about the lives given to free slaves and would rather dwell on the evils of the whites but the fact remains that the freedom of the slaves was a direct result of the civil war and the men and women (mostly white) who died. I've studied my history perhaps you should as well before you shoot off your mouth.
Hitchens avoids the real issues by never defining what he means by "reparations." Is it a one time check? improved access to college? scholarships?, or whatever. As he uses it, "reparations " is a vague, feel good word which means whatever you want it to mean.
@@brianwrynn3109 Can't have an honest discussion about what reparations might look like until the first step, agreeing that a good faith effort should be attempted, is taken. And the counter that if one doesn't already know what that effort should be, so therefore we shouldn't even try, is not a good faith argument. It's very often disingenuous - the person usually is just against the idea at all but won't say so.
@@mukorgalaxies7766 I guess reparations for those who dont wish to be here can be argued for. Restorative justice before any ADOS forfeit their citizenship and leave for a more accommodating country.
"Torrent of bad faith...lolllll "when people begin to introduce the irrelevant the non sequitur and the generalizations .. you can tell you're onto something". Lollll the Hitch
When he said that all I could think of was some of the bad rationalizations in the youtube comments. I've read a few times what about the Arabs who practiced slavery in the same time period.
@@writerconsidered Hmm. Arabs have practised slavery since Sumerian times, as have many, if not most others. Slavery of one sort or another is still widely practised today. During the times that the American slave trade was going, Arabs, Europeans and other African tribes participated.
I don't think that people who are being collectively assigned the guilt of historical events based on their race can be automatically dismissed as bad faith actors. Hitchens is basically just dismissing all arguments which attempt to contextualize the absurdity and injustice of the notion of transgenerational race-based reparations which I think is intellectually dishonest at best, and plainly malevolent at worst.
I think dismissing the generalization of his argument about the Parthenon Marbles is not as easy and as he states. Is there really that stark of a difference between classic Greek artifacts and Pharaonic Egyptian ones (or something you might imagine in between)? There are no Pharaonic Egyptians around, but neither are there Ancient Hellenic polis-dwellers, so how can modern Christian Greeks claim that piece justly as their own, but modern Islamic Egyptians respectively can't? In both cases the artifact's meaning is symbolical, not religious anymore, their meaning far from their original context, and there is a difficult case for historic civilizational continuation and claims to heritage. Sure, details can make a crucial difference, but with regards to his argument in general terms they may not at all.
If someone stole your great grandfather's property which had been passed down the generations to more immediate family, you would have a just claim to demand it to be restituted. However if your great grandfather robbed someone else and seized their property and in return that property got taken away by a third party, then that claim becomes a bit weaker, although you are still allowed to make it. While modern day Greeks aren't Hellenistic Greeks, they are still largely their descendants due to the continuous process of shaping Greek society as we know it today. Historical evidence suggests the process was a lot less smooth in Egypt as Arabs were not just conquerors, but also forced the local population to assimilate into their society, through enforced Islamisation, rape, murder, etc. Admittedly, both modern day countries would still like their artifacts returned due to the economic benefits of increased tourism, but ultimately only the Greeks can play the culture card.
In some sense I do understand, but you're dealing with a Ship of Theseus problem here, and everyone's answer varies bases in what they think constitutes a continual identity. In my case, I think both the Greeks and Egyptians should be returned their artifacts- not necessarily because they were taken from the exact same people as those who sculpted the original artworks, but because they were taken from Greeks and Egyptians (1800s) who are arguably the same today. Whether or not they can claim heritage, they can certainly claim lost revenue from tourism and sovereignty over whatever is dug up on their territory.
@@LancesArmorStriking & @Nikola Langov Mhmh, both valid points. Thanks. I wonder how this relates to the question of seized land, and "formal" reasons why and how people in general were dispossessed of somthing, e.g. during a war. I guess, giving some symbolical items back is easier and the sentimental value of having had them lying around in a museum for a few generations weighs much less than settlers' claims to land, which was conquered in an "unjustified" war (obviously a never-ending question in itself), and then been occupied for a similar time. Psychologically, people are loss averse, and in this case having lived on and "owned" land passed down from your grandparents is practically something else, and involves living individuals much more immediately than ownership of some items by a trust or a state or a museum (simply in psychological terms), but I think there is still a problem of distinguishing these things categorically, if we regard lost ownership, potential, revenue etc. in that way. Seems to be a slippery slope.
I think the analogy is rather devoid of logic in its entirety. Some artifact that some state (or state's agent) seized from another culture centuries ago could be returned as restitution. In this case, there would not be collectivized guilt. It would be understood that the entire English ethnic group, for example, was not collectively guilty of stealing the Parthenon Marbles and bringing them to London. They were taken by the English monarchy and brought there. The English may have benefited from it being there, but it was by no inherent collectivized fault of their own that it was there. Taking this example and comparing it to the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans is filled with a multitude of logical inconsistencies. First, it was not the entire "white society", as Hitchens argued, that is responsible for the slave trade, slavery, racist laws, etc. 98% of European American families did not own slaves, and many among them were not supporters of slavery as an institution. It benefited the wealthy aristocracy almost exclusively. As an institution, it actually hurt poor European immigrants because there was less need for cheap labor as a result of it. Moreover, many European Americans are the descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. after emancipation. Some came from countries that didn't even partake in colonization or the slave trade, such as Poland. Add on top of this that not all African Americans are descended from freed slaves. Some of their descendants even partook in slavery themselves against their own people in the New World. So at the end of the day, what reparations represents is the notion that ALL European Americans, regardless of their ancestry, are guilty. It is not just "sins of our father," it is sins of our neighbor, our kings, our Congress, of ANYONE who belonged to our racial group who partook in these historical actions. It is a form of transgenerational racialized guilt against those of European descent and transgenerational racialized victimization of those of African descent. That said, how could reparations ever be justly implemented? Just think of the logistics of such an endeavor and how fraught with incompetence and injustice it would be. If using tax dollars, then the African Americans would essentially just be paying themselves reparations. If a racial tax was assessed, it would be a gross and obvious violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which, ironically, is the amendment which also naturalized freed slaves as American citizens. That is why reparations for slavery can never be just...or legal...in the United States. Hitchens would minimalize and mock my argument as "white whining," but really, there is just simply no logical or justifiable way to implement reparations based on race, even if the idea seems virtuous at face value.
@@googleisskynet7312 Hey, this wasn't really what I was discussing, but I'll just accept your point here. However I have to say, I think you make a bit a categorical error. Reparations in the case of US-American slave descendant or in many other cases, are not intended (by any sane person) as a punishment because of some alleged inherited collective guilt. If this were so your point would be correct, but without rewatching this video, I would say generally such propositions including that of Hitchens' would frame them as a form of affirmative action, to make up for past discrimination, which has implications to this day. I don't want to discuss the intricacies of such policies at all, but I think at least in that regard your point is correct: Ethnic boundaries are blurry and the burden of past wrongs is difficult to quantify and account for not only on an individual level, but on a level of group or "racial identity". Should one attempt it nonetheless, and how? Different questions.
The African slave trader tribes should also be sued for all of the people they enslaved and sold like cattle. This idea of reparations is highly impractical and divisive and is a road the USA should never go down.
I understand your logic on this on its face, but ultimately that’s an extension of hypothetical reparations that could never be enforced. I still think it would be better to do something rather than nothing. Just because the US can’t ever fully reclaim all that was stolen from those enslaved doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try.
@ Just common sense. People who are bad with money will eventually end up separated from their money, People who are industrious will always rise to the top. What do you think poor black people would do with a bunch of government cash?
Ryan I absolutely agree my mother is Scottish and I hold no animosity to the English for past crimes, unlike black people today who have never been victims of slavery but will tell you they’re owed reparations for what happened to their great, great, great grandparents
Obi-wan Shinobi oh damn, being English I guess we’d have to pay pretty much half the countries in the world for past wrongdoing. But we’re on our way to financial ruin anyway. Well we could always get the money from the French for their part in the 11th century and the Italians for the 1st century....
Do the Third Reich or Umayyad Caliphate have active HR departments? As Slavic "vermin" or "garbage," I'll happily take my reparations in Adidas and slivovitz, or vodka if you must. It's gotta be potato, though! I know my new Irish friend stands with me on this. Corn is for whiskey, not for vodka...
@@christianvaclavic9574 Never heard the term Slavic "vermin or garbage". But if it was used by the Third Reich or the muslims I would take it as an intended insult and say to hell with them.
@@stevefarris9433 Oh, yeah. Heydrich and Hitler hated the Czechs. Ironically, their tests concluded the Czech people had more "Aryan" traits than a lot of Germany. So...jealousy, maybe? They covered it up, it course. What else is a government to do?!
funny to see all of the exact bad faith arguments being played out here in the comments section against reparations that Hitchens warned about in this video...
too be fair; he's made an argued against a position that no one was arguing. And it's very difficult to assign a value to reparat when neither population of white or black living today have either owned slaves or been enslaved. So, I don't think there is an argument for reparations in the Americas. And the same is true for Africa; how do you produce a quantity of value to be repatriated to Africa? If you cannot find that value, then when do you know that youve successfully repaid what us owed? The answer is that you can't.
@@atlehman69 Oh the irony in you using the phrase "straw man" here, because that's exactly what I'm referring to in people's arguments against reparations. Hitchens here is warning, essentially, against the straw man. He's warning against the straw man of the pro-reparation argument, wherein they twist the pro-reparationist's argument with non sequiturs and the classic "so what you're saying is...". 3:10 to approximately 4:40 in this video are the relevant time stamps. Here Hitchens is speaking of non sequiturs, with clear analogies to the reparation argument. And I see the same kinds on non sequiturs that he's referring to in the video in this comments section.
@@RikkSpencer this argument isn't over what the right "value" is to assign reparations, merely if they should be made in some form. Those forms could be made in many ways, monetary or otherwise. For example, affirmative action could be said to be a form of reparation. But to say that no one is arguing against reparations seems disingenuous. There are certainly many people in America today (maybe even a majority of people?) who would agree that there should be *no* reparation for slavery of any form. Hitchens is here merely arguing that there *should* be a non-zero reparation for slavery. What value should be assigned to such a reparation? Well, that's another detailed topic, but I don't think anyone on the pro-reparation side of this argument is advocating anything very extreme in the quantity of that value. And Hitchens here even seems to think that whatever value is assigned is likely to be inadequate, but at least better than nothing ("best is the enemy of the good").
@Klaa2 Please discredit the fact that my family moved here in the 1910s.... How much do I owe Americans that were never slaves for my sin of never being remotely connected to American slave owners...?
A strong man can become a victim but it is the weakest man that can try to claim victimhood without fear of persecution. Meaning if you're really a victim, you wouldn't be able to whine and cry about it. If you're strong and independent, you would not be whining and crying about being a victim.
For me to be for reparations for slavery, someone needs to answer the following questions. Why should I pay for the sins of my ancestors? If I should pay for the sins of my ancestors who were slave owners, why should I not receive credit for my ancestors who fought against slavery? Why should I pay for reparations to those black people who are better off than I am? What about people who are half white and half black such a Barack Obama and Mariah Carey? Should they pay reparations to themselves?
@Omar Savory There are many factors to consider (petersonscottb brought up some of them), however, to consider the Civil Liberties Act of 1888 as a precedent is not correct. This Act gave reparations to SURVIVING Japanese individuals affected, not their descendants.
@Omar Savory Nowhere did I mention statute of limitations. Also, to equate inheritance with reparations shows ignorance on your part. Due to the logistics involved with distributing wealth to those affected by slavery, it will never happen. The best thing would be to do something similar to what you mentioned, Georgetown. Handing out money to the affected masses will only serve to lower their socioeconomic status even further. Thus, the best action would be to provide financial support to higher education, or perhaps even a lower interest rate on business loans. Increasing the education level of the masses affected, will have the result of increasing their socioeconomic level in the long run. It's not that I disagree with helping those affected, but just handing out lump sums of money is illogical. But, and this is a very big "but", how do you propose determining who can receive the financial support?
@Omar Savory Okay, but how would you suggest going about determining who gets what? If you decide to use DNA to exclude those that don't meet a "minimum threshold", you are going to open up Pandora's box, regarding unsolved crimes. So, again, what would you use to determine eligibility?
@Omar Savory I'd prefer that we work towards a nation that doesn't need reparations because there is no longer such a great inequality that they are needed.
@Omar Savory You have data that proves we shouldn't work towards a more equal society? I'll take a look at that, because if you think just giving some people some money is going to fix anything then you're nuts.
I accept neither collective guilt nor hereditary guilt. No American living today has owned or been a slave. There is no victim and no guilt. No debt exists. Force a redistribution of wealth based on ethnicity will doom ethnic reconciliation.
I'm overwhelmed with admiration for this man. His tact, his poise, his candor and honesty. His incredible eloquence, and here his piercing cognizance of an important issue that is often mistreated by the ignorant and biased. I would commend his consistency, but I've less respect for consistency after reading Emmerson's Self Reliance. I've never before felt in my life that person was gone too soon. My eternal admiration and respect to you Hitch!
@Miki sadly hitch just got awakened to the fact that life was eternal, that he was wrong about God and misled many, all is not over for him as he will know no rest that’s very sad 😔. Should one respect and admire a lost sinner who confused many and stood on the throne of life denying his creator, well no, one should empathise for one that is so lost and deceived and who sadly apart from a deathbed conversion perished in his sins and trespasses, hardly something to celebrate.
robert marshall nah hitchens was right. Because of him I regained my senses regarding superstition and the harm that a bad metaphysic (such as a belief in the eternal under the guise of a mind) can do. Youre incontrovertibly incorrect about Hitchens and its a damn shame you dont have the senses to see otherwise. This is just backhanded nonsense. Keep your religion to yourself. It’s foolish as was as pretentious and senseless.
My ancestors came from Norway, and some joined the Union Army straight away. So, what of that? I have one that died while serving. So, who owes here? How do people who have no ancestors that were slaves deserve reparations?
robert vernon what, not wanting to pay for something to some one else for no good reason? How about reparations for my ancestors dying..? If your ancestors werent slaves? No reps. That would take care of a good majority of it.
Simply giving people money is not how you solve problems. If there were reparations, I guarantee it'd do almost nothing and in a few years the reaction would be "You didn't give us enough".
Years? Try the next day. The whinging would begin anew the very next day. Once it became reality that there is money to be had the process would never stop or slow.
*_@Gary Wood ::_* _Whatever the desire would be for "more" money, is supposition on your part._ _What is known, however, is the Imperial-Greed of Europeans AND Americans who Took The Hemisphere from the Natives, because Enough Is Never Enough for Rapacious "Conquistadors" !_
I find myself agreeing with Hitchens on every occasion except twice. 1. when he said women cant be funny and 2. now. Reparations were paid in blood when North and South fought a disastrous war were thousands upon thousands were killed.
Instead of paying repirations to blacks,why dont they use that money to build great schools in poor areas and educate all the poor how to help themselves
Typical white supremacist they believe that black reparations should be passed out to all poor people something they would never say to a Jewish Holocaust victims. Fool, you did not enslave poor people you enslaved black people.
Hitch is wrong. He argued there is no longer a Babylon, yet there are contemporary people in Iraq that have a claim. Just because the name we call people, i.e. Babylonian vs citizens of Iraq, doesn't mean the people stop existing. With this said, where do we draw the line for reparations. Should we make the modern Italians, who clearly banked their exploitive nature into capital as Romans, assume some financial responsibility to the many peoples they aggrieved? It is one thing to realize a wrong, like the seizure of property, and try to correct it. It is another to place atonement on things as intangible as past profits.
Lol , Ya, its "intangible " because we choose for it to be. Obviously there's not a dollar amount that can make up for what was done. But you certainly can ( & people have ) put an approximate figure on what dollar amount would be owed for centuries of free labor. In modern dollars we'd be talking about almost 2 trillion dollars . We are really good as Americans at figuring out shit we WANT to do. "If you can put a man on the moon".
Are you serious? Look just because I kinda look like someone that allegedly did some past crime doesn't make me accountable. This is an immoral place to begin your argument, because the presumption is racially motivated.
I'm sure a line can be drawn somewhere. But I'm sorry my friend, we dont have to go back but 55 years to find total atrocity in this country in regards to African Americans. We're NOT talking about 2000 years ago. We're talking just 150 years for slavery & not until 1965 did Jim Crow,blatant discrimination, lynching ,inability to vote & real estate red lining begin to subside. That's just 50 year. Hitch knows his history & how we're just a generation away ( my father lived under Jim Crow as a boy....& my 101 year old grandmother was born in the deep south 1914)from many horrendous wrongs.
John Smith The whole country was built upon a foundation of "Race" John. There's no way to address the problem WITHOUT the subject being at the center of the conversation. You can blame our country for that one. Slavery & the 100 years of Jim Crow , lynching & real estate red lining, was all based SOLELY on "race". The people who were hugely affected by it ,we're African Americans. Don't know how you address the issue without addressing race. That's nonsensical. It's racist NOT to discuss. Because you're basically saying we should forget all the iniquities that still exist because of that history. Silly.
The Devil is in the details. How do you calculate how much each victim class member was harmed in terms of dollars and how much each individual oppressor class member is culpable and how much he must pay.
Moreover, which members are actually within the oppressor class and which were the victims. West Africans captured and sold the majority of the slaves that ended up in America. Gonna do Ancestry DNA to try and figure out if you came from one of the people that got captured or one of them that did the capturing? Or what if your mother's side was black slave trader, but your Dads side was a slave? what the hell you gonna do them? Or are we just going by how much melanin you've got and whites with ancestors who were surfs or another oppressed people that came to North America have gotta pay also? And on and on it goes.
Did Hitch say the reparations have to actually be monetary? He does talk about the Federal Reserve and America's wealth but I don't believe he ever actually mentioned actual money. I think he is making a far more important point. One that still needs to be made and we need to be reminded of every time a Black person is killed unjustly by cops, every time a Black person is profiled by White civilians, every time a Black person is given a harsh punishment disproportionate to the crime they committed. Yes perhaps some money is in order but the question goes far deeper than mere money.
Hitch begins by saying he is going to make an argument by analogy and proceeds to relate some arguments for and against returning the Elgin Marbles. But he then goes on to repeatedly dismisses his opponents’ analogies with respect to the Marbles and reparations as efforts at distraction that reveal their bad faith. I always enjoy listening to him but this is just sophistry.
My earliest Ancestors in My home country of Australia were sent here against their will as Irish Convict slaves. Do I deserve Reparations or does the colour of my skin make me not eligible?
@AridMy oldest ancestor was sent here for the charge of " uttering unholy oaths" meaning he was suspected of belonging to an organisation sworn to resist and oppose British rule in Ireland. (eg like the ribbon men) If membership could be proven death was the sentence. For Suspected resistors confiscation of property, Transportation, whipping and slavery was dished out by the English. He would have hated the British Empire as much as any Indigenous Australian ever has.
Arid Ned Kelly's father was sent half way round the world to break rocks in the scorching sun because he stole pigs to feed his family, so you think he deserved it because he was a criminal or is it because he was white?(hint: it's the latter)
I don’t know if the present and future would be the same if he hadn’t already been here. A truly brilliant mind, and I agree with the heart of your statement, we need him now more than ever
The best way to repair the damage from slavery is to ensure nobody can be a slave ever, and that everyone is treated the same under the law without protected groups. Anything else is just band aids.
There are more slaves today than 100 years ago Its just that no one cares because they are not in western countries People think the west is evil, and they only really virtue signal when the west does something And that is because in western democracy they have been given freedom to virtue signal its almost like self loathing
How would "Reparations" work.. 1) If you're a white "Yankee" and lost a family member freeing the slaves do you get a cut? 2) If you're white and your family came here in the 1900's are you charged? 3) If you're black and have no slave ancestors do you get a cut? 4) How much is assessed to the black tribal leaders that actually captured the slaves and sold them to whites? 5) If you're black and some of your ancestors were captured and sold to whites .. but the most of your remaining ancestors were wiped out by the war, disease or genocide that has plagued Africa since time began, do you have to pay whites for saving your future?
The Elgin marbles is a big red herring. The Greeks at the time had no interest in or respect for their history, and had destroyed countless artifacts to make lime, costing the world inestimably dearly in lost knowledge. The Elgin marbles were about to suffer the same fate. They weren't stolen, they were rescued, for all of us. Reparations for slavery is a difficult one for me. The suffering was terrible, but those who experienced it are long dead, as are those who perpetrated it, and the many Africans who enabled it because it wasn't just a white on black thing. And in fact black on white slavery continued until the turn of the 20th century when the barbary pirates were wiped out, so white families from the Mediterranean all the way up to the coast of Britain have slavery in their families right up to the edge of living memory and as such have perhaps an even more legitimate claim. However, I believe that nobody is responsible or should be held accountable for the crimes of their ancestors (even when an individuals ancestors can be proved to have been involved). Nor should a nation be held responsible for events where no participant or victim still lives. If we are to hold people responsible for historic events, how many generations must pass before it becomes silly? I live in the north of England - does that mean, therefore, that I can claim reparations from Denmark for the actions of the Vikings? Or Rome for the invasion of 43ad? We're not even meant to hold Germany responsible for the blitz, a mere 7 decades ago.
They were rescued but they ought to go back. They belong in Athens, somewhere near the Acropolis and the Parthenon, not in a British museum. It is as simple as taking ancient heritage back where it came from and where it belongs The Parthenon is still there, at least partly, and there is a thread of continuity between the ancient and modern world in this case. It is not like ancient Hellas simply disappeared altogether and was miraculously recovered. Reparations for slavery is a far more controversial and impractical concept, obviously.
+Ishmael Forester Yeah I've no argument there, and it would be a nice gesture for archaeologists and historians in both nations to come together with a mutually beneficial compromise, as I think you hinted at in another post. I just felt that the often-implied idea that our ancestors went around essentially raping antiquity is at best misleading and at worst an outright libel that needs challenging.
Evil Twin I don't think they raped antiquity but they certainly raped the present in their day. I don't think anybody intelligent has any illusions about imperialism generally, not just the British, anymore.
No interest in their history? Well, during the battles to take Athens, the Turks were melting down the lead rods holding up the pillars of the Parthenon for bullets. The Greeks were so worried about this they offered the Turks bullets if they would only stop melting down the material. Were there a lot of Greeks who weren't aware of their history? Or perhaps weren't even really Greeks? Sure. However, there were quite a few who did.
No right thinking person believes in or endorses imperialism now, but nobody is responsible for the actions of their ancestors, and anyway you are conflating two seperate and unconnected issues here. Look, the fact is that there isn't a single museum in the world that does not contain items stolen from another culture. If you endorse giving the Elgin Marbles back, then the Met, for example, should give Britain back all the medieval armour that the people did not give them permission to take, or pretty much every museum should return their mummies to Egypt, a country that doesn't have the space or resources to look after them properly (artefacts in Cairo museum are shockingly badly restored and conserved). Or maybe middle eastern artefacts should be returned to Isis, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We've all seen the respect they have for antiquities.
I've never agreed with him on this. How do you make a person who never owned slaves pay respirations to a person who was never a slave. Makes no sense.
Are you for a 100% inheritance tax? After all why should continous generations inherit millions they didn't work for? Funny how we allow what benefits us from the past be inherited but not what is deterimental.
@@AndyTomlins That's a red herring. Hitchens just said in the video to not let people like you dodge the subject with what-aboutisms. So the question remains, why should Italians pay me, a Briton, reparations for slavery, when they didn't own slaves, and I was never a slave.
Why is it disappointing? As far as I can remember, most of his debates went something like this. He’d go off on 47 different tangents, many of which were not related to the matter at hand, then he’d somehow tie it up together without actually telling people what his argument was. And the audience would be left guessing. His only appeal was that he was a great rethorician and he was funny - and he sometimes said things people wanted to hear.
Maybe it's because I'm watching on little sleep. But this quote came to mind: "At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." 😆
It's weird I always hear so much about how great this guy was but I don't think I've fully agreed with a single argument he's ever made. Yet I enjoy watching him make them.
Conservatives are Hitchens fans now? Seems to me they were always quite at odds with him over his views on foreign wars and religion. Maybe you should know what you're talking about before saying silly things?
I think reparations should take the reverse form of Lee Atwater's southern strategy. If we propose to help everyone who suffers from a legacy of poverty, if that helps minorities such as blacks more, then so be it. There is so much injustice in US history, and I think the proof is in the soaring poverty rates of minorities. We need to provide them with opportunities to advance their social class, and do it under the rubric of lifting everyone out of poverty.
reparations make no sense for these reasons: 1. no one who was subjected to slavery is alive 2. not all black people descended from slaves 3. not all white people descended from slave owners 4. there were black slave owners (though very few) you can't lift anyone out of poverty by giving them handouts. there are more poor white people than black people in America, so why should the black people get help and not the white people? if you want to help, just help those who need help, don't pick and choose based on race, that's racism.
@@Atamanxxxvii Are you going to deny colonialism from the major western powers, England, France, Spain, Portugal, and others? Because that's where you get spanked, Skippy.
@@captur69 I was presumptuously projecting through the medium of Imagination. I've seen so many admirers of Hitchens wishing him "RIP" and I'm momentarily apoplectic at the meaninglessness to an Atheist. He's not "resting" - owing to a sudden attack of death. Hitchens' wisdom was imparted universally and The Planet was better for him.
Rufus Chucklebutty it’s more about the wave of economic and social damage that had been done by Jim Crow, slavery, ect.. All people of color have been affected by these things. Couldn’t get jobs, buy homes ect..
Your question implies that the only blacks who have suffered in america did so as slaves, when I'd argue that slavery was just the initial injury (Jim Crow, etc.) and more importantly that damage is still being done to this day (the ridiculously high numbers of African Americans incarcerated in this country, etc.) and thus the reasonableness of reparations to that race of humans.
@@kingirisnetwork9847 , but how is throwing money at the problem going to solve it. Wouldn't a better solution be for the black community to first gain self responsibility for the crime that exists in their neighborhood?
Fortunate to have learned English to the point of understanding Hitchens. So miss you Professor Hitchens. Simply Succulent. I pay attention When he speaks.
@@baddog6003 >not realizing islam at one point conquered half of europe and all of northern and eastern africa. >not surprised at all basically what I'm saying is, if we had left them alone they'd probably be equal in terms of societal and economic development. Oh and they would all be arab more than likely. perhaps spreading so far that we were too
Reparations are a terrible idea. Think of the level of scrutiny of people’s history required to properly distribute reparatory money properly. The records of history wouldn’t be adequate for the average joe. So, you’d have to have a blanket policy, such as all black Americans receive reparations. But then what of the blacks who’s recent ancestry does not involve slavery, what of the blacks descended from those that themselves sold slaves-what are they owed? What of mixed race Americans descended from slave trader heritage, what of blacks like Oprah Winfrey, who are a hundred thousand times more successful than the average white? Morally, there is a case to be made, but sadly there is no practical way that this could be implemented fairly.
@Tom Voke I left a comment regarding reparations on a video regarding reparations. I am saying that morally, as Hitchens argued, there is a good case to be made that descendants of slaves deserve reparations. However, there is no way to implement this fairly. That is my point. If I can't leave that comment on this video then I'm not sure where I could leave it. And regarding whether or not I'm 'obsessed' (after one instance, you may want to look that word's definition up) with your comment likes. It was merely a passing comment. It's amusing how when you post a comment it immediately has 1 like, yet none thereafter. You must have one very dedicated fan!
Should reparations be the offering of one-way tickets back to the mother-land that they wish their ancestors had not been removed from? Since America is apparently so bad, and their mother-land is so wonderful?
The reason Christopher Hitchens is correct about Britain stealing Greece’s heritage is the British navy was sailing to India to sell bolts of cotton (cotton picked from slave labor) and stopped off at Constantinople to resupply. They made allies with the Ottoman empire. The British asked the Ottomans if they could take a few things from Greece… you know, souvenirs. The sultan said yes, if the items were already on the ground. But the British did not do that. Rather, they dynamited Greek architecture and stole all the pieces that ended up on the ground to take them back to their museum. The Greeks were fighting for their lives and couldn’t respond. After the Ottomans desecrated a city or village they would go through and kidnap the young boys and brainwash them, turning them into the next generation of warriors called Janissaries. One area where Hitchens is incorrect, we (the United States) did not go to Africa to get slaves. The West Dutch Indies Company, a British company did that and sold them to the colonists. The United States of America wasn’t even a country at the time. There is no one alive who committed the injury and no one alive (or direct relative) who has been injured. Case closed. Most cultures have had some form of slavery or ill yoke brought against them at some time or another. Only people of African decent cries foul about it and expects entitlements.
@@bobbytumbleweed Yes, American freed some slaves and they immigrated to Liberia. The freed blacks in turn enslaved people native to that land. Go figure!
This is the first time I've heard Hitch make absolutely no sense whatsoever. He's not even addressing the two basic questions: who pays and who gets paid?
I’ve long been a fervent admirer of CH. But I guess I’m not smart enough to get his point on this topic. He suggests that reparations are appropriate but never says it in a blunt manner. And he never provides details of how it could ever be undertaken. Sorry Hitch, I’m not buying it.
Reparations? Paid by whom, the Africans who sold their own people? What was done a long tome ago by people who are dead to other people who are also dead is in the past. I appreciate Hitchens but strongly disagree with him on this one.
did you finish the video? everyone reasonable knows it was a disgusting deal. remember that slavery was introduced by societies allegedly bearing enlightenment values.
And 100 yrs of Jim Crow and in some cases nearly 200 yrs, as Jim Crow is the natural birthed child after ending slavery. Slavery ended in 1783 in Massachusetts. Legal Jim Crow came right after and truly didn't end until the busing crisis in 1974, just shy of 200 yrs. Most Irish and Italians were not even here until after 1850, while Africans bullet this country. In building this country these enslaved Africans also had most of the labor skills. And this is what Jim Crow and lynching was all about. It was about killing freed blacks ability to COMPETE when they had superior labor skills... Hence, newly arriving Europeans would not be as needed, nor able to build their new lives if the freed Africans had equal access to opportunity as newly arriving immigrants, as your family. Your family came despite slavery and Jim Crow, hence...you should pay for your birthright. Can you imagine if there were 10 million Barack Obamas? Lol... The goal has also been to prevent that. I kid you not, 1/2 your women would defect.
@@kizombeiro8130 You have a slanted view of history. If you live in America you benefit from the free labor of the enslaved. If you live in America you don't have to compete evenly with descendents of slavery because the Government stole land and instituted laws against African descendents. The laws and behaviors resulted in over 100 years of Sanctions on African American communities. Look what sanction have done to Iran in just a few years. Imagine having 100 years of Sanctions after 250 yrs of enslavement. Yes. Generation wealth, knowledge and skills were denied to the descendents of the enslaved. Sorry, your family came here (If here) because America was a panacea. Africans helped make it that panacea with free labor and blood..Their children never received generational wealth. And generational wealth is what helps families transcend their immigrant status in America.
I agree completely with the analogy between the Elgin Marbles and African sl@ves (ensl@ved by each other or by Arabs, I must point out, not by Europeans) and think restitution should be made in both cases and in the same manner--immediate repatriation.
Hitchens was wrong as usual. Taking from someone, from people who had nothing to do with slavery is theft. Reparations would surely do just that. Should I have to pay for the sins of people I didn't even know? Sins I never committed? No Christopher, you were wrong, as usual. You were slick as snot, but snot non the less.
Clearly, you are not a christian. You argue that you are not responsible for paying reparations. One could argue that descendants of slave owners who received any inheritance continue to benefit from the unpaid labour of those slaves, thus are not part of the group "who had nothing to do with slavery".
First subtract out welfare payments and the monetary worth of affirmative action and then cut by proportion down to the actual proportion the percent of slave ancestry and reduce by any percent of white ancestry for what is owed to any claimant. Then reduce the amount owed by any individual based on whether they were actual descendents of slave owners and this whole thing becomes meaningless drivel.
I disagree with Hitch's rationale in that the reference to the Elgin Marbles would only be comparable if the nations of Africa wanted the decendants of it's stolen people back. This was a very poor position to take. I can't see how he could convolute "Reparation" with "Repatriation".
@Camille Desmoulins Completely irrelevant to the issue at hand and also quite wrong. Whatever the austerity policy imposed by the European Stability Mechanism--or Germany, if you can't do without your own personal Antichrist--foreclosing on art is not how national debt is collected. Nice try at a segue though. @Michael Gaspar I agree with the part about Hitchens' conflation of "reparation"/"repatriation", but I think his injunction to not "make the best the enemy of the good" still holds. As far as reparation is concerned, the once-promised forty acres and a mule (or their modern-day value equivalent) might be a good start, since this would have been wealth passed down in the families of former slaves. After all, there are 640 million acres of federal land in the US.
Hitch is very eloquent; however, he is mistaken on multiple counts. Those early colonial buildings were built, in large measure, by the early colonists and indentured servants. Indentured servitude is essentially a contract for passage via time-labor. Slavery existed in Africa hundreds of years prior to any white colonialism in West Africa and it was the locals that were party to gathering the human capital and making it available for sale to the owners of the slave ships. The debt has already been paid via combinatorial losses during the US Civil War. The only people that would make bank on the implementation of reparations consists of the bureaucrats that would see fit to manage the entire affair. It would certainly infuriate those individuals that are made to pay the bill and who never owned slaves nor are the decedents of slave owners. It would cast the recipients of whatever was left (after the bureaucrats took their cut) of the welfare payments into an even further state of dependency and self-loathing. Of course, this whole reparations thing will be eaten up whole hog by those self-immolating masochists that intoxicate in their white guilt. I will have no part in it.
@@rudipan1715 Indeed, I have also read DiLorenzo and others and am familiar with The Lincoln Scholars. Nonetheless, once of the artifacts from the Civil War was the Emancipation Proclamation. Hitch's argument falls flat; a static bit of timeless marble bears to resemblance to a mortal individual human being. He is stretching beyond credulity and he had enough self-awareness to know it.
As Hitchens is careful to point out right up front, watch out for those who redirect the argument. Slave labor existed in the US, regardless of which heap of bricks you want to attribute it to. White people profited monetarily from forced black labor. A monetary reparation could be made and should be made. There is no statute of limitations on a moral wrongdoing. The speaker before Hitchens was evidently a black man who did not want members of the African American public to accept such a payout so as to avoid resulting damage to the recipient's character and morals. I can see that argument. So why not use our national strength and wealth to send serious long term, nation-building aid to the West African regions that were most heavily affected by the atrocities? Our world would be a better place for doing it. You might consider the approach a penance as much as restitution, but that is fine and good. If we did it honestly, it could work. As a white guy, I can't say how much would be enough. But I think that at a certain point, we'd all see that the effort would be so rewarding that no hard ending would be necessary. The point is not how familiar Hitchens is with details about bricks or chunks of marble. The point is that a wrong is waiting to be righted. If you don't accept that, why are you even watching the video?
@@SH-th4wy You are WRONG. The vast majority of white people did NOT profit from slavery. The vast majority of white people did not own slaves or did not have any ties to slavery. The vast majority of slave owners were what would be considered today as the 1% and only the 1% of the south. The south was only part of the economy and country would have survived just fine without slavery. All those plantation owners would just have had to pay for labor. Not to mention all those white people today who's ancestors immigrated after slavery was abolished. All your monetary reparations would do is create a greater divide, more racism, and a further separation from equality, especially from all the other minorities that aren't receiving so- called special benefits. And yes, there is a statute of limitations on a moral wrong doing. NO civilized society would condemn the sons and daughters for crimes of the father and mother. Besides, if you are talking about restitution of historic crimes, I'll take you serious when you add the Mongols, The Egyptians, the Ottomans, the Turks, The Japanese, the Arabs to the list for their past crimes. And let's not forget the Aztecs for their brutal conquest of all the other native tribes when they created their empire.
@@SH-th4wy Oh and yeah, if it's so rewarding you are more than welcome to start giving up part of your paycheck, assuming you even work. You have the freedom to give any or all of your money to any african americans you wish
jjj1951 who’s fathers sins should we pay before? I am From An Irish family that came to Ellis Island at turn of 20th Century as an example. Would I have to contribute because of the color of my skin?
Perhaps other speakers ventured into these areas but a few observations: 1. Mr. Hitchens claims the US should pay reparations for slavery but does not mention England should even though England started the practice in the US as early as 1619. The US was born into this practice and couldn't change things overnight. Yet, not a word about this aspect. 2. He frames the subject in ways that avoid important questions. For example, slavery was a legal practice. If it had been an illegal practice it would have been much smaller in scale. What precedent do you set if you punish people for doing something that was legal simply based on changing moral grounds? In addition, we have a practice in the West of not punishing the son for the sin's of the father or in this case the sins of the great grandfather being pushed on the great grandson. Except that doesn't even have it right because modern Americans have varying ancestry so only a percentage of their ancestry may have any tie to slavery if at all. This is all major departure from typical criminal and civil law so we would be creating a new precedent. 3. He ignores that genetic and/or other environmental factors are contributing to the existing divide rather than past issues with slavery. 4. Perhaps the biggest question avoided is will reparations actually heal the divide or will it widen it? Because if it becomes a practice it will create a lot of resentment and there will be repercussions that may be worse than the issue thought to be solved.
Native Americans were screwed the most because the Europeans came in and took their land and their culture. So with this where does it end? Reparations is a dumb and dangerous idea.
@@charlesgradle286 *"1. Mr. Hitchens claims the US should pay reparations for slavery but does not mention England should even though England started the practice in the US as early as 1619. The US was born into this practice and couldn't change things overnight. Yet, not a word about this aspect."* Probably because the number of slaves owned in English colonies in the US was tiny, and also because the English didn't have slavery IN ENGLAND. It was something only done in the American colonies, and mostly in the Caribbean. So, why would England today be responsible for what American colonists did, especially after they gained independence from Britain before the slave trade even became as big as it was? Secondly, the British already paid reparations for the slave trade. It took them 200 years, but the British tax-payer paid off the cost of abolition. I agree with everything else you wrote.
@@charlesgradle286 naTive Americans already receive reparations. So do Jewish Peoples and japaneese..this is not something that hasn't or isn't being done .it is okay for everyone else but dumb for black desendants of slavery..
Charles Gradle There were only about 10 million Natives in America when Columbus arrived. They didn't claim the whole continent as theirs so very little of their land was stolen. The reason they were put in reservations is because they savagely killed innocent men, women and children who settled on land the Natives didn't claim.
XdognateX Why just the British? Get a good children’s encyclopaedia and read of all the empires since around 6,000bc. Do they all offer reparations or just those that benefited from 19th century technology.
If you can reap the benefits of your ancestors, the inheritance of wealth, then why should you not also inherit the responsibilities of your ancestors, especially if they lied, killed or enslaved to gain said wealth? If you don’t want to inherit the responsibilities then you should not inherit their wealth and assets.
@@Macconator2010 that's fine. I have lineage that traces back to the Barbary Slave trade. So I need to foot the bill to North Africans who enslaved my ancestors? I think not.
I can see his argument. But to my defense I say I wasn't here during the time of slavery in this country. My ancestors weren't here either they were starving in Ireland and being persecuted by the crown. You see a bill is due but who is to say who rightly owes the back wages..
I struggle with that as well, but I think the answer would have to be we as a nation. We as the United States permitted the practice and as a result, millions of Americans were never paid for their labor.
@@TheRealColt45 you live in the most prosperous nation the earth has ever seen that's your reward for your ancestors suffering, every country and civilisation on earth had slavery why would America be the ones to pay?. More Europeans were taken by the barbary slavers than african slaves were taken to the American colonies. Cuba had twice as many African slaves as America. The Vikings enslaved lots of Irish and Scottish approximately 62% of the Icelandic maternal gene pool is derived from Ireland and Scotland. People from Scandinavia do not owe us Irish and Scots anything. During the height of the Irish famine where millions starved to death grain was stolen from Ireland by the Crown and sold to the American colonies Neither the British or the American colonies who benefitted owe Irish people anything today. Everyone could stake a claim that they are owed something butt that's not how the world works we are not on the hook for something our ancestors did or didnt do
Would the African tribes, like the Zulus, Watusi and others, who had slaves of their own and sold those they didn't want to keep to the slave traders, also pay reparations? North and South American Indians also made slaves of the captives they did not torture to death. Many tribes also practiced human sacrifice. Sometimes a hundred or more young virgins were killed during a 3 day celebration. FYI...Wars for booty, slaves, religion and territorial gain were also common the tribes in North, Central and South America. Perhaps someone could define the moral high-ground?
Propaganda Richard Schaefer, the winners of wars and choreographers of colonialism write false narratives for the conquered. That's typical when lands are stolen, so future generations and descendants remain passive and unaware of their true histories.
@@ericwright2763 And "true" history is what exactly? "Conquest" and "stolen" is an exercise of semantic nonsense. All have a right to self defense and preservation. The inability to repel conquest is not a moral argument. The denial of self defense, through legislation is.
@@ericwright2763 REALLY? So you're saying that LONG before ANY white person stepped foot in their Continent, the Africans, North and South American Indians, Mongols, Persians, Romans, Egyptians, et al, were NOT taking each other and conquered others into slavery? Thousands of years before. YOU really need to research World history. Since the beginning of mankind, "to the victor goes the spoils" was common practice and us "white folks" aka Americans, didn't invent it, we ended it.
@@joeashbubemma Please tell me what culture, in history, refused to defend themselves through legislation? IMO, the conquered DID try to defend themselves, the conquerors were simply superior and that's true from massive armies and superior weapons and tactics, to small hordes of berserker Vikings, down to small Indian raid parties.
I like Hitchens quite a bit, but if he had been debating me on this subject, I would have brutalized him. His argument is ignorant on virtually every conceivable level, that of the individual, that of the group, historically, and morally. I actually am rather stunned that he would even attempt to make this argument.
"If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat forever" Reparations will cause more damage, as it will only make people more dependent on the government. This is standard Marxist/Communist thinking. Now you understand why he addressed the audience as "Comrades" 🤦♂️
To who exactly? The reason there isn't a huge underclass of descendants of the arab slave trade is because they castrated the males and took the women as concubines.
@@hogwashsentinel You're wrong about all male slaves being castrated. Some weren't because those who were sometimes died. In 2010, about 100 baby boys died in the USA from a botched circumcision, a much less invasive procedure than a castration. An early sex change operation was done because of a botched circumcision.
Some people in the comment section are just ridiculous. Can you not see the clear gap between blacks and the rest of america? The living conditions and treatment of black people in america by the system obviously shows that. Stats don't lie. It was this same system that had slaves and benefited from the free labour that has created this massive gap and still continuous to widen the gap. Clearly something has to be done to fix it.
socraytes Maybe investing more into these communities. Developing better systems of education? I don't know I'm no politician but something better than what the government is doing right now
Yomamas Nekst As a nation we pay more now into education now than we've ever paid in the history of the United States yet we're falling further and further down the rankings. Explain how the federal government funding education is helping? As for the communities how can communities thrive when crime is such that business don't want to go into those communities for fear of going under. You can't just dump money on the problem but again if you could who would pay and what would they pay?
socraytes Crime is an economic symptom. On a large scale you cannot distinguish between those. In general though the west has gone so far in the wrong direction with the triumph of neo-liberalism in the last 30 years that its not just Blacks that are being stiffed, its everyone in the middle class and the working class. So the whole damned thing is going in the wrong direction so its no surprise that Blacks aren't getting miraculously saved by a system that can't even keep formerly privileged white people from suffering. Also, spending money isn't a magic barometer. Its how that money is spent thats the issue, and the policies that go with it. All this standardized testing nonsense that keeps coming up is a lot of money spent on something that doesn't improve anything.
Yomamas Nekst I have a novel idea on how to fix it. How about the blacks in America get an education and a job, marry and raise families, care for their young, eschew the life of crime and drugs and thuggery, and see how that works.
Why don't the people who feel reparations are in order, set up a fund, let all those with guilt donate, and then mete-out the proceeds to those who feel they deserve it? This would leave-out those of us who had not a thing to do with slavery alone, and maybe we could finally shut-up the element that has haunted us.
None of us had anything to do with the slavery of centuries past. But many of us have benefited from it nonetheless. And as the speaker points out at 8:25, some of the profits of slavery are now held by public institutions.
only 1 in 10 in south owned slaves. Most of them owned only one. Thats 5% in all of the US then. Of the people alive today only 5% can trace themselves back to pre 1860s America, most have come from immigrants that came after that. so 5% of 5% which means there is almost nobody here who owes anybody anything.
I agree with reparations, but not in a lump sum of money given to people, but to invest in black people and black neighborhoods. Many all bit abandoned.
What about Irish Americans? Or black slave owners?when it comes to the Irish we had it much worse and for much longer overall almost 3 out of 10 Americans are descended slaves.who would pay?the confederate government is dead he federal government sacrificed 350,000 lives.the only people responsible would be the democratic party
+sammy1227 schlablabble Let's be clear, I'm talking about black slaves desendents. We overall benefited from slavery as a country. The Confederacy and the Democratic party are irrelevant. I don't get how the Irish had it worse or what that has to do with the conversation.
+ruediger hahn I don't understand, what is racist about what I said. I'm talking about reparations for American chattel slavery specifically. Don't know what you mean by equal white and black slaves, so I'll ignore because it doesn't seem related to what I'm talking about.
+ruediger hahn Let me be clear, I'm not falling in that "What about this or that whoever" trap. It's not racist to ask for reparations because you think it is. I assume you're not black by how you're arguing you point. Also, BLM is having us to at least start the conversation and there's facts behind the emotion.
+ruediger hahn As a BLM supporter thank you for telling me what I think. Saying All Lives Matter isn't racist, but it diverts from the issue. The problem is unwarranted murder of black people by the police. the police officer race is irrelevant. The thing is that black folk are pissed, and your stats and saying it's because of black on black crime isn't going solve it.
I like the guy a lot, but disagree with him. If we pay this generation, then does that absolve us from the next one? Or the one after that? Just when does that bill get paid, when I didn't own a slave, nor did any other of my ancestors? What if my ancestor fought for the Union in the Civil War...do I get a waiver? Does a debt my ancestor made 1000 years ago still become mine? The guilty and the ones who WERE abused and enslaved are long dead. Let them rest in peace.
how bout they can receive reparation if they renounce their citizenship and return to their ancestors point of sale. reparation to be equal to purchase price and in the currency of that region inflation adjusted. the whole concept is ludicrous. the families of those who immigrated after the fact just get the shaft i take it.
@@user-po5bi6jb9g I'm all for that as long as the descendants of those union soldiers who died freeing the slaves get the same benefits as well as all those who's ancestors either had nothing to do with slavery or immigrated after slavery was abolished
As soon as I am paid for my ancestors land, the women and children who were slaughtered, and our culture destroyed, THEN, AND ONLY THEN will I talk about "reperations".
Elgin's Marbles are a non sequitur - and he complains about his opinion on them being subjected to non sequiturs. He also says when people stoop to such tactics, then you're on to something. His entire argument is emotional - and he comments about those who satisfy themselves with emotion.
He is using it as an example to juxtapose wrongs that can easily and entirely be made right, and those wrongs that cannot be made right, at least not completely.
Well... that is true at face value, but lets not pretend that racism against People of all colors isn't alive and well in america, and historically being pointed relentlessly at brown people more so than any other groups. I mean even when the Puritans and the Catholics were genociding the quakers during colonization, black people were still being treated worse as slaves than the quakers at large. The idea behind reparations is that HAD their ancestors not been slaves, and the more recent ones been profiled and disadvantaged purposely then perhaps the black and hispanic and native american communities would not be the overwhelming majority of poor people in the United states. Why is it, that in a country where white people make up 60-70% of the population, all the other races combined are far more than 70% of all people below the poverty line (almost 90%). It is because the system is rigged, and has been rigged worse in the past to favor us with fairer skin, not because we deserved it, but because our ancestors deemed the others worthy of malicious treatment to burden their own coin bags. There are a lot of groups that deserve reparations in the united states, in a way all reparations means is "paying back a debt for past wrongdoing". If your ancestor had massive amounts of debt, and wealth to pass on to you, you would have to pay the debt before you could access the wealth they passed on. Why then can we access the immense amount of wealth our ancestors accrued for us without righting the legacy of exploitation and barbarity they also pass on to us?
@@user-vl5qg5rf4n Homogeneity is the answer. Multiculturalism is a sin. Diversity and immigration is the importation of conflict and war. "There is no reason for people of different genetics, religions, and cultures to live together in a single society or state. None whatsoever. The very concept of "a multicultural society" is intrinsically self-contradictory to the point of being oxymoronic. The whole point of the nation-state is to permit the different nations to live in peace according to their own distinct and particular preferences. That was the idea behind the several and sovereign American States being "laboratories of democracy". And to the contrary, all that "multiculturalism" and "open borders" and "mass immigration" guarantees is a never-ending struggle of all against all, as each different tribe, religion, and culture seeks to impose its preferences on all the others." - Vox Day
@@whiterationalism4253 Sins are not real, just as the god who imposes the supposed punishment for them. Nice thinly veiled racism though. I'm sure vox day is a well respected academic whom many people listen too. oh, whats this, he's a fundamentalist southern baptist, whom people close to describe as openly a white nationalist and misogynist. Interesting. I'm sure that him literally being a racist scumbag has nothing to do with the fact that he thinks "races shouldn't mix". sorry, you can't just claim something so outlandish without some sort of evidence. And while I do believe that mister Beale would love to genocide minorities in America so that he could have his white paradise I don't see any point you've made with that quote that really does anything more than emptily posit things that seem ridiculous.
@@user-vl5qg5rf4n Another nihilist. You know anyone who uses the term 'racist' these days where they stand and where there head (lack of brains) is at. "Racist" is just a term non-white people use to demand access to white people, white inventions, white culture and white civilization. "People use the word Racist as a control word. Humans have control words for dogs (Sit, Stay, Down) and those who want to rob Whites of their countries have control words for Whites: Racist, White Supremacists, Nazi" - Frank Raymond "A racist is patriot . Throughout history a patriot has been revered as a person who stands up for the interest of his race, his people, his ethnicity, his kind. Patriotism and Racism have always been the highest virtues. We give medals to Patriots...to racists. But now the highest virtue Patriotism is vilified as the lowest crime, and it is called Racism." - Frank Raymond "Racists are the only people properly equipped to live and survive in this world." “If you're not racist it's about time you start your country is hanging in the balance” Have a nice day!
He was such a beautiful speaker and extremely charismatic. That being said, once you really break down what he is saying, there is very little of an actual argument there.
It was a fairly straightforward moral argument in favor of reparations. Not sure why you would think it unclear. Was there an injustice done? Yes. Do we have the ability and the imperative to address it? Yes.
Making the argument that the Rosetta stone is better left at the british museum because more people will see it and there is no direct connection of modern egypt with ancient egypt, while at the same time demanding the return of some greek statue, is morally wrong snd hypocritical. And no, the wrongs of slavery cannot be corrected, you can’t make the descendants of white people who came to america after the civil war pay money to other people whose ancestors were never slaves. And even if you could find only the descendants of slaves and their slave owners, it us still morally and legally wrong to make children pay for the sins of their fathers. Who is going to pay then for the suffering caused by the crusades, or by the islamic conquest of india, persia, or the atrocities of the ottoman empire on the balkans and armenia?
@@HNedel You're paying for Jews to have their own country, with a fully formidable military, a nuclear arsenal, at a rate of $10,000 per day. White Americans AND black Americans, had nothing to do with that. But reparations for black Americans is a punishment to you? Make that make sense!
@@bancolino no I don't, the us aid to Israel is 3.1 billion per year, which is 10 dollars per person per year. USA is paying more in aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a round a billion to Jordan, Ethiopia and Pakistan each. You can have your 10 dollars per year, maybe you can actually buy a pair of Jordans in 30 years.
“If you can’t write well, you can’t think well. If you can’t think well, then other people will do your thinking for you.” -George Orwell
a fascist writing the basis of much of our anti-fascist ideology
You don't have to be highly educated to know bullshit when you see it. Some intellectuals are very obtuse in certain ways.
Owen Ryan a socialist that fell away from his ideologies in later life. He wrote about totalitarianism and warned against it in any form. Read further, think better.
very true, you can tell a lot about a person by the way they write, its a glimpse into the inner workings of their mind... and the strength or lack there of their mental faculties.
anab0lic glimpse*, thereof of*, mental*.
"Anyone can have thoughts.. many people content themselves with feelings"
Hence the popularity of 'fake outrage' on the part of conservatives.
I don't think so.
Damn you Hitch, why did you have to die on us when we need you so much
@@Melville1800s Haha! Blubbering..If you ever listened to Hitchens, which iam guessing you do because you commented on his video, you would know that that is exactly what he teaches " It's not what you think, it's how you think" so your point is garbage, especially the troll ass way you said it..
If that were the thinking, he'd probably have to stay alive for eternity ;)
@Marlon Quintana-Nieto The comment was a tribute to the man, not a literal statement. Sheesh...
God took him
@@ToraTiger26 I think he'd wish you didn't say that - th-cam.com/video/jiIA188QnIk/w-d-xo.html
"Beware of making the best the enemy of the good." Wonderful.
and not even close to being original with Hitchens
Originally a Napoleon quote I believe.
@@mja91352duh? Hitched himself said that. And the comment didn’t claim that originated with him.
@@mja91352 You bring up another example of bad faith argument. Thanks for arguing against something else you yourself set up in order to demean the first thing by association. Great irony and your lack thereof, you demonstrate oh clever one.
Being a "Black American ", I've always had respect for Hitchens and his views but now he gets nothing but my respect.
May he never be forgotten!
@Factual Fox ..nothing else..
lol
um.. your a racist....jews were enslaved in history many many times...where is your voice for thier reparations...oh wait... i forgot, you already stated your black and only care about blacks....
So because you agree with him, NOW, he is totally worthy of YOUR respect.
What the fuck does being a black American have to do with it
MorleyHaus Bloodlines being biased
I’m black as well
I may not always agree with this legend, but i always listen
ok
@@sebastianbernardo9900 your comment reminds me of a quote about non-sequiturs...wish I could recall the source
You can't force people to change their opinion, but you can educate yourself and present what you learned in a manner that is acceptable to anyone willing to listen without compromising your own principals and beliefs. I'm so grateful to have lived and learned from one of the best teachers this world had to offer.
@padzzz9377, You meant principles, not principals. Principals are headmasters of schools.
Christopher, we need you now more than ever.
Absolutely.
Absolutely someone needs to put HRC in her place
@@scan865 Hitch certainly would have done that effectively and with style.
@@scan865 maybe 3 years ago, when she was still relevant... Why her? Why not your orange angerpresident?
@@__Stitchy still a rotten bag, not my president lad, not american. I'm from a country with worse politicians than anywhere!
"Contenting yourself with feelings"
"... to the principles of free inquiry and open debate, that goes up to make a great university..."
For his sake I am glad he is not still around to witness the disaster that we are experiencing now.
I would love to see him eviscerate the people in power today. None could withstand his sharp wit and scathing remarks regarding their corruption.
Not do sure about that. He absolutely hated the Clintons.
@@jehjeh37111 Which is precisely why he'd be so effective today. As odious as Trump clearly is, the bigger problem is in the Liberal establishment, over which the Clintons wield so much power. They're the ones directing the identity politics community towards utterly destroying discourse in the Left.
He himself was a political agitator in his years at Oxford. A Marxist no less. I suspect, though we will never know, and I humbly admit my conclusion is speculative (something I note incidentally that you haven’t done), you might have been disappointed with his views on the current campus activism. What irks me most about internet commentators is how righteously they claim to know the thoughts of the dead. We see this everywhere: F1 fans claim to know what Senna would have thought of the current grid, film fans claim to know what Walt Disney would have thought of his company’s current output, and here we see Hitchens fans simply assuming he would have agreed with them no matter what. It’s wrong-headed, and demonstrates the same unthinking fatuousness he is on record as having opposed through his life.
@@hughtubecube You appear very much to assume most Hitchens fans are from the right - attacking so called 'Marxist' agitators on the left. For all Hitchens' contradictions over Iraq and The War Against Terror, he did so from the Trotskyist tradition of opposing the Stalinism of Saddam and a Marxist rejection of Theocratic Islamism. That this lead him into the cul-de-sac of supporting US imperialism is the great shame that he could never admit to.
His Neocon admirers tried to own him but he stated many times he'd never been any kind of Conservative, he supported the US as the only successful revolution still standing.
It's not enough to simply say Hitchens would have opposed identity politics activism due to his disgust at the Clintons or anything so fatuous. I strongly suspect he would have recognised the religious fervour in SJW puritanism leading to public denunciations without evidence and so on. The fetishization of identity is something Marx would have said allows the bourgeoise to divide and rule. It's built purely upon a perceived level of oppression in contrast to level of privilege - disabled/muslim/black/lesbian vs straight/white/male.
Such a politics takes all the struggles and injustices people face, the energy that might be used to fight for a better world, and channels that all away from defeating class structures towards correcting 'privilege'.
At this point it's worth noting that your class is abstract which means it can be challenged and dismantled, whereas privilege is inherent to you if you're a straight white male - whether you like it or not.
And in this video, Hitchens identifies injustices that can be set right, especially as they continue to hold sway over the globe - while being very clear he opposed the fundamentalist mindset of repaying all debts throughout history - to empty the museums as it were.
As he would have put it - it's crucial to understand how to think, not what to think. Hitchens would most likely have eviscerated the Orwellian nightmare of SJW activism and the Kafkaesque campaigns of MeToo/TimesUp. But equally if he were still around I'm sure the lightweights such as Jordan Peterson would not have come to prominence.
Peterson wouldn't stand a chance against Hitchens, something he got a taste of while being effortlessly taken apart by Slavoj Zizek recently..
What this man would say about the world now
He’d still be saying that the Iraq war was a great idea.
Arthur Rimbaud 😭
@@arthurrimbaud7287 pay attention dummy, he changed his mind on that. Quite a few clips of him saying so.
@@SuperUnknown1967 link?
Hitchens always makes a reasoned case, how he is missed.
STFU Dumbass!
Wow.
Somebody triggered someone with words
@@aneily
Davieboy did a White Whine...
@@Davieboy-dovbear Judging by your well thought out reply you are probably an english teacher from California, tenured?
@@johndallara3257 - all the pro-Hitchens arguments (and Hitchen's himself), *not that you have made any!* .. are subjective and lack essence. What Hitchens is doing to you all (has been doing), is solely for the purpose of selling his books. Hitchens is a conman with a rich vocabulary that can manipulate the minds of people like you (the uneducated and the misinformed). I believe too, Christianity is a fake religion but is the easiest to debunk and that's why Hitchens attacks Christianity all the time, it makes him look good! But trust me when I tell you this, there's hardly any difference between the du mb christians who give money to the Church, and you bu ms who give money to Hitchens (or show support for him) .. this is what I meant when I said _"S T F U,"_ I just wanted to save space & time and being that you all Hitchens fan[atic]s are so _”smart”_ (LOL), I was expecting you gonna understand.
It's odd that someone like Hitchens would, on another stage, argue vehemently (and quite rightly) against the Christian concept of Generational Sin, yet in this forum he argues the exact opposite. Why should African Americans be the only ones who deserve reparations for past wrong-doings? Why stop at them? Why not Armenians, 1940's Serbians, how about British victims of Viking raids? Let's go back 2000 years...or maybe 4000 years....
Re-watch his talk. He preempts that line of argumentation with "don't let the best be the enemy of the good." Though I'll admit, I don't think reparations would rectify the situation that the vast majority of African Americans face. A one time cash payment will not fix the structural poverty cycle.
We need to double down on efforts to improve education, improve access to healthcare, and to generally gentrify poor (and predominantly black) neighborhoods. One of the biggest failures of the establishment left in the US was to ensure that African Americans received political rights, and then to (largely) give up on economic justice.
He mocked your very style of argument for a good minute in his speech. I hope you did this ironically.
Have you watched the entire debate/discussion yet? It addressed your point.
Jebediah Krimsoncraftleding Mocking does not equal rebutting.
Corey Graham
I would love to argue with you, but not when you've clearly disregarded the contents of the debate in order to make some flowery, half-assed point.
In this event, "mocking" and "rebutting" are synonymous, as I thought he so easily dismantled your flawed argument, that it made a mockery of anyone who would choose to use it. Watch the debate again to see Hitchens' argument, as I see no need to clarify what you can see for yourself, if you stopped being lazy.
It escapes words to explain how this man is sorely missed.
Let me help you. His advocacy of the Iraq war is not missed by millions of Iraqis. His serial plagiarism is not missed by numerous authors. There I did it for you!
@@jugheadsrule But is his advocacy of the Iraq war missed LESS than Saddam Hussein himself...or the 3/4 MILLION Iraqi's in whose death or "disappearance" Saddam was directly implicated? By the way, out of curiosity, are YOU an Iraqi, or simply an anti-war activist who presumes to speak on their behalf? As for serial plagiarism, I'd be more than happy to examine any evidence you'd care to present.
Either way...See Also: Ad Hominem.
@@OmniphonProductions It can't be ad hominem if it's true can it, you supercilious clown. Saddam was a lame duck by 2003. NFZs had wiped out most of his airforce and air defences so he wasn't a threat to anyone. In any case, the justification for the invasion was that he was connected with 9/11 and that he had WMD. Both provably false.
And the result of that invasion? 1million plus dead, the birth of ISIS and the destabilisation of the whole region.
As for his serial plagiarism, it's well documented, get off your arse and research it yourself. Here's a starter, and his most well known plagiarism, his book on Thomas Paine had copious amounts lifted from a book on Paine written by John Keene, who has personally acknowledged my publicizing Hitchens copying of his work.
@@jugheadsrule WOW! Defending an ad hominem with another ad hominem. Impressive. In RETROSPECT, you're right that Saddam was not a threat to anyone by 2003. However, his refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors to actually do their jobs...as well as no small amount of sabre rattling and his consistent violation of no fewer than 14 conditions of the Desert Storm Cease Fire Treaty...indicated otherwise AT THE TIME. For that matter, American, British, and French Intelligence agencies all concluded that he DID likely have WMD. I have no choice but to agree that this proved false, but we didn't know that BEFORE going in.
Moreover, while Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, that event began a Global War On Terror, and...considering the 3/4 million Iraqis in whose deaths Saddam was directly implicated (complete with mass graves discovered only AFTER the Iraq invasion), his military strikes on Iraqi Kurds in the north, and the billions of U.N. Oil For Food dollars that were diverted to...among other things...building palaces FOR Saddam, the man was (by any objective metric) a terrorist, AND the world is a better place without him. As for the total body count, if groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban hadn't IMPORTED combatants INTO Iraq (from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iran...for starters), it would have been over far sooner with far fewer casualties. That said, the biggest failure of the U.S. in that respect is that nobody ANTICIPATED such importation of enemy combatants DESPITE the events of 9-1-1, and nobody ANTICIPATED the rise of ISIS (or any other terrorist group) to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam's removal. In that respect, you and I actually agree that it was tragically ill-planned, ill-conceived, and not _immediately_ necessary. HOWEVER, as mentioned earlier, we didn't know that BEFOREHAND.
As for the plagiarism, thank you for actually providing somewhere to look. Far too many people online would leave it with the rude and unproductive, "Get off your arse and research it yourself." The person MAKING the claim is responsible for providing EVIDENCE. It's not the job of the person HEARING the claim to research whether its true, and in the ABSENCE of such provided evidence, the rational position is NOT to believe the claim. In this case, you have, at least, given me something. Actual links would be better, but anything is better than nothing. With that in mind, what did Keene specifically say about your efforts? ("...personally acknowledged," doesn't tell me much.)
P.S. You still haven't answered whether you're Iraqi or not. Call me a racist, but your deep knowledge of Thomas Paine literature leads me to believe you're not.
@@jugheadsrule while I agree with the Iraq pay of your comment (Hitchens himself regretted his backing) is love to see a citation for the second part of your comment
My Irish ancestors came to the u s in the 1840s. If, if. They had food stamps ,subsidised housing and interest free loans i would probably be very wealthy,
Probably not. Being on welfare is not as wonderful as evil nut cases such as Ronald Reagan would like us to believe.
@Mikkel The Red. Ah, but did the Irish have to go through slavery, then share cropping, then Jim Crow, all at gun point and threat of lynching, my racist little friend? I'm just kidding, I would never be your friend. I hope no one else is either, because you're a terrible person.
No, none of those things can make you smart, they are designed to just keep you alive.
@Erik Mikkelsaar because, as white people, they would have been permitted to do so. To buy property wherever they could afford and participate in business. They were permitted to build an economic base. To be properly educated. They werent just "freed" in rags and told to pull up their bootstraps. But you already knew that. You just chose to ignore it.
Making people who never owned slaves give money to people who never were slaves will never happen.., nor should it.
I think the issue with most people is that my people were LIED to about reparations, and then brutally abused for the next 100 years afterward.
ChristianDrums777 they were but we are a different nation now.
@@phatbackbeat6553 yeah but thise who had authority over us abused their responsibility. The repercussions of their choices that rippled through time warrant some kind of compensation.
Reginald West we give Israel a lot of money to combat terrorism and keep the oil flowing to the USA 🇺🇸
That money is for no reparations .., it’s to fight Islam. 🤷♂️
ChristianDrums777 the Nation has moved on from this “very dark period “ in our history .., so too must its people.
Reparations, legally speaking, is unconstitutional. The Democrats know this, but they make these promises to try to buy votes.., just like free tuition or free healthcare.
The 40 acres and a mule is not coming.., and it never was going to happen. It was a lie then and it is a lie now. Stop believing and depending on the Government. They do not care about individuals and freedom.., just power and votes ! 🤷♂️
seems pretty clear that alot of people down here in the comments didn't watch the video.
I watched the video. I’m still unaware of the method/system of reparations.
Have to disagree with Hitch here. There's a reason it was called the slave trade and not the slave theft. It's not like the slave traders were hunting down Africans and snatching them up. It would be one thing if that was the case, but the way it happened is that African warlords and chieftains rounded up their subjects and sold them to slave traders for rum. The slave traders were buying slaves, yes, but the African chieftains were selling them. So let's not act like white Americans (many of whom have zero slaveowners in their ancestry) are entirely responsible for slavery in North America.
Wade Perkins
what the fuck? so calling it "trade" makes it not a horrible thing? what the actual fuck?
No John, calling it a "trade" means somebody was doing the selling. Who do you think that was?
Oh dear. Blaming the victim.
No, because I wasn't involved in slavery and my ancestors didn't own slaves. Forcing me to pay for reparations simply because of some vague gamble that I'm "benefiting" from it now has about as much weight as me arguing that everyone else including blacks have benefited from slavery as well.
It should also be said that black people also owned slaves in the US. A lot of them too. And quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned no, white civilization does not owe anyone a damn thing. The nature of competition insures that what is won is kept. Dinesh D'souza makes a million times more of a better argument than him. It is not non-sequitur to bring up the injustices of other races. It is not non-sequitur to bring up the injustices whole-sale committed and ask "what about them?" It's a rug-sweeping maneuver to imply that other injustices cannot be brought up when talking about reparations for slavery, because why are black african slaves the only ones to be considered for reparations? Was it not the Native Americans that both black and white stole land and killed for resources? Was it not the Native Americans who were originally enslaved first in this continent? So why must we then only consider the black population, who, by Hitchens own argument, are less deserving of Reparations when more was stolen and taken from the Native Americans?
He has a pompous morale justification, but only from his own understanding of morales, not any actual sense of fairness or education. He sits on a podium that lays atop the graves of millions of not blacks, but Native Americans, which if it were not for them and their land that we had taken, this country would not even exist. So to this I say, no. We cannot and should not try to fix or mend the past. The past is what it is, the best we can do is do away with the constraints that hold individuals back, which as it certainly stands, we've done more than enough of.
Atheos B. Sapien I think you're an idiot that wasn't paying attention to what I said. I said it wasn't a non-sequitur to bring that up, and hitchens says it is, which I am saying that hitchens is saying that in order to "sweep under the rug" the fact that there are legitimate holes in his logic which he's choosing to ignore simply because of the inconvenient truth that injustices have occurred to all people all over the world.
Try paying attention.
Absolutely give reparations. Anyone still alive who was a slave gets it.
Very good my friend.
You haven't listened to any of the arguments contradicting your views.
Hate hidden with obtuse logic is the only thing conservative folk have left as protection from others progression.
Conservative means adverse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.
It's not rocket science, Cupcakes.
All our thoughts are never new.
We're just confused with all times being new & deceived by the predictable few.
Global conservative right-wing rat packs are muddying the waters because modern technology would evaporated the waters if used correctly.
Even when I disagreed with him I couldn't help but be impressed by the strength and articulation of his arguments.
Seems like common sense what are you disagreeing with?
Corey C disagree??? How?????
Ischar Holloway-are you guilty for the sins of the father, and is anyone alive in the US today that was ever actually a slave?
James Brewer that’s not the point!!!!!!!!!! There has been WRONG done to a people of the ABSOLUTE worst kind and continues today. No there fathers aren’t alive but they’re decedents who are DIRECTLY affected by the actions of MANY countries and should be made whole. I mean this isn’t even a hard one. Did you watch the video???!!!! “Was there a rape a theft a wrong done?, can and should it be made whole?” Simple!!!!!!!!! Wtf dude
@@ischar23 Western society is built on the idea of the individual. As soon as you start punishing individuals based on what group you think they belong to every thing would collapse. Do you go to jail if your father steals a car? If you did, damn near everyone would be in prison. The whole innocent until proven guilty idea is out the window also. Plus, in this scenario, it is actually impossible even if you attempted to do it. I'm second generation here, my ancestors were surfs in Europe. Most slaves from West Africa were originally captured and sold by other African's. I'm white, no slaves owned by my family. Many Black people's ancestors were slave traders. Gonna try to figure out everyone's family history to see if they were the guilty or the victims?!? Or just say they are guilty or victims based on skin tone?
If the English Navy protected the Atlantic Slave Trade shouldn't they also be liable to pay Reparations? Tell me instead about the great slave revolt and how they earned their freedom, OH wait that never happened. Instead, 350,000 whites gave their lives to win their freedom. That sounds like reparation enough.
You mean the constant slave revolts? They never happened?! Ever heard of Haiti?
You can't say that, it goes against the liberal dogma and you will be hunted down and silenced for having an opposing opinion and thinking for yourself.
@@wilgarris Lol, it's funny that factually incorrect statements are "opposing opinions" fiercely rejected by some liberal boogie man.
Those lives given were not to free the slaves, but to keep the Union intact. And I’m guessing you also don’t know or care to know, about all of the other injustices blacks were subjugated to after those lives were “given” and well up to today as well. Pick up a book and learn history before you shoot off at the mouth.
I'm sure that you care little about the lives given to free slaves and would rather dwell on the evils of the whites but the fact remains that the freedom of the slaves was a direct result of the civil war and the men and women (mostly white) who died. I've studied my history perhaps you should as well before you shoot off your mouth.
Hitchens avoids the real issues by never defining what he means by "reparations." Is it a one time check? improved access to college? scholarships?, or whatever. As he uses it, "reparations " is a vague, feel good word which means whatever you want it to mean.
Well, he was clearly answering the debate question of 'should'. 'How' or 'in what form' comes next, once we establish the need.
@Hayden Jose Fair issue, but to me you cannot discuss what you "should" do if you haven't said what it is you should be doing?
@@brianwrynn3109 Can't have an honest discussion about what reparations might look like until the first step, agreeing that a good faith effort should be attempted, is taken. And the counter that if one doesn't already know what that effort should be, so therefore we shouldn't even try, is not a good faith argument. It's very often disingenuous - the person usually is just against the idea at all but won't say so.
@@mukorgalaxies7766 I guess reparations for those who dont wish to be here can be argued for. Restorative justice before any ADOS forfeit their citizenship and leave for a more accommodating country.
@@mukorgalaxies7766 How is it not a good faith argument to be in the negative?
"Torrent of bad faith...lolllll "when people begin to introduce the irrelevant the non sequitur and the generalizations .. you can tell you're onto something". Lollll the Hitch
When he said that all I could think of was some of the bad rationalizations in the youtube comments. I've read a few times what about the Arabs who practiced slavery in the same time period.
@@writerconsidered Hmm. Arabs have practised slavery since Sumerian times, as have many, if not most others. Slavery of one sort or another is still widely practised today. During the times that the American slave trade was going, Arabs, Europeans and other African tribes participated.
@@SkinnySkates Frankly, I think it should be "laugh aloud."
@@writerconsidered
They aren't bad rationalizations. They are arguments intended to contextualize reparations as totally illogical and unjust.
I don't think that people who are being collectively assigned the guilt of historical events based on their race can be automatically dismissed as bad faith actors. Hitchens is basically just dismissing all arguments which attempt to contextualize the absurdity and injustice of the notion of transgenerational race-based reparations which I think is intellectually dishonest at best, and plainly malevolent at worst.
I think dismissing the generalization of his argument about the Parthenon Marbles is not as easy and as he states. Is there really that stark of a difference between classic Greek artifacts and Pharaonic Egyptian ones (or something you might imagine in between)? There are no Pharaonic Egyptians around, but neither are there Ancient Hellenic polis-dwellers, so how can modern Christian Greeks claim that piece justly as their own, but modern Islamic Egyptians respectively can't? In both cases the artifact's meaning is symbolical, not religious anymore, their meaning far from their original context, and there is a difficult case for historic civilizational continuation and claims to heritage. Sure, details can make a crucial difference, but with regards to his argument in general terms they may not at all.
If someone stole your great grandfather's property which had been passed down the generations to more immediate family, you would have a just claim to demand it to be restituted. However if your great grandfather robbed someone else and seized their property and in return that property got taken away by a third party, then that claim becomes a bit weaker, although you are still allowed to make it. While modern day Greeks aren't Hellenistic Greeks, they are still largely their descendants due to the continuous process of shaping Greek society as we know it today. Historical evidence suggests the process was a lot less smooth in Egypt as Arabs were not just conquerors, but also forced the local population to assimilate into their society, through enforced Islamisation, rape, murder, etc. Admittedly, both modern day countries would still like their artifacts returned due to the economic benefits of increased tourism, but ultimately only the Greeks can play the culture card.
In some sense I do understand, but you're dealing with a Ship of Theseus problem here, and everyone's answer varies bases in what they think constitutes a continual identity.
In my case, I think both the Greeks and Egyptians should be returned their artifacts-
not necessarily because they were taken from the exact same people as those who sculpted the original artworks, but because they were taken from Greeks and Egyptians (1800s) who are arguably the same today.
Whether or not they can claim heritage, they can certainly claim lost revenue from tourism and sovereignty over whatever is dug up on their territory.
@@LancesArmorStriking & @Nikola Langov Mhmh, both valid points. Thanks. I wonder how this relates to the question of seized land, and "formal" reasons why and how people in general were dispossessed of somthing, e.g. during a war. I guess, giving some symbolical items back is easier and the sentimental value of having had them lying around in a museum for a few generations weighs much less than settlers' claims to land, which was conquered in an "unjustified" war (obviously a never-ending question in itself), and then been occupied for a similar time. Psychologically, people are loss averse, and in this case having lived on and "owned" land passed down from your grandparents is practically something else, and involves living individuals much more immediately than ownership of some items by a trust or a state or a museum (simply in psychological terms), but I think there is still a problem of distinguishing these things categorically, if we regard lost ownership, potential, revenue etc. in that way. Seems to be a slippery slope.
I think the analogy is rather devoid of logic in its entirety. Some artifact that some state (or state's agent) seized from another culture centuries ago could be returned as restitution. In this case, there would not be collectivized guilt. It would be understood that the entire English ethnic group, for example, was not collectively guilty of stealing the Parthenon Marbles and bringing them to London. They were taken by the English monarchy and brought there. The English may have benefited from it being there, but it was by no inherent collectivized fault of their own that it was there.
Taking this example and comparing it to the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans is filled with a multitude of logical inconsistencies. First, it was not the entire "white society", as Hitchens argued, that is responsible for the slave trade, slavery, racist laws, etc. 98% of European American families did not own slaves, and many among them were not supporters of slavery as an institution. It benefited the wealthy aristocracy almost exclusively. As an institution, it actually hurt poor European immigrants because there was less need for cheap labor as a result of it. Moreover, many European Americans are the descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. after emancipation. Some came from countries that didn't even partake in colonization or the slave trade, such as Poland. Add on top of this that not all African Americans are descended from freed slaves. Some of their descendants even partook in slavery themselves against their own people in the New World.
So at the end of the day, what reparations represents is the notion that ALL European Americans, regardless of their ancestry, are guilty. It is not just "sins of our father," it is sins of our neighbor, our kings, our Congress, of ANYONE who belonged to our racial group who partook in these historical actions. It is a form of transgenerational racialized guilt against those of European descent and transgenerational racialized victimization of those of African descent.
That said, how could reparations ever be justly implemented? Just think of the logistics of such an endeavor and how fraught with incompetence and injustice it would be. If using tax dollars, then the African Americans would essentially just be paying themselves reparations. If a racial tax was assessed, it would be a gross and obvious violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which, ironically, is the amendment which also naturalized freed slaves as American citizens.
That is why reparations for slavery can never be just...or legal...in the United States. Hitchens would minimalize and mock my argument as "white whining," but really, there is just simply no logical or justifiable way to implement reparations based on race, even if the idea seems virtuous at face value.
@@googleisskynet7312 Hey, this wasn't really what I was discussing, but I'll just accept your point here. However I have to say, I think you make a bit a categorical error. Reparations in the case of US-American slave descendant or in many other cases, are not intended (by any sane person) as a punishment because of some alleged inherited collective guilt. If this were so your point would be correct, but without rewatching this video, I would say generally such propositions including that of Hitchens' would frame them as a form of affirmative action, to make up for past discrimination, which has implications to this day. I don't want to discuss the intricacies of such policies at all, but I think at least in that regard your point is correct: Ethnic boundaries are blurry and the burden of past wrongs is difficult to quantify and account for not only on an individual level, but on a level of group or "racial identity". Should one attempt it nonetheless, and how? Different questions.
The African slave trader tribes should also be sued for all of the people they enslaved and sold like cattle. This idea of reparations is highly impractical and divisive and is a road the USA should never go down.
I understand your logic on this on its face, but ultimately that’s an extension of hypothetical reparations that could never be enforced. I still think it would be better to do something rather than nothing. Just because the US can’t ever fully reclaim all that was stolen from those enslaved doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try.
Here's the problem, 10 years after reparations, the same people are back at the bottom...
Why would you assume that? Is there a precedent for this?
@ Just common sense. People who are bad with money will eventually end up separated from their money, People who are industrious will always rise to the top. What do you think poor black people would do with a bunch of government cash?
Charles Black 10 years? Try one or two
Given that hundreds of billions have already been given to african-americans over the past 50 years, I'd say you're probably right.
Rational Thought try trillions
I’m Scottish and I demand that the English pay back my 700 years of child support for prima nocta.
Send the bill to Mel Gibson: that crap in Braveheart was just fantasy.
@DieFlabbergast Are you saying the English didn't lord over the Scottish and Irish? Because I hate to tell you they fucking did.
Ryan I absolutely agree my mother is Scottish and I hold no animosity to the English for past crimes, unlike black people today who have never been victims of slavery but will tell you they’re owed reparations for what happened to their great, great, great grandparents
@Ryan lol oh man that's a tough question I'm going to ask the Hodge twins about that one
Obi-wan Shinobi oh damn, being English I guess we’d have to pay pretty much half the countries in the world for past wrongdoing. But we’re on our way to financial ruin anyway.
Well we could always get the money from the French for their part in the 11th century and the Italians for the 1st century....
My ancestors were Irish and came to America as indentured servants. I will take my reparations in whiskey, thank you.
Do the Third Reich or Umayyad Caliphate have active HR departments? As Slavic "vermin" or "garbage," I'll happily take my reparations in Adidas and slivovitz, or vodka if you must. It's gotta be potato, though! I know my new Irish friend stands with me on this. Corn is for whiskey, not for vodka...
Agreed. Bourbon, corn whiskey, Vodka potato base. @@christianvaclavic9574
@@christianvaclavic9574
Never heard the term Slavic "vermin or garbage". But if it was used by the Third Reich or the muslims I would take it as an intended insult and say to hell with them.
Once again I heartily agree. Corn for bourbon, Potato for Vodka.@@christianvaclavic9574
@@stevefarris9433 Oh, yeah. Heydrich and Hitler hated the Czechs. Ironically, their tests concluded the Czech people had more "Aryan" traits than a lot of Germany. So...jealousy, maybe? They covered it up, it course. What else is a government to do?!
Regardless of what you think of him, he's got a first rate mind and he's one of the great speakers & teachers...
funny to see all of the exact bad faith arguments being played out here in the comments section against reparations that Hitchens warned about in this video...
amcaff Like what? I’ve heard great arguments that he never mentioned. Hitchens attempted straw man here was beneath him.
too be fair; he's made an argued against a position that no one was arguing. And it's very difficult to assign a value to reparat when neither population of white or black living today have either owned slaves or been enslaved. So, I don't think there is an argument for reparations in the Americas. And the same is true for Africa; how do you produce a quantity of value to be repatriated to Africa? If you cannot find that value, then when do you know that youve successfully repaid what us owed? The answer is that you can't.
@@atlehman69 Oh the irony in you using the phrase "straw man" here, because that's exactly what I'm referring to in people's arguments against reparations. Hitchens here is warning, essentially, against the straw man. He's warning against the straw man of the pro-reparation argument, wherein they twist the pro-reparationist's argument with non sequiturs and the classic "so what you're saying is...". 3:10 to approximately 4:40 in this video are the relevant time stamps. Here Hitchens is speaking of non sequiturs, with clear analogies to the reparation argument. And I see the same kinds on non sequiturs that he's referring to in the video in this comments section.
@@RikkSpencer this argument isn't over what the right "value" is to assign reparations, merely if they should be made in some form. Those forms could be made in many ways, monetary or otherwise. For example, affirmative action could be said to be a form of reparation. But to say that no one is arguing against reparations seems disingenuous. There are certainly many people in America today (maybe even a majority of people?) who would agree that there should be *no* reparation for slavery of any form. Hitchens is here merely arguing that there *should* be a non-zero reparation for slavery. What value should be assigned to such a reparation? Well, that's another detailed topic, but I don't think anyone on the pro-reparation side of this argument is advocating anything very extreme in the quantity of that value. And Hitchens here even seems to think that whatever value is assigned is likely to be inadequate, but at least better than nothing ("best is the enemy of the good").
@Klaa2 Please discredit the fact that my family moved here in the 1910s.... How much do I owe Americans that were never slaves for my sin of never being remotely connected to American slave owners...?
A strong man can become a victim but it is the weakest man that can try to claim victimhood without fear of persecution. Meaning if you're really a victim, you wouldn't be able to whine and cry about it. If you're strong and independent, you would not be whining and crying about being a victim.
It sad to have lost such a clear, sober mind and courageous spirit when we need him he most. I could listen to him talk all day.
Sober...lol
I wouldnt say sober
Definitely not sober
@@poozer1986 hitch was more sober when drunk than most right-wing religious types.
Sober? The guy was an alcoholic relapsed Marxist.
I was born 120 years after the end of slavery...you're right I should be held responsible. Makes perfect sense.
Read what Chris Rock says in his interview in Vulture Magazine regarding your "innocence."
@@EnchantmentHippie he talks about me?
Yes,why should people who never owned slaves pay money to people who never were slaves?
For me to be for reparations for slavery, someone needs to answer the following questions.
Why should I pay for the sins of my ancestors?
If I should pay for the sins of my ancestors who were slave owners, why should I not receive credit for my ancestors who fought against slavery?
Why should I pay for reparations to those black people who are better off than I am?
What about people who are half white and half black such a Barack Obama and Mariah Carey? Should they pay reparations to themselves?
@Omar Savory There are many factors to consider (petersonscottb brought up some of them), however, to consider the Civil Liberties Act of 1888 as a precedent is not correct. This Act gave reparations to SURVIVING Japanese individuals affected, not their descendants.
@Omar Savory Nowhere did I mention statute of limitations. Also, to equate inheritance with reparations shows ignorance on your part. Due to the logistics involved with distributing wealth to those affected by slavery, it will never happen. The best thing would be to do something similar to what you mentioned, Georgetown. Handing out money to the affected masses will only serve to lower their socioeconomic status even further. Thus, the best action would be to provide financial support to higher education, or perhaps even a lower interest rate on business loans. Increasing the education level of the masses affected, will have the result of increasing their socioeconomic level in the long run. It's not that I disagree with helping those affected, but just handing out lump sums of money is illogical. But, and this is a very big "but", how do you propose determining who can receive the financial support?
@Omar Savory Okay, but how would you suggest going about determining who gets what? If you decide to use DNA to exclude those that don't meet a "minimum threshold", you are going to open up Pandora's box, regarding unsolved crimes. So, again, what would you use to determine eligibility?
@Omar Savory I'd prefer that we work towards a nation that doesn't need reparations because there is no longer such a great inequality that they are needed.
@Omar Savory You have data that proves we shouldn't work towards a more equal society? I'll take a look at that, because if you think just giving some people some money is going to fix anything then you're nuts.
I accept neither collective guilt nor hereditary guilt. No American living today has owned or been a slave. There is no victim and no guilt. No debt exists. Force a redistribution of wealth based on ethnicity will doom ethnic reconciliation.
I'm overwhelmed with admiration for this man. His tact, his poise, his candor and honesty. His incredible eloquence, and here his piercing cognizance of an important issue that is often mistreated by the ignorant and biased. I would commend his consistency, but I've less respect for consistency after reading Emmerson's Self Reliance. I've never before felt in my life that person was gone too soon. My eternal admiration and respect to you Hitch!
@ what???
@Miki sadly hitch just got awakened to the fact that life was eternal, that he was wrong about God and misled many, all is not over for him as he will know no rest that’s very sad 😔. Should one respect and admire a lost sinner who confused many and stood on the throne of life denying his creator, well no, one should empathise for one that is so lost and deceived and who sadly apart from a deathbed conversion perished in his sins and trespasses, hardly something to celebrate.
@ Ah! Now I see. Well then, much good may all of that do you sir. Good day.
robert marshall nah hitchens was right. Because of him I regained my senses regarding superstition and the harm that a bad metaphysic (such as a belief in the eternal under the guise of a mind) can do.
Youre incontrovertibly incorrect about Hitchens and its a damn shame you dont have the senses to see otherwise. This is just backhanded nonsense. Keep your religion to yourself. It’s foolish as was as pretentious and senseless.
@ oh
My ancestors came from Norway, and some joined the Union Army straight away. So, what of that? I have one that died while serving. So, who owes here?
How do people who have no ancestors that were slaves deserve reparations?
Typical european thinking,...so called.
robert vernon
what, not wanting to pay for something to some one else for no good reason? How about reparations for my ancestors dying..?
If your ancestors werent slaves? No reps. That would take care of a good majority of it.
I am european just like you, you idiot
well wth was i supposed to think?
Simply giving people money is not how you solve problems.
If there were reparations, I guarantee it'd do almost nothing and in a few years the reaction would be "You didn't give us enough".
Years? Try the next day. The whinging would begin anew the very next day. Once it became reality that there is money to be had the process would never stop or slow.
*_@Gary Wood ::_*
_Whatever the desire would be for "more" money, is supposition on your part._
_What is known, however, is the Imperial-Greed of Europeans AND Americans who Took The Hemisphere from the Natives, because Enough Is Never Enough for Rapacious "Conquistadors" !_
I find myself agreeing with Hitchens on every occasion except twice. 1. when he said women cant be funny and 2. now.
Reparations were paid in blood when North and South fought a disastrous war were thousands upon thousands were killed.
Instead of paying repirations to blacks,why dont they use that money to build great schools in poor areas and educate all the poor how to help themselves
Typical white supremacist they believe that black reparations should be passed out to all poor people something they would never say to a Jewish Holocaust victims. Fool, you did not enslave poor people you enslaved black people.
@@taipan1234 oh shut up lol. You sound so fucking racist by that statement. Seriously just fucking go away with that shit you dumbass ha.
Hitch is wrong. He argued there is no longer a Babylon, yet there are contemporary people in Iraq that have a claim. Just because the name we call people, i.e. Babylonian vs citizens of Iraq, doesn't mean the people stop existing. With this said, where do we draw the line for reparations. Should we make the modern Italians, who clearly banked their exploitive nature into capital as Romans, assume some financial responsibility to the many peoples they aggrieved? It is one thing to realize a wrong, like the seizure of property, and try to correct it. It is another to place atonement on things as intangible as past profits.
Lol , Ya, its "intangible " because we choose for it to be. Obviously there's not a dollar amount that can make up for what was done. But you certainly can ( & people have ) put an approximate figure on what dollar amount would be owed for centuries of free labor. In modern dollars we'd be talking about almost 2 trillion dollars . We are really good as Americans at figuring out shit we WANT to do. "If you can put a man on the moon".
Are you serious? Look just because I kinda look like someone that allegedly did some past crime doesn't make me accountable. This is an immoral place to begin your argument, because the presumption is racially motivated.
I'm sure a line can be drawn somewhere. But I'm sorry my friend, we dont have to go back but 55 years to find total atrocity in this country in regards to African Americans. We're NOT talking about 2000 years ago. We're talking just 150 years for slavery & not until 1965 did Jim Crow,blatant discrimination, lynching ,inability to vote & real estate red lining begin
to subside. That's just 50 year. Hitch knows his history & how we're just a generation away ( my father lived under Jim Crow as a boy....& my 101 year old grandmother was born in the deep south 1914)from many horrendous wrongs.
+Philip Hennen So yes....I would say he's very "serious ".
John Smith The whole country was built upon a foundation of "Race" John. There's no way to address the problem WITHOUT the subject being at the center of the conversation. You can blame our country for that one. Slavery & the 100 years of Jim Crow , lynching & real estate red lining, was all based SOLELY on "race". The people who were hugely affected by it ,we're African Americans. Don't know how you address the issue without addressing race. That's nonsensical. It's racist NOT to discuss. Because you're basically saying we should forget all the iniquities that still exist because of that history. Silly.
The Devil is in the details.
How do you calculate how much each victim class member was harmed in terms of dollars and how much each individual oppressor class member is culpable and how much he must pay.
Moreover, which members are actually within the oppressor class and which were the victims. West Africans captured and sold the majority of the slaves that ended up in America. Gonna do Ancestry DNA to try and figure out if you came from one of the people that got captured or one of them that did the capturing? Or what if your mother's side was black slave trader, but your Dads side was a slave? what the hell you gonna do them? Or are we just going by how much melanin you've got and whites with ancestors who were surfs or another oppressed people that came to North America have gotta pay also? And on and on it goes.
@Dra O 2 weeks
Duke Economics Professor William A Darity has some good starting points.
Did Hitch say the reparations have to actually be monetary? He does talk about the Federal Reserve and America's wealth but I don't believe he ever actually mentioned actual money. I think he is making a far more important point. One that still needs to be made and we need to be reminded of every time a Black person is killed unjustly by cops, every time a Black person is profiled by White civilians, every time a Black person is given a harsh punishment disproportionate to the crime they committed. Yes perhaps some money is in order but the question goes far deeper than mere money.
DNA analysis.
Hitch begins by saying he is going to make an argument by analogy and proceeds to relate some arguments for and against returning the Elgin Marbles. But he then goes on to repeatedly dismisses his opponents’ analogies with respect to the Marbles and reparations as efforts at distraction that reveal their bad faith. I always enjoy listening to him but this is just sophistry.
My earliest Ancestors in My home country of Australia were sent here against their will as Irish Convict slaves.
Do I deserve Reparations or does the colour of my skin make me not eligible?
liar.
@AridMy oldest ancestor was sent here for the charge of " uttering unholy oaths" meaning he was suspected of belonging to an organisation sworn to resist and oppose British rule in Ireland. (eg like the ribbon men)
If membership could be proven death was the sentence.
For Suspected resistors confiscation of property, Transportation, whipping and slavery was dished out by the English.
He would have hated the British Empire as much as any Indigenous Australian ever has.
Arid Ned Kelly's father was sent half way round the world to break rocks in the scorching sun because he stole pigs to feed his family, so you think he deserved it because he was a criminal or is it because he was white?(hint: it's the latter)
Arid had nothing to do with race but vulnerability instead.
The Irish actually do deserve restitution from the British dude, because they KILLED a bunch of them
Christopher you were born in the wrong year. You belong to our present and future. You are just amazing. 💖
I don’t know if the present and future would be the same if he hadn’t already been here. A truly brilliant mind, and I agree with the heart of your statement, we need him now more than ever
Why thank you, comrade
The best way to repair the damage from slavery is to ensure nobody can be a slave ever, and that everyone is treated the same under the law without protected groups. Anything else is just band aids.
There are more slaves today than 100 years ago
Its just that no one cares because they are not in western countries
People think the west is evil, and they only really virtue signal when the west does something
And that is because in western democracy they have been given freedom to virtue signal
its almost like self loathing
thats a lame ass straw man pile of crap and we all know it age is irrelevant to this context..@PikPobedy
How would "Reparations" work..
1) If you're a white "Yankee" and lost a family member freeing the slaves do you get a cut?
2) If you're white and your family came here in the 1900's are you charged?
3) If you're black and have no slave ancestors do you get a cut?
4) How much is assessed to the black tribal leaders that actually captured the slaves and sold them to whites?
5) If you're black and some of your ancestors were captured and sold to whites .. but the most of your remaining ancestors were wiped out by the war, disease or genocide that has plagued Africa since time began, do you have to pay whites for saving your future?
I miss this guys takes on things, and his subtle humor!
What if you're half black and half white? Does that mean you owe yourself money?
HAHA Love it!
Sue yourself
The Elgin marbles is a big red herring. The Greeks at the time had no interest in or respect for their history, and had destroyed countless artifacts to make lime, costing the world inestimably dearly in lost knowledge. The Elgin marbles were about to suffer the same fate. They weren't stolen, they were rescued, for all of us.
Reparations for slavery is a difficult one for me. The suffering was terrible, but those who experienced it are long dead, as are those who perpetrated it, and the many Africans who enabled it because it wasn't just a white on black thing.
And in fact black on white slavery continued until the turn of the 20th century when the barbary pirates were wiped out, so white families from the Mediterranean all the way up to the coast of Britain have slavery in their families right up to the edge of living memory and as such have perhaps an even more legitimate claim.
However, I believe that nobody is responsible or should be held accountable for the crimes of their ancestors (even when an individuals ancestors can be proved to have been involved). Nor should a nation be held responsible for events where no participant or victim still lives.
If we are to hold people responsible for historic events, how many generations must pass before it becomes silly? I live in the north of England - does that mean, therefore, that I can claim reparations from Denmark for the actions of the Vikings? Or Rome for the invasion of 43ad? We're not even meant to hold Germany responsible for the blitz, a mere 7 decades ago.
They were rescued but they ought to go back. They belong in Athens, somewhere near the Acropolis and the Parthenon, not in a British museum. It is as simple as taking ancient heritage back where it came from and where it belongs The Parthenon is still there, at least partly, and there is a thread of continuity between the ancient and modern world in this case. It is not like ancient Hellas simply disappeared altogether and was miraculously recovered. Reparations for slavery is a far more controversial and impractical concept, obviously.
+Ishmael Forester Yeah I've no argument there, and it would be a nice gesture for archaeologists and historians in both nations to come together with a mutually beneficial compromise, as I think you hinted at in another post. I just felt that the often-implied idea that our ancestors went around essentially raping antiquity is at best misleading and at worst an outright libel that needs challenging.
Evil Twin I don't think they raped antiquity but they certainly raped the present in their day. I don't think anybody intelligent has any illusions about imperialism generally, not just the British, anymore.
No interest in their history? Well, during the battles to take Athens, the Turks were melting down the lead rods holding up the pillars of the Parthenon for bullets. The Greeks were so worried about this they offered the Turks bullets if they would only stop melting down the material. Were there a lot of Greeks who weren't aware of their history? Or perhaps weren't even really Greeks? Sure. However, there were quite a few who did.
No right thinking person believes in or endorses imperialism now, but nobody is responsible for the actions of their ancestors, and anyway you are conflating two seperate and unconnected issues here.
Look, the fact is that there isn't a single museum in the world that does not contain items stolen from another culture. If you endorse giving the Elgin Marbles back, then the Met, for example, should give Britain back all the medieval armour that the people did not give them permission to take, or pretty much every museum should return their mummies to Egypt, a country that doesn't have the space or resources to look after them properly (artefacts in Cairo museum are shockingly badly restored and conserved).
Or maybe middle eastern artefacts should be returned to Isis, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We've all seen the respect they have for antiquities.
I've never agreed with him on this. How do you make a person who never owned slaves pay respirations to a person who was never a slave. Makes no sense.
Are you for a 100% inheritance tax? After all why should continous generations inherit millions they didn't work for? Funny how we allow what benefits us from the past be inherited but not what is deterimental.
@@AndyTomlins That's a red herring. Hitchens just said in the video to not let people like you dodge the subject with what-aboutisms. So the question remains, why should Italians pay me, a Briton, reparations for slavery, when they didn't own slaves, and I was never a slave.
Very disappointing of Christopher Hitchens. He didn’t make an argument.
Why is it disappointing? As far as I can remember, most of his debates went something like this. He’d go off on 47 different tangents, many of which were not related to the matter at hand, then he’d somehow tie it up together without actually telling people what his argument was. And the audience would be left guessing. His only appeal was that he was a great rethorician and he was funny - and he sometimes said things people wanted to hear.
Maybe it's because I'm watching on little sleep. But this quote came to mind: "At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." 😆
sparkyk24 well he argued with his heart on this very much not his brain.
I'd say, if you can't get any information from this, then you've already made up you mind
@KR if we both get something out of this, something was done
that was kind of lame by Hitchens standards, i don't agree with him here and he usually convinces me.
Paul English You think our nations that pillaged and destroyed other nations don’t owe any sort of compensation?
@@wrath_of_thrawn2163 Islam isn't a race you utter muffin. His contentions on religion were completely valid.
It's weird I always hear so much about how great this guy was but I don't think I've fully agreed with a single argument he's ever made. Yet I enjoy watching him make them.
It's okay, because if you live in America it is to live in constant disagreement 🤷♂️
@@Mr._Moderate I disagree.
@@sophomoremd Ha!
Love all the cons getting triggered in the comments, weren’t expecting that from Hitchens, were you?
Conservatives are Hitchens fans now? Seems to me they were always quite at odds with him over his views on foreign wars and religion. Maybe you should know what you're talking about before saying silly things?
I think reparations should take the reverse form of Lee Atwater's southern strategy. If we propose to help everyone who suffers from a legacy of poverty, if that helps minorities such as blacks more, then so be it. There is so much injustice in US history, and I think the proof is in the soaring poverty rates of minorities. We need to provide them with opportunities to advance their social class, and do it under the rubric of lifting everyone out of poverty.
reparations make no sense for these reasons:
1. no one who was subjected to slavery is alive
2. not all black people descended from slaves
3. not all white people descended from slave owners
4. there were black slave owners (though very few)
you can't lift anyone out of poverty by giving them handouts.
there are more poor white people than black people in America, so why should the black people get help and not the white people? if you want to help, just help those who need help, don't pick and choose based on race, that's racism.
@@MrWhodatsay Don't get me started about colonialism in Africa. That is NOT an argument you are going to win.
@@JohnWilliams-channel Lol, I hear this every time I'm about to spank some idiot over colonialism. Give it your best shot.
@@Atamanxxxvii Are you going to deny colonialism from the major western powers, England, France, Spain, Portugal, and others? Because that's where you get spanked, Skippy.
@@JohnWilliams-channel well do it then, come on I'm waiting
America needs this man so much right now. RIP Christopher.
And the planet....
"Be assured I am resting as I AM AN ATHEIST!" (Message from the crematorium.)
@@Longtack55 interesting quote....?..
@@captur69 I was presumptuously projecting through the medium of Imagination. I've seen so many admirers of Hitchens wishing him "RIP" and I'm momentarily apoplectic at the meaninglessness to an Atheist. He's not "resting" - owing to a sudden attack of death.
Hitchens' wisdom was imparted universally and The Planet was better for him.
@@Longtack55 definitely.....death is final.. I never really get the "rip" brigade....
Wouldn't a fundamental principle of law be broken by paying compensation to someone for just being a relative of a person who suffered injury ?
Rufus Chucklebutty it’s more about the wave of economic and social damage that had been done by Jim Crow, slavery, ect.. All people of color have been affected by these things. Couldn’t get jobs, buy homes ect..
when people die, do their homes and cars go with them into the grave?
Your question implies that the only blacks who have suffered in america did so as slaves, when I'd argue that slavery was just the initial injury (Jim Crow, etc.) and more importantly that damage is still being done to this day (the ridiculously high numbers of African Americans incarcerated in this country, etc.) and thus the reasonableness of reparations to that race of humans.
@@chadmueller1784 then perhaps the democratic party as an entity should pay reparations.
@@kingirisnetwork9847 , but how is throwing money at the problem going to solve it. Wouldn't a better solution be for the black community to first gain self responsibility for the crime that exists in their neighborhood?
Fortunate to have learned English to the point of understanding Hitchens. So miss you Professor Hitchens. Simply Succulent. I pay attention When he speaks.
*REPARATIONS: “BACK-PAY. OWED. AND IT’S OVERDUE.”*
I agree but the question is to whom. Every person of that era is dead. Do we give reparations to every person of color????
@@robertopistone1179 Yes, to every person of color. That era is only half-dead.
Go see the AFRICANS, who committed the original sin of enslaving them . Easy ...
I've been paying reparations since LBJ's "Great Society" in 1965.
White people was collecting that LBJ check dumbass
@@baddog6003 are you native American? Just curious
@@baddog6003 >not realizing islam at one point conquered half of europe and all of northern and eastern africa.
>not surprised at all
basically what I'm saying is, if we had left them alone they'd probably be equal in terms of societal and economic development. Oh and they would all be arab more than likely. perhaps spreading so far that we were too
Reparations are a terrible idea. Think of the level of scrutiny of people’s history required to properly distribute reparatory money properly. The records of history wouldn’t be adequate for the average joe.
So, you’d have to have a blanket policy, such as all black Americans receive reparations. But then what of the blacks who’s recent ancestry does not involve slavery, what of the blacks descended from those that themselves sold slaves-what are they owed? What of mixed race Americans descended from slave trader heritage, what of blacks like Oprah Winfrey, who are a hundred thousand times more successful than the average white?
Morally, there is a case to be made, but sadly there is no practical way that this could be implemented fairly.
@Tom Voke Yes, I did. What makes you think that? Also, don't like your own comment--it's cringeworthy.
@Tom Voke I left a comment regarding reparations on a video regarding reparations.
I am saying that morally, as Hitchens argued, there is a good case to be made that descendants of slaves deserve reparations. However, there is no way to implement this fairly. That is my point. If I can't leave that comment on this video then I'm not sure where I could leave it.
And regarding whether or not I'm 'obsessed' (after one instance, you may want to look that word's definition up) with your comment likes. It was merely a passing comment. It's amusing how when you post a comment it immediately has 1 like, yet none thereafter. You must have one very dedicated fan!
Should reparations be the offering of one-way tickets back to the mother-land that they wish their ancestors had not been removed from? Since America is apparently so bad, and their mother-land is so wonderful?
u cant give reparations to people who werent alive when the crimes were committed
richard cline we are our ancestors and they are us! This country was built on their backs! Your ignorance is amerikkka.
The reason Christopher Hitchens is correct about Britain stealing Greece’s heritage is the British navy was sailing to India to sell bolts of cotton (cotton picked from slave labor) and stopped off at Constantinople to resupply. They made allies with the Ottoman empire.
The British asked the Ottomans if they could take a few things from Greece… you know, souvenirs. The sultan said yes, if the items were already on the ground. But the British did not do that. Rather, they dynamited Greek architecture and stole all the pieces that ended up on the ground to take them back to their museum.
The Greeks were fighting for their lives and couldn’t respond. After the Ottomans desecrated a city or village they would go through and kidnap the young boys and brainwash them, turning them into the next generation of warriors called Janissaries.
One area where Hitchens is incorrect, we (the United States) did not go to Africa to get slaves. The West Dutch Indies Company, a British company did that and sold them to the colonists. The United States of America wasn’t even a country at the time.
There is no one alive who committed the injury and no one alive (or direct relative) who has been injured. Case closed.
Most cultures have had some form of slavery or ill yoke brought against them at some time or another. Only people of African decent cries foul about it and expects entitlements.
@@bobbytumbleweed Yes, American freed some slaves and they immigrated to Liberia. The freed blacks in turn enslaved people native to that land. Go figure!
I don't owe anyone anything.
_You owe the IRS OR are you avoiding paying taxes ?_
doubt that. we all owe someone. you have no gratitude.
The government owes...you have no say.
Dickie Bhee, I respect your opinion but you’re not going to change anyone’s mind talking about Jesus who isn’t Catholic nor Christian
Faye Flower I’m grateful to be alive so yes, I suppose
This is the first time I've heard Hitch make absolutely no sense whatsoever. He's not even addressing the two basic questions: who pays and who gets paid?
Way to broadcast to the world that you missed the point
I wonder why this is the first time u disagree with him lol
@@Russyda1 I don't understand what you are trying to imply. And I definitely don't understand the "lol."
I’ve long been a fervent admirer of CH.
But I guess I’m not smart enough to get his point on this topic.
He suggests that reparations are appropriate but never says it in a blunt manner.
And he never provides details of how it could ever be undertaken.
Sorry Hitch, I’m not buying it.
Jesus Didnt Exist, No Proof, Look It Up Braille only. I like a challenge.
Reparations? Paid by whom, the Africans who sold their own people? What was done a long tome ago by people who are dead to other people who are also dead is in the past. I appreciate Hitchens but strongly disagree with him on this one.
Well, it wasn't just them, but also those that tried to counter abolition for a long time...
did you finish the video? everyone reasonable knows it was a disgusting deal. remember that slavery was introduced by societies allegedly bearing enlightenment values.
And 100 yrs of Jim Crow and in some cases nearly 200 yrs, as Jim Crow is the natural birthed child after ending slavery. Slavery ended in 1783 in Massachusetts.
Legal Jim Crow came right after and truly didn't end until the busing crisis in 1974, just shy of 200 yrs. Most Irish and Italians were not even here until after 1850, while Africans bullet this country. In building this country these enslaved Africans also had most of the labor skills. And this is what Jim Crow and lynching was all about. It was about killing freed blacks ability to COMPETE when they had superior labor skills... Hence, newly arriving Europeans would not be as needed, nor able to build their new lives if the freed Africans had equal access to opportunity as newly arriving immigrants, as your family. Your family came despite slavery and Jim Crow, hence...you should pay for your birthright. Can you imagine if there were 10 million Barack Obamas? Lol... The goal has also been to prevent that. I kid you not, 1/2 your women would defect.
In effect taking money from people who were never slave owners and giving it to people who were never slaves.
@@kizombeiro8130 You have a slanted view of history. If you live in America you benefit from the free labor of the enslaved. If you live in America you don't have to compete evenly with descendents of slavery because the Government stole land and instituted laws against African descendents. The laws and behaviors resulted in over 100 years of Sanctions on African American communities. Look what sanction have done to Iran in just a few years. Imagine having 100 years of Sanctions after 250 yrs of enslavement. Yes. Generation wealth, knowledge and skills were denied to the descendents of the enslaved. Sorry, your family came here (If here) because America was a panacea. Africans helped make it that panacea with free labor and blood..Their children never received generational wealth. And generational wealth is what helps families transcend their immigrant status in America.
Brilliant brilliant man. And courageous in his assertions. So badly missed.
This is quite a stupid argument from analogy.
I agree completely with the analogy between the Elgin Marbles and African sl@ves (ensl@ved by each other or by Arabs, I must point out, not by Europeans) and think restitution should be made in both cases and in the same manner--immediate repatriation.
I wish he was still with us.
He would be horrified at how far we've fallen.
Luther Blissett but not surprised
@@lutherblissett8780 I'm not sure, Dawkins and DeGrasse totally disappointed, they're completely synchronized with mainstream propaganda.
Such effortless panache. Also, don't know what more striking: How warm he looked or the fact that wasn't johnnie walker black label in his hand.
3:40 he was drinking that white wine 🤣😎
Hitchens was wrong as usual. Taking from someone, from people who had nothing to do with slavery is theft. Reparations would surely do just that. Should I have to pay for the sins of people I didn't even know? Sins I never committed? No Christopher, you were wrong, as usual. You were slick as snot, but snot non the less.
Clearly, you are not a christian.
You argue that you are not responsible for paying reparations.
One could argue that descendants of slave owners who received any inheritance continue to benefit from the unpaid labour of those slaves, thus are not part of the group "who had nothing to do with slavery".
First subtract out welfare payments and the monetary worth of affirmative action and then cut by proportion down to the actual proportion the percent of slave ancestry and reduce by any percent of white ancestry for what is owed to any claimant. Then reduce the amount owed by any individual based on whether they were actual descendents of slave owners and this whole thing becomes meaningless drivel.
I disagree with Hitch's rationale in that the reference to the Elgin Marbles would only be comparable if the nations of Africa wanted the decendants of it's stolen people back. This was a very poor position to take. I can't see how he could convolute "Reparation" with "Repatriation".
@Camille Desmoulins Completely irrelevant to the issue at hand and also quite wrong. Whatever the austerity policy imposed by the European Stability Mechanism--or Germany, if you can't do without your own personal Antichrist--foreclosing on art is not how national debt is collected. Nice try at a segue though.
@Michael Gaspar I agree with the part about Hitchens' conflation of "reparation"/"repatriation", but I think his injunction to not "make the best the enemy of the good" still holds. As far as reparation is concerned, the once-promised forty acres and a mule (or their modern-day value equivalent) might be a good start, since this would have been wealth passed down in the families of former slaves. After all, there are 640 million acres of federal land in the US.
Hitch is very eloquent; however, he is mistaken on multiple counts. Those early colonial buildings were built, in large measure, by the early colonists and indentured servants. Indentured servitude is essentially a contract for passage via time-labor. Slavery existed in Africa hundreds of years prior to any white colonialism in West Africa and it was the locals that were party to gathering the human capital and making it available for sale to the owners of the slave ships. The debt has already been paid via combinatorial losses during the US Civil War. The only people that would make bank on the implementation of reparations consists of the bureaucrats that would see fit to manage the entire affair. It would certainly infuriate those individuals that are made to pay the bill and who never owned slaves nor are the decedents of slave owners. It would cast the recipients of whatever was left (after the bureaucrats took their cut) of the welfare payments into an even further state of dependency and self-loathing. Of course, this whole reparations thing will be eaten up whole hog by those self-immolating masochists that intoxicate in their white guilt. I will have no part in it.
The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It was merely an excuse.
@@rudipan1715 Indeed, I have also read DiLorenzo and others and am familiar with The Lincoln Scholars. Nonetheless, once of the artifacts from the Civil War was the Emancipation Proclamation. Hitch's argument falls flat; a static bit of timeless marble bears to resemblance to a mortal individual human being. He is stretching beyond credulity and he had enough self-awareness to know it.
As Hitchens is careful to point out right up front, watch out for those who redirect the argument.
Slave labor existed in the US, regardless of which heap of bricks you want to attribute it to. White people profited monetarily from forced black labor. A monetary reparation could be made and should be made. There is no statute of limitations on a moral wrongdoing.
The speaker before Hitchens was evidently a black man who did not want members of the African American public to accept such a payout so as to avoid resulting damage to the recipient's character and morals. I can see that argument. So why not use our national strength and wealth to send serious long term, nation-building aid to the West African regions that were most heavily affected by the atrocities? Our world would be a better place for doing it. You might consider the approach a penance as much as restitution, but that is fine and good. If we did it honestly, it could work. As a white guy, I can't say how much would be enough. But I think that at a certain point, we'd all see that the effort would be so rewarding that no hard ending would be necessary.
The point is not how familiar Hitchens is with details about bricks or chunks of marble. The point is that a wrong is waiting to be righted. If you don't accept that, why are you even watching the video?
@@SH-th4wy You are WRONG. The vast majority of white people did NOT profit from slavery. The vast majority of white people did not own slaves or did not have any ties to slavery. The vast majority of slave owners were what would be considered today as the 1% and only the 1% of the south. The south was only part of the economy and country would have survived just fine without slavery. All those plantation owners would just have had to pay for labor. Not to mention all those white people today who's ancestors immigrated after slavery was abolished. All your monetary reparations would do is create a greater divide, more racism, and a further separation from equality, especially from all the other minorities that aren't receiving so- called special benefits. And yes, there is a statute of limitations on a moral wrong doing. NO civilized society would condemn the sons and daughters for crimes of the father and mother. Besides, if you are talking about restitution of historic crimes, I'll take you serious when you add the Mongols, The Egyptians, the Ottomans, the Turks, The Japanese, the Arabs to the list for their past crimes. And let's not forget the Aztecs for their brutal conquest of all the other native tribes when they created their empire.
@@SH-th4wy Oh and yeah, if it's so rewarding you are more than welcome to start giving up part of your paycheck, assuming you even work. You have the freedom to give any or all of your money to any african americans you wish
4:55 actually can repaid
5:47 better to be in USA
6:35 was there a crime and can any of it be made good
8:51 free labour
9:15 what is owed
Yes there was an offense. But I had nothing to do with it. So don't take my money
Some times we pay for the sins of our fathers.
@@jjj1951 my fathers are from the Philippines
jjj1951 who’s fathers sins should we pay before? I am From An Irish family that came to Ellis Island at turn of 20th Century as an example. Would I have to contribute because of the color of my skin?
@561 j and the Chinese. Are they demanding money?
@561 j they were slaves when they built the railroads. Keep whining for your free stuff. It won't make you feel better or change history.
Perhaps other speakers ventured into these areas but a few observations:
1. Mr. Hitchens claims the US should pay reparations for slavery but does not mention England should even though England started the practice in the US as early as 1619. The US was born into this practice and couldn't change things overnight. Yet, not a word about this aspect.
2. He frames the subject in ways that avoid important questions. For example, slavery was a legal practice. If it had been an illegal practice it would have been much smaller in scale. What precedent do you set if you punish people for doing something that was legal simply based on changing moral grounds? In addition, we have a practice in the West of not punishing the son for the sin's of the father or in this case the sins of the great grandfather being pushed on the great grandson. Except that doesn't even have it right because modern Americans have varying ancestry so only a percentage of their ancestry may have any tie to slavery if at all. This is all major departure from typical criminal and civil law so we would be creating a new precedent.
3. He ignores that genetic and/or other environmental factors are contributing to the existing divide rather than past issues with slavery.
4. Perhaps the biggest question avoided is will reparations actually heal the divide or will it widen it? Because if it becomes a practice it will create a lot of resentment and there will be repercussions that may be worse than the issue thought to be solved.
Another thing he ignores... Most slaves from West Africa were captured and sold by West African's.
Native Americans were screwed the most because the Europeans came in and took their land and their culture. So with this where does it end? Reparations is a dumb and dangerous idea.
@@charlesgradle286
*"1. Mr. Hitchens claims the US should pay reparations for slavery but does not mention England should even though England started the practice in the US as early as 1619. The US was born into this practice and couldn't change things overnight. Yet, not a word about this aspect."*
Probably because the number of slaves owned in English colonies in the US was tiny, and also because the English didn't have slavery IN ENGLAND. It was something only done in the American colonies, and mostly in the Caribbean. So, why would England today be responsible for what American colonists did, especially after they gained independence from Britain before the slave trade even became as big as it was?
Secondly, the British already paid reparations for the slave trade. It took them 200 years, but the British tax-payer paid off the cost of abolition.
I agree with everything else you wrote.
@@charlesgradle286 naTive Americans already receive reparations. So do Jewish Peoples and japaneese..this is not something that hasn't or isn't being done .it is okay for everyone else but dumb for black desendants of slavery..
Charles Gradle There were only about 10 million Natives in America when Columbus arrived. They didn't claim the whole continent as theirs so very little of their land was stolen. The reason they were put in reservations is because they savagely killed innocent men, women and children who settled on land the Natives didn't claim.
Are the British going to go back and pay reparations to all the people they colonized? They could start with India.
XdognateX Why just the British? Get a good children’s encyclopaedia and read of all the empires since around 6,000bc. Do they all offer reparations or just those that benefited from 19th century technology.
@@henghistbluetooth7882 Well I used Britian as an example because he's British.
@@xdognatex9897 Christopher Hitchens was actually English by birth, there is no such thing as 'British' FYI with regards to place of birth.
@@glennbowen Did I say anything about place of birth? www.google.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/us/amp/english/british
@@xdognatex9897 Yes, you called him 'British', he's English
It's pretty simple really. You are responsible for your sins. You are not responsible for anyone else's...whether they are in your lineage or not.
If you can reap the benefits of your ancestors, the inheritance of wealth, then why should you not also inherit the responsibilities of your ancestors, especially if they lied, killed or enslaved to gain said wealth? If you don’t want to inherit the responsibilities then you should not inherit their wealth and assets.
@@Macconator2010 well said
no one is saying we are responsible for our ancestors sins.
@@Macconator2010 that's fine. I have lineage that traces back to the Barbary Slave trade. So I need to foot the bill to North Africans who enslaved my ancestors? I think not.
@@alanwoodwind5265 , the Arab slave trade predates the Atlantic slave trade by hundreds of years.
I can see his argument. But to my defense I say I wasn't here during the time of slavery in this country. My ancestors weren't here either they were starving in Ireland and being persecuted by the crown. You see a bill is due but who is to say who rightly owes the back wages..
I struggle with that as well, but I think the answer would have to be we as a nation. We as the United States permitted the practice and as a result, millions of Americans were never paid for their labor.
Doug Colt goodo then, can you now pay all women for their unpaid and lower paid work?
J Andrews that’s what Birmingham city council did. That’s why it had to sell all its assets 😂
@@TheRealColt45 might seem reasonable if you include white slaves as well
@@TheRealColt45 you live in the most prosperous nation the earth has ever seen that's your reward for your ancestors suffering, every country and civilisation on earth had slavery why would America be the ones to pay?. More Europeans were taken by the barbary slavers than african slaves were taken to the American colonies. Cuba had twice as many African slaves as America. The Vikings enslaved lots of Irish and Scottish approximately 62% of the Icelandic maternal gene pool is derived from Ireland and Scotland. People from Scandinavia do not owe us Irish and Scots anything. During the height of the Irish famine where millions starved to death grain was stolen from Ireland by the Crown and sold to the American colonies Neither the British or the American colonies who benefitted owe Irish people anything today. Everyone could stake a claim that they are owed something butt that's not how the world works we are not on the hook for something our ancestors did or didnt do
Would the African tribes, like the Zulus, Watusi and others, who had slaves of their own and sold those they didn't want to keep to the slave traders, also pay reparations?
North and South American Indians also made slaves of the captives they did not torture to death. Many tribes also practiced human sacrifice. Sometimes a hundred or more young virgins were killed during a 3 day celebration. FYI...Wars for booty, slaves, religion and territorial gain were also common the tribes in North, Central and South America.
Perhaps someone could define the moral high-ground?
Propaganda Richard Schaefer, the winners of wars and choreographers of colonialism write false narratives for the conquered. That's typical when lands are stolen, so future generations and descendants remain passive and unaware of their true histories.
Richard Shaefer AND all over the World, since the beginning of mankind.
@@ericwright2763 And "true" history is what exactly? "Conquest" and "stolen" is an exercise of semantic nonsense. All have a right to self defense and preservation. The inability to repel conquest is not a moral argument. The denial of self defense, through legislation is.
@@ericwright2763 REALLY? So you're saying that LONG before ANY white person stepped foot in their Continent, the Africans, North and South American Indians, Mongols, Persians, Romans, Egyptians, et al, were NOT taking each other and conquered others into slavery? Thousands of years before. YOU really need to research World history. Since the beginning of mankind, "to the victor goes the spoils" was common practice and us "white folks" aka Americans, didn't invent it, we ended it.
@@joeashbubemma Please tell me what culture, in history, refused to defend themselves through legislation? IMO, the conquered DID try to defend themselves, the conquerors were simply superior and that's true from massive armies and superior weapons and tactics, to small hordes of berserker Vikings, down to small Indian raid parties.
I like Hitchens quite a bit, but if he had been debating me on this subject, I would have brutalized him. His argument is ignorant on virtually every conceivable level, that of the individual, that of the group, historically, and morally. I actually am rather stunned that he would even attempt to make this argument.
I couldn't agree more. He was a mental midget who received credit for being absurd. Much like AOC today. She is the left's hero because she is absurd.
You and me both. I would have demolished his arguments.
I'm kinda convinced if every grievance anybody ever had were repaid the world would just end.
So make excuses for evil?
@@terrancehall9762 A grievance based society is evil.
@@VolvoImpala so more excuses for evil
Haha with the amount of heinous shit everyones done to everyone else we'd probably end up with ww3 fighting to see who's picking up the tab
"If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat forever"
Reparations will cause more damage, as it will only make people more dependent on the government. This is standard Marxist/Communist thinking. Now you understand why he addressed the audience as "Comrades" 🤦♂️
Saudi Arabia should start paying reparations for the far more extensive Arab slave trading.
You're still feeling spineless Christian guilt. Empires aren't built with white gloves mate.
To who exactly? The reason there isn't a huge underclass of descendants of the arab slave trade is because they castrated the males and took the women as concubines.
@@hogwashsentinel And the female slaves?
@@aelwyn1 took them as concubines as I said. Bred them out if you want to get technical.
@@hogwashsentinel You're wrong about all male slaves being castrated. Some weren't because those who were sometimes died. In 2010, about 100 baby boys died in the USA from a botched circumcision, a much less invasive procedure than a castration. An early sex change operation was done because of a botched circumcision.
Some people in the comment section are just ridiculous. Can you not see the clear gap between blacks and the rest of america? The living conditions and treatment of black people in america by the system obviously shows that. Stats don't lie. It was this same system that had slaves and benefited from the free labour that has created this massive gap and still continuous to widen the gap. Clearly something has to be done to fix it.
Yomamas Nekst And that "something" would be what?
socraytes Maybe investing more into these communities. Developing better systems of education? I don't know I'm no politician but something better than what the government is doing right now
Yomamas Nekst As a nation we pay more now into education now than we've ever paid in the history of the United States yet we're falling further and further down the rankings. Explain how the federal government funding education is helping? As for the communities how can communities thrive when crime is such that business don't want to go into those communities for fear of going under. You can't just dump money on the problem but again if you could who would pay and what would they pay?
socraytes Crime is an economic symptom. On a large scale you cannot distinguish between those.
In general though the west has gone so far in the wrong direction with the triumph of neo-liberalism in the last 30 years that its not just Blacks that are being stiffed, its everyone in the middle class and the working class. So the whole damned thing is going in the wrong direction so its no surprise that Blacks aren't getting miraculously saved by a system that can't even keep formerly privileged white people from suffering.
Also, spending money isn't a magic barometer. Its how that money is spent thats the issue, and the policies that go with it. All this standardized testing nonsense that keeps coming up is a lot of money spent on something that doesn't improve anything.
Yomamas Nekst I have a novel idea on how to fix it.
How about the blacks in America get an education and a job, marry and raise families, care for their young, eschew the life of crime and drugs and thuggery, and see how that works.
Why don't the people who feel reparations are in order, set up a fund, let all those with guilt donate, and then mete-out the proceeds to those who feel they deserve it? This would leave-out those of us who had not a thing to do with slavery alone, and maybe we could finally shut-up the element that has haunted us.
No, those who have unwarranted "Guilt" donate. NO-ONE alive today had anything to do with North American Slavery.
In the words of the wise man: " Only a fool makes derision of guilt."
None of us had anything to do with the slavery of centuries past. But many of us have benefited from it nonetheless.
And as the speaker points out at 8:25, some of the profits of slavery are now held by public institutions.
only 1 in 10 in south owned slaves. Most of them owned only one. Thats 5% in all of the US then. Of the people alive today only 5% can trace themselves back to pre 1860s America, most have come from immigrants that came after that. so 5% of 5% which means there is almost nobody here who owes anybody anything.
I will not pay you for something someone else did to someone else.
Superb, fluent, compelling
What a beautiful mind and voice. I may not agree with him, but I can admire his brilliance and fine delivery.
I agree with reparations, but not in a lump sum of money given to people, but to invest in black people and black neighborhoods. Many all bit abandoned.
What about Irish Americans? Or black slave owners?when it comes to the Irish we had it much worse and for much longer overall almost 3 out of 10 Americans are descended slaves.who would pay?the confederate government is dead he federal government sacrificed 350,000 lives.the only people responsible would be the democratic party
+sammy1227 schlablabble Let's be clear, I'm talking about black slaves desendents. We overall benefited from slavery as a country. The Confederacy and the Democratic party are irrelevant. I don't get how the Irish had it worse or what that has to do with the conversation.
+ruediger hahn I don't understand, what is racist about what I said. I'm talking about reparations for American chattel slavery specifically. Don't know what you mean by equal white and black slaves, so I'll ignore because it doesn't seem related to what I'm talking about.
+ruediger hahn Let me be clear, I'm not falling in that "What about this or that whoever" trap. It's not racist to ask for reparations because you think it is. I assume you're not black by how you're arguing you point. Also, BLM is having us to at least start the conversation and there's facts behind the emotion.
+ruediger hahn As a BLM supporter thank you for telling me what I think. Saying All Lives Matter isn't racist, but it diverts from the issue. The problem is unwarranted murder of black people by the police. the police officer race is irrelevant. The thing is that black folk are pissed, and your stats and saying it's because of black on black crime isn't going solve it.
I would"ve loved to see him expound on the Arab slave trade in Africa.
An amazing man, with a an astute vision.
I like the guy a lot, but disagree with him. If we pay this generation, then does that absolve us from the next one? Or the one after that? Just when does that bill get paid, when I didn't own a slave, nor did any other of my ancestors? What if my ancestor fought for the Union in the Civil War...do I get a waiver? Does a debt my ancestor made 1000 years ago still become mine? The guilty and the ones who WERE abused and enslaved are long dead. Let them rest in peace.
I suggest an end on income taxation and free medical insurance for the African American population
@@user-po5bi6jb9g Lmao that's pretty much where they're at now!
how bout they can receive reparation if they renounce their citizenship and return to their ancestors point of sale. reparation to be equal to purchase price and in the currency of that region inflation adjusted.
the whole concept is ludicrous. the families of those who immigrated after the fact just get the shaft i take it.
@@user-po5bi6jb9g I'm all for that as long as the descendants of those union soldiers who died freeing the slaves get the same benefits as well as all those who's ancestors either had nothing to do with slavery or immigrated after slavery was abolished
As soon as I am paid for my ancestors land, the women and children who were slaughtered, and our culture destroyed, THEN, AND ONLY THEN will I talk about "reperations".
Elgin's Marbles are a non sequitur - and he complains about his opinion on them being subjected to non sequiturs. He also says when people stoop to such tactics, then you're on to something.
His entire argument is emotional - and he comments about those who satisfy themselves with emotion.
He is using it as an example to juxtapose wrongs that can easily and entirely be made right, and those wrongs that cannot be made right, at least not completely.
Reparations in a nutshell: People who were never Slaves expect to receive money from people who never owned slaves!
gee, if only Hitchens had heard you. He would've certainly been floored by that stupefying a-historical pearl.
Well... that is true at face value, but lets not pretend that racism against People of all colors isn't alive and well in america, and historically being pointed relentlessly at brown people more so than any other groups. I mean even when the Puritans and the Catholics were genociding the quakers during colonization, black people were still being treated worse as slaves than the quakers at large. The idea behind reparations is that HAD their ancestors not been slaves, and the more recent ones been profiled and disadvantaged purposely then perhaps the black and hispanic and native american communities would not be the overwhelming majority of poor people in the United states. Why is it, that in a country where white people make up 60-70% of the population, all the other races combined are far more than 70% of all people below the poverty line (almost 90%). It is because the system is rigged, and has been rigged worse in the past to favor us with fairer skin, not because we deserved it, but because our ancestors deemed the others worthy of malicious treatment to burden their own coin bags. There are a lot of groups that deserve reparations in the united states, in a way all reparations means is "paying back a debt for past wrongdoing". If your ancestor had massive amounts of debt, and wealth to pass on to you, you would have to pay the debt before you could access the wealth they passed on. Why then can we access the immense amount of wealth our ancestors accrued for us without righting the legacy of exploitation and barbarity they also pass on to us?
@@user-vl5qg5rf4n Homogeneity is the answer. Multiculturalism is a sin. Diversity and immigration is the importation of conflict and war.
"There is no reason for people of different genetics, religions, and cultures to live together in a single society or state. None whatsoever. The very concept of "a multicultural society" is intrinsically self-contradictory to the point of being oxymoronic.
The whole point of the nation-state is to permit the different nations to live in peace according to their own distinct and particular preferences. That was the idea behind the several and sovereign American States being "laboratories of democracy". And to the contrary, all that "multiculturalism" and "open borders" and "mass immigration" guarantees is a never-ending struggle of all against all, as each different tribe, religion, and culture seeks to impose its preferences on all the others." - Vox Day
@@whiterationalism4253 Sins are not real, just as the god who imposes the supposed punishment for them. Nice thinly veiled racism though. I'm sure vox day is a well respected academic whom many people listen too. oh, whats this, he's a fundamentalist southern baptist, whom people close to describe as openly a white nationalist and misogynist. Interesting. I'm sure that him literally being a racist scumbag has nothing to do with the fact that he thinks "races shouldn't mix". sorry, you can't just claim something so outlandish without some sort of evidence. And while I do believe that mister Beale would love to genocide minorities in America so that he could have his white paradise I don't see any point you've made with that quote that really does anything more than emptily posit things that seem ridiculous.
@@user-vl5qg5rf4n Another nihilist. You know anyone who uses the term 'racist' these days where they stand and where there head (lack of brains) is at.
"Racist" is just a term non-white people use to demand access to white people, white inventions, white culture and white civilization.
"People use the word Racist as a control word. Humans have control words for dogs (Sit, Stay, Down) and those who want to rob Whites of their countries have control words for Whites: Racist, White Supremacists, Nazi" - Frank Raymond
"A racist is patriot . Throughout history a patriot has been revered as a person who stands up for the interest of his race, his people, his ethnicity, his kind. Patriotism and Racism have always been the highest virtues. We give medals to Patriots...to racists. But now the highest virtue Patriotism is vilified as the lowest crime, and it is called Racism." - Frank Raymond
"Racists are the only people properly equipped to live and survive in this world."
“If you're not racist it's about time you start your country is hanging in the balance”
Have a nice day!
He was such a beautiful speaker and extremely charismatic. That being said, once you really break down what he is saying, there is very little of an actual argument there.
It was a fairly straightforward moral argument in favor of reparations. Not sure why you would think it unclear. Was there an injustice done? Yes. Do we have the ability and the imperative to address it? Yes.
itomba nowhere does he make a case that what can be done, does in fact address the problem at hand.
Making the argument that the Rosetta stone is better left at the british museum because more people will see it and there is no direct connection of modern egypt with ancient egypt, while at the same time demanding the return of some greek statue, is morally wrong snd hypocritical. And no, the wrongs of slavery cannot be corrected, you can’t make the descendants of white people who came to america after the civil war pay money to other people whose ancestors were never slaves. And even if you could find only the descendants of slaves and their slave owners, it us still morally and legally wrong to make children pay for the sins of their fathers. Who is going to pay then for the suffering caused by the crusades, or by the islamic conquest of india, persia, or the atrocities of the ottoman empire on the balkans and armenia?
@@HNedel You're paying for Jews to have their own country, with a fully formidable military, a nuclear arsenal, at a rate of $10,000 per day. White Americans AND black Americans, had nothing to do with that. But reparations for black Americans is a punishment to you? Make that make sense!
@@bancolino no I don't, the us aid to Israel is 3.1 billion per year, which is 10 dollars per person per year. USA is paying more in aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a round a billion to Jordan, Ethiopia and Pakistan each. You can have your 10 dollars per year, maybe you can actually buy a pair of Jordans in 30 years.